Living in God's will. Part III

So far I have danced around the issue of knowing whether you 'in God's will' or not.  Firstly I have said we are all out of it to some degree ala the 10 commandments and other moral standards.  Secondly there is the consideration of specific will and how far it's detail extends.  Sufficed to say that whatever level you subscribe to, you will probably be aware that you are unable to perfectly live up to it.  So I have gotten away with being able to say that we are always out of God's will to some degree but that would be such a dualistic view.

Accepting that we aren't perfect and will never perfectly live as Christians does not excuse us from following Jesus to the degree we can, and it is this degree that I now want to make the focus of the question of living in God's will.  

First we should note that the possibility of our ever being perfect is totally ruled out by I John 1 so the issue is not perfection, the issue is where we are pointing - what pilots would call attitude, what yachties would call heading, what John Mitchell would call journey.  Boiling it all down to the moment - is what you are choosing taking a step toward Jesus or not?  Here is where it gets interesting because this is where people have different views on WWJD and therefore what we should do.  I will discuss some of the tools we have to judge whether we are stepping to Jesus or away and will also refer to views of what is holy and what is not.

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

Last post we looked at God's general will and our example was the 10 commandments as well as the way Jesus developed it in the sermon on the mount.  Now we will look at what people most often mean when they talk about being in or out of God's will - his specific will.

The concept of God's specific will is the idea that God has something or things that he wants you to do.   It could be a task or a role.  God wanted Abram to sacrifice his son Isaac (or did he) which is an example of a task.  For a role you could look at Jesus - to be the sinless saviour or Paul to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Now, the range of what you could believe about specific will is huge - ranging from God has a task he wants you to do, to several tasks (like points on a map), to the exact path of your life all mapped out.

Personally I find it a little to navel-gazy to analyse each and every action I take all day wondering whether it is God's will! I ask myself, is it God's will that I live in constant anxiety and concern to be perfect? and the answer I get is no!  We have already established that none of us even keeps all the commandments let alone other descriptions of perfect behaviour so instead of wondering whether we have been perfect we can simply know we will not have been.

That doesn't mean there isn't room for reflection and soul-searching however most of life should consist of living and then we will have something to reflect on.

What I do believe is that God gives us a place in life where we can step up to serve him in a way that fits with our personality, strengths, weaknesses and accumulated experience. It is still our choice to do so, however whatever choice you make can be lasting.  You can choose to go on a roller coaster for instance, but cannot choose to get off halfway through.  This is a concept of freewill that I have not often heard talked about, but I think it is vital to understand that free choice does mean we are in total control it just means that we are responsible and we can start off and end processes in our life by our choices.