How do you know if you are living in God's will? Part I

Your approach to this question will depend on where you are on the belief spectrum between God's detailed predestination of your life and his gift of free will to people.  I believe in completely free will but know that I am nowhere near good enough, smart enough or wise enough to live without offering my life and choices to God.  Furthermore, I can trust his judgement and desire to bless me more than I can trust my own judgement so I try to use my free will to be in the places and situations that God sees as best. 

In actual fact, to even have this question you must believe that you have free will, otherwise, what would it matter if you were in or out of God's will, you were predestined!

So what measure or measures do you you use to determine if you are in God's will?

Firstly, there are the obvious things like the 10 commandments

1. Have no other gods
2. Have no idols
3. Do not use the Lords name in vain
4. Remember the sabbath
5. Honour you father and your mother
6. Do not murder 
7. Do not commit adultery
8. Do not steal
9. Do not give false testimony
10. Do not covet

Now most honest people will realise that they do not keep all 10 all the time, however it gets even more drastic when you take into account what Jesus said in the sermon on the mount that even committing these acts in your heart is sin.  

1 John 1:8 says: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and truth is not in us.  So at the first level we are always out of God's will, not just because we sin but because we aren't perfect... to be continued!

Good Quote

"The State is the great fictitious entity by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."

- Frederic Bastiat (1801 - 1850)

  19th Century French Economist

Spin

Spin is the euphemistic term we use to describe misuse of information.  It was previously known as misrepresenting the truth or bluntly, lying.  The trick of spin is it is a degree of lying mixed with a degree of truth.  It purports to be the whole truth though.

Politicians are well known to use spin as one of their tools, listed businesses also.  When it is used from one country to the next we call it propaganda.   But what do we call it when we use it as an individual?

Pride, boasting, egoism, denial, twisting the truth, fibbing, lying!

It is not merely putting your best foot forward, it is claiming that your foot is better than it really is, that you are more that you really are.    

How often are you willing to let people think you contributed more to a project than you really did? That success was due to you more than it really was? That your faults are smaller and your strengths greater than they really are?  If truth is your goal, then spin cannot be.