KNOWING GOD'S WILL"By late Pastor Lloyd Peterson

KNOWING GOD'S WILL"
By late Pastor Lloyd Peterson
We need to understand how to apply grace to the decision-making process
of our lives. When grace rules a person's life his perspective changes
on everything. He begins to understand that every detail of life flows
from his relationship with God. Grace means that God does it all. We
simply receive from Him, cooperating with the Holy Spirit by trusting
Him moment by moment. To walk in grace doesn't mean that we are passive
In matters of daily living. To the contrary, it means that we act in
confidence, resting In the fact that it is God who will initiate,
perpetuate, and consummate His plan for our lives.
Many believers fall short of the joy God intends for them because they
fall to understand how His grace acts on our behalf to being to pass the
wonderful plan He has for us. God has an awesome plan for your life. It
isn't a cookie-cutter plan, either. He designed a special agenda that
was uniquely created just for you. Before you were ever born, He saw you
and customized His plan for your lifetime. (Ps.139:16) One of the
greatest joys in life is knowing that you are experiencing the very
purpose for which you were created. Fulfilling the will of God Is not
some elusive goal that can never be reached. It Is possible for
Christians to enjoy the experience of knowing that we are in the very
center of God's purpose.
The starting point for understanding the will of God must be grace. The
legalist asks, "What is the will of God for me?" The will of God is not
primarily a plan, but instead is a Person. Jesus Christ is the wiII of
God. When one rightly relates to Him, doing the wiII of God becomes the
natural result of our union with Him.
Many Christians act like a deist* when it comes to God's will. They look
for God to show them his wiII so that they can then go out and do it.
So under grace, it isn't the Christian's duty to find God's will, but
rather God will reveal His will to the one who rests in Him. A person
ruled by law will pursue God's will with sincerity and yet never be
confident that he has discovered it. One who enjoys intimacy with Jesus
will know it without struggling to find it.
* A Deist, basically recognizes very little personal interaction between
God and has empowered the car (earth) to run, and now it is up to many
where he drives it and how he runs it.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
We ought not to pray supposing that if only we pray
hard enough
we shall get whatever we ask for. Most of the
bitterness of
unanswered prayer comes from the assumption that God
will
juggle His universe to give us what we plead for if
we plead long
enough. On the other hand, many things can happen,
both within
and outside of the individual, in response to prayer
without any
setting aside of God's orderly processes.
----George Harkness,