0706 FINDING GOD’S WILL PART 1

JULY 6 = 1 THESSALONIANS 3

FINDING GOD’S WILL, PART ONE

I think we have something of a misunderstanding of what we might call “the center” of God’s will for us. In searching for our center, we take spiritual gifts inventory tests and fill out various other self-discovery tools, and we read our Bibles and try to read the signs of the times, while we pray and seek a sign that we are in God’s perfect place at God’s perfect timing.

The problem is, we are asking questions of Who, What When and Where, instead of Why and How. We think of “God’s will” as a person, place or thing. But God’s will is not a noun. God’s will is found in verbs.

These next chapters in 1 Thessalonians provide some excellent examples of knowing that you are in the center of God’s perfect will for your life. Let’s take three days to explore the depths of each one, and find out how to know for certain that you are in the center of God’s will for you. Ready? 

Here is what Paul says in chapter 3.

“May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”

While this little segment doesn’t directly say the words “God’s will,” it does talk about things that God does in us. So bear with me if you will (see how I just referred to your will? It’s like that!), and see where this is going.

What the Lord wills to do in you and me is to make our love increase, so that all that you do is motivated by and saturated with love. Not reluctant duty, but increasing love. 

And the Lord causes that increasing love in turn to overflow for each other. It is God’s will for us as a body to genuinely love one another. Not just put up with each other, and certainly not to complain or gossip about one another when they aren’t around. But to feel genuine compassion for one another, to truly want what is best for each other, and to willingly put one another’s needs ahead of our own.

You might say that the next circle affected by our overflowing love is “everyone else,” as the NIV translates it. It is God’s will that each of us will be like the Good Samaritan, who loved a stranger enough to willingly, generously lay down our own ambitions to help another. This is what the Bible calls “hospitality;” the “love of strangers.” 

And notice again that it is not you and me trying to drum up the feelings needed to love. Paul’s hope is that THE LORD WILL do that in you. (Did you notice how I just referred to God’s WILL there?)

Another thing God wants to do in me and you is to strengthen our hearts, so that we will be blameless and holy. We might say that strong feelings of love without the discipline of a strong heart, we will find ourselves in the end to be nice people who never made a difference with our lives because we simply blended in with the world. A loving motivation stirs a disciplined resolve and makes us complete individuals, functioning together in perfect harmony to do the right things, and in this way to prepare us for the final judgment. 

Does that sound like the center of God’s will to you?

To me, too. Amen.