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. 

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!