Do you ever feel a little lost or purposeless, or wonder what God’s will is for your life?
I have felt that way at times, especially when I get caught up in the daily tasks of my role as a wife and mom, which can at times feel monotonous. When the kids are crying over a math lesson, dinner is burning while we are busy struggling under a load of laundry, and job conflicts or people problems are burdening us emotionally, it’s easy to start thinking there is something bigger and better out there that we’re missing - especially with the call of the little squares on social media, like a siren song, altering our expectations and luring us to all the wrong things.
Well, God‘s will for your life and mine isn’t some mysterious thing that we have to figure out. It’s right here:
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.”Colossians 1:9-12 NKJV
Did you catch it? In verse nine Paul tells the Colossians that he is praying they will be filled with knowledge of God’s will:
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;”
And then he lists exactly what that is in the following verses.
“…{1}that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, {2}being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; {3}strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; {4}giving thanks to the Father…”
I don’t know about you, but I fall short of all of those things every day. But to any extent that God strengthens me to fulfill His will for my life, it is only because of what Christ has done on the cross. God alone is holy, and He took our sins upon Himself and died in our place, offering us His righteousness when we trust in Christ, so that we can stand blameless someday before the throne of God.
“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Colossians 1:13-14 NKJV
So you and I, when we trust in Jesus alone for our salvation, we don’t have to sit around wondering anymore if we are missing God’s will for our lives. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing with our time, whatever obstacles or struggles come with those daily tasks, we can live fully in His will if we do these things. We can pray and ask Him to equip us to…
…walk in a manner worthy of Him, fully pleasing Him in whatever we do,
…bear fruit in every good work by the power of His Holy Spirit,
…increase in your knowledge of God,
…be strengthened by His glorious might to do your daily work, in service to Him, with endurance, patience, and joy,
…and to give thanks to the Father who delivered us from darkness to the light of Christ’s Kingdom, by Jesus own blood spilt for our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.
That. That is God’s will. For your life and for mine.
Sometimes it’s not a very clear answer. This is where Paul’s prayer for spiritual wisdom makes a lot of sense. We need to pray for God’s wisdom to see these things clearly when making decisions. If there is no right/wrong decision, it’s just a matter of our preference, then I think we choose to the best of our ability, and do whatever we do to the glory of God.
What do you think?
I agree wholeheartedly. We’ve gone through the New City Catechism a few times, and it states that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s our purpose, that’s His overarching will for our lives. Everything else will get sorted out. In college, I briefly went to a church that used to hit the college students over the head with the need to pray and ask God to reveal His will for our lives and what our purpose is. It drove me nuts at the time, but I didn’t yet have the wisdom to fully discern why. It left all the college students feeling like we were trying to solve a riddle to figure out what our Great Purpose is. When in reality, it’s to seek after God, know Him more, and glorify Him. As long as we’re doing these things, we’ll be where we need to be.
Thank you for this. I like how you address both the overarching, "What is God's will for my life?" and then at the end talk about trying to discern God's will for a specific decision that needs to be made. The latter is what I struggle with the most at this point in my life.
When I saw the title of your post, I remembered one time when my dad preached on this topic and his conclusion was pretty much that determining God's will is actually pretty simple, as you've written here. I think for me the hard part is attuning my heart to HIS will and trusting that HIS will is good for me.
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