I delight to do Your will, O my God; yes, Your law is within my heart.
Psalm 40:8
David said that he was delighted to do God’s will, and most of us would say the same thing. We are willing to do the will of God, but we may not always be sure what His will is for us. One of the questions people ask most frequently is, “What is God’s will for my life?”
If we don’t know the will of God, it may be that we are asking the wrong questions. We may seek answers from God about what our career should be, where we should work, whom we should marry, if we should purchase the new car we want, if we should buy or sell a house, if we should make a commitment to volunteer at church or perhaps become a missionary. Those questions are in regard to our circumstances in life and they are not wrong questions to ask, but they aren’t the first or most important questions to ask. Jesus told us what to ask or seek in Matthew 6:33:
But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.
Matthew 6:33
Wanting to know God’s will is not primarily about our circumstances, our job, or whom we should marry. God does care about those things, but if we seek to know those answers alone, we are not discovering the most important part of God’s will.
There are deeper things that God wants us to seek Him about, and when we do we will find that the answers we need for daily life are readily evident. The following are some of the deeper things God desires that we seek Him about.
When we know God deeply and intimately, we will be more likely to know the answers to questions like where we should work, whom we should marry, whether we should buy a new car, and so forth. The more intimate we are with anyone, the better we instinctively know what they would want or not want in any situation. The same things happen when we develop a more intimate relationship with God.
The apostle Paul said that his determined purpose was to know God more deeply and intimately (see Philippians 3:10). One would think that since he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write two-thirds of the New Testament, he would have known God, and I am sure that he did, yet he wanted to know Him better and better. Is the cry of your heart to know God more deeply?
I was a Christian for many years before I realized I had a very surface relationship with God. I had asked God for many things, but I had never asked to know Him more deeply! We should not let things be more important to us than God Himself is.
We should not let things be more important to us than God Himself is.
This is a lifelong pursuit and one that I personally find exhilarating and exciting. When we truly love God, we will want to do all that He wants us to do, and none of what He does not want us to do. We will want to be more and more like Him.
Seeking God for spiritual maturity and Christ-likeness may be the most ignored portion of God’s will. Discipleship is seriously lacking among Christians, but it should be given high priority. God’s will is that we glorify Him—we cannot do that if we remain spiritual infants all of our lives.
Knowing anything always requires diligent study and a willingness to learn. It takes time and effort. Many people claim they cannot understand the Bible, but I think it is more likely that they are not willing to make the effort required to learn. The Holy Spirit will reveal the meaning of God’s Word to anyone who is willing to become a serious student of it.
If we seek to know God’s Word, we will find many of the answers we search for regarding daily life. One of the main ways that God guides us is through His Word. I urge you to make a commitment to study God’s Word diligently.
When asked what the most important commandment (God’s will) is, Jesus replied:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect). This is the great (most important, principal) and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself.
Matthew 22:37–39 AMPC
Since learning to love God, others, and ourselves is the most important commandment, it is a subject that we should spend a great deal of time studying. I was an unhappy Christian for many years. I spent a lot of time seeking God’s help and asking Him to guide me in decisions I needed to make, but I had failed to seek His will concerning walking in love. I was a very selfish person and had not realized the importance of learning to truly love in the way that God wanted me to. I began to study love and all of its aspects, and the more I studied it and walked in it, the happier I became.
The apostle Paul instructs us to live from faith to faith (see Romans 1:17). In other words, make it your goal to remain in faith at all times. When doubt comes knocking on your door, answer with faith.
When doubt comes knocking on your door, answer with faith.
Multitudes of Christians seek God daily for direction concerning their circumstances while simultaneously holding grudges against others and refusing to forgive them. I have found that I hear from God much more clearly if I keep my heart free of offense. Jesus said that the pure in heart will see God (see Matthew 5:8). They will easily discern God’s will for their lives.
Thank [God] in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you [who are] in Christ Jesus [the Revealer and Mediator of that will].
I Thessalonians 5:18 AMPC
The last time I spent some serious time seeking God about what His will was for me for the remainder of my life, He said, Be happy and enjoy life! So I am going to keep doing what I do in ministry and be sure I am happy and enjoy the journey. I am going to continue being a wife and mom and make sure I am enjoying the journey. Let’s serve God with a smile on our faces and let Him know that He makes us glad!
The psalmist David said that we should serve the Lord with gladness (Psalm 100:2).
If you have been seeking God for His will concerning your life, I am asking that you first consider whether you are pursuing and growing in the eight areas I mentioned. If you are not, set aside your other questions and go after what God has already said is important to Him.
Knowing God’s will is one thing, but doing it is another. Knowing must always be followed by doing, otherwise the knowing is powerless. Jesus gave His disciples an example of serving by washing their feet, and then He said, “If you know these things, blessed and happy and to be envied are you if you practice them [if you act accordingly and really do them]” (John 13:17 AMPC).
If you are anything like me, you find that at times you want to do the will of God—you even intend to do it—but somehow you can’t seem to follow through. The apostle Paul experienced the same dilemma and describes it accurately in Romans chapter 7:
For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am [ever] doing.
Romans 7:19 AMPC
He went on to say that he was unhappy and pitiable and wretched and that he needed help. Then, as if he saw the light, he exclaimed, “O thank God! [He will!] through Jesus Christ.…”(Romans 7:24–25 AMPC).
This leads me back to what I shared previously, which is that God wants us to use our free will to choose His will and then rely on Him and His grace to enable us to do it!
I want to make a strong point in this area, because I think there are two mistakes we can make concerning the doing of God’s will. First, we may try to do God’s will using willpower alone, but then we experience frustration and disappointment because we always fail. Willpower is helpful, but it only takes us so far, and then we need supernatural power to step in. Remember, Jesus said that apart from Him we could do nothing (see John 15:5), and He meant it. Of course, there are things we can attempt through sheer determination, but those attempts are often met with stress and anxiety. By leaning entirely on Jesus, we can do what God wants us to do with His power (grace), we will give Him the credit, and we will have lots of peace and joy.
Second, it is folly to think that we can have God’s will without making a choice to do so. Passive people sit idly by and hope something good will happen to them, but they do nothing to ensure that it does. They may be deceived into thinking that if a thing is God’s will, then God will just make it happen without them doing anything at all. For example, it is God’s will for you to have a job if you need one, but you have to go look for one. We are partners with God. We have a part and He has a part. We cannot do His part, and He will not do our part.
Our part is to be willing to do the will of God, and God’s part is to reveal His will and give us the power to do it. When we pray for God to solve a problem for us, He very often gives us something to do, and we can be assured He will energize us to do anything He asks of us.
The apostle James said that if we hear the Word of God but don’t do what it says, we are deceiving our own selves by reasoning that is contrary to the truth (see James 1:22). Once again, we see that knowing is useless without doing, but if we don’t take the proper approach to successful “doing,” we will always end in failure and frustration.
Before I learned what I am sharing, I clearly remember hearing rousing sermons in church about the need for better thoughts, more godly words, and a better attitude. I agreed and was always convicted by the Word of a need for improvement, so I promptly went home and “tried” to change. Of course, I always failed because I had left God out of the picture. I was trying to do His will by willpower alone, without asking for His help (grace).
However, I could have asked for God’s grace and yet been unwilling to do anything myself and still have failed. God doesn’t do everything for us, but He does work through us, and we do things while leaning entirely on Him. I am working on this book today. Yes, I am working, but not without having asked God to help me do a good job. The apostle Paul said that he worked harder than anyone, but it was actually God working in and through him that produced the good results:
By the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not [found to be] for nothing (fruitless and without effect). In fact, I worked harder than all of them [the apostles] though it was not really I, but the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God which was with me.
I Corinthians 15:10 AMPC
We are in error if we think we can do what needs to be done on our own, and we are in error if we believe God will do everything for us. The Bible teaches us that God usually works in and through people to accomplish His will.
Man’s will or “what he wants” reveals more about him than anything else. If we want money more than anything, then we are greedy. If we want promotion, popularity, and applause, then we are insecure, wanting things to make us feel good about ourselves. If we want to be delivered from our difficulties more than we want to be strong in them, then we perhaps want a life of ease with no difficulty. But, if more than anything, we want God’s will, then we have a right heart and will ultimately end up in the right place with the right life. What do you want?
According to God’s Word, we should want Him more than anything. If we seek Him first, then all other things will be added to our lives (see Matthew 6:33). If by examining my life I find that most of my prayers are about things that I want and circumstances in my life that I want to change, then I am probably putting my own desires first, rather than God’s.
About twenty years ago, I was praying one morning for all the things I wanted and felt that I needed God to do for me when suddenly He interrupted me. Have you ever been interrupted by God while you thought you were praying to God? I was praying about what was important to me, but I was not praying in the will of God. The first thing I sensed in my heart was that I needed to compare my prayer life to that of Jesus or perhaps the apostle Paul. When I did that, I was quite ashamed of the way I had been praying because all of my prayers were for something in the physical realm (things I wanted, growth of my ministry, for people who annoyed me to change, et cetera). All of Jesus and Paul’s prayers were for deeper and more important things. Jesus prayed for unity among believers. He prayed that God would keep us from evil. He prayed that we would make progress in holiness or that we would be sanctified (see John 17:15–23). He prayed for God’s will to be done and not His.
Saying, Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but [always] Yours be done.
Luke 22:42 AMPC
Paul also had an amazing prayer life, and yet in all of his prayers for the believers, I never found one example of Paul praying for them to be delivered from adverse circumstances or to have more money or better living conditions. What I find are prayers for believers to know God, to know our inheritance in Him and the power that is available to us as His children, for us to be strengthened in the inner man by the Holy Spirit, to know and experience the love of God for ourselves, and to be bodies wholly filled with God (see Ephesians 3:16–19).
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul prayed that believers would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and have all spiritual wisdom. That they would walk, live, and conduct themselves in a manner fully pleasing to God, steadily grow and increase in the knowledge of God, be strengthened with the power to exercise every kind of endurance and patience (perseverance and forbearance) with joy, and always give thanks to God (see Colossians 1:9–12).
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul prayed that their love would abound more and more, that they would learn to sense and prize what was excellent and of real value. He prayed that they would be filled with the fruits of righteousness (see Philippians 1:9–11). So, as with the prayers of Jesus, we see that Paul’s prayers contained spiritual depth rather than mere requests for changes in circumstances.
If you compare your prayer life to these excellent biblical examples, do you perhaps feel a need to change how you pray? If not, that is great. But if you do, there is no need to be condemned; just rejoice that God is helping you see truth that will make you free.
When I realized how anemic my prayers were, God challenged me not to ask for one “thing” other than more of Him until He released me to do so. I want to share that this season in my life that lasted six months was one of the highlights of my journey with God, and it was life-changing for me. I learned to seek God for Who He is instead of only for what He could do for me. Let me stress again that God wants to do “things” for us, and we can ask Him for what we want and need, but we should not get the cart before the horse, so to speak. Always keep first things first and the rest will fall into place much more easily.
Making every day count is dependent on having a rich and vibrant relationship with God. Our prayers are important, and they don’t have to be selfish and self-centered. Let’s pray and then plan for God’s will to be done each and every day in our lives.
• Knowing God’s will is not primarily about our circumstances—it’s about getting to know Him more deeply and intimately.
• The more you study God’s Word, the more answers you’ll find regarding daily life.
• God wants us to use our free will to choose His will and then rely on Him and His grace to enable us to do it!
• By leaning entirely on Jesus—rather than on our own willpower—we can do what God wants us to do with His power (grace).
• Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love Him and to love others as we love ourselves.