God's Will Revisited

Well, this is a perfect example of the fact that I do not have it all together and that I am learning as I speak to you, my readers.  I don't have everything figured out.  You could say…I am a work in progress.  When I write songs, I call the unfinished ones WIP's.  Anyway, Satan has again attacked me once again with this issue, and so therefore I have learned some more.  So, once again God allowed beauty to come from the pain.

First and foremost, I am going to be honest and say that my biggest fear is to be outside of God's will, or to miss God's best because I was stupid, missed the boat, or stubborn.

We have heard our whole life, to not settle, to strive ahead and achieve our dreams.  Which is great advice, but somehow that has led me to fear that my life now isn't hard enough, challenging enough, and worrisome enough to be God's will.

It has led me to believe that easy things are not of God, and peaceful things are not of God.

But what in the world?  That makes no sense.  Yes, sometimes God does send us trials to make us grow, but He is an all powerful God.  If He wants he can make a molehill out of mountain, instead of making a mountain out of molehill.

Yes, God is a big and immense, glorious God that we will never be able to understand this side of heaven, but that doesn't mean He is going to always make the road hard and confusing.  Wouldn't it be deceptive of God to keep his will confusing?  God isn't deceptive therefore we can trust that He will show us the way, when it is necessary for us to know.  He just might not tell us when we find it's the right time, but He will always let us know when it's time.

So, this week I had dinner with the president of my sorority.  As I was telling her of the many worries that run through my head on a daily basis, most of which that pertain to the future.  She asked me if I had ever tried to only focus on a day at a time, and not think about or worry to much about what God wants of me tomorrow, but of only what He wants of me today.

Then, everything started to make sense. My jewel house mentor, last semester wrote on this white board in our room, "Be faithful to what God has given you to do today" and in one of my favorite books of the bible it says  "Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them." James 4: 13-17

This verse shows that it is actually boasting to tell others what you are going to do in the future, because you don't know what could happen…therefore we must understand that if and only if it is the Lord's will, we will do whatever we plan on doing. 

One of my friends was talking to me about God's will and she said that she finds it almost funny that we except God to give us the future all the time.  It is a miracle to know the future, yet we ask God as if it is a requirement, when really it is something so extraordinary for us to even have a glimpse of the future.  

Then, there is this verse "Don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself" Matthew 6:34  

So, if we really seek to have a trust without borders, we must rest in God each day and trust that God has got tomorrow covered. We must know that He isn't a deceiving God who is going to confuse us; He is a God who will ask us to trust Him with the future, and be faithful for what He has asked us to do today.   

Yet, this may be difficult because as another friend told me that he had learned from one of his mentors, it that we can form habits in our thoughts.  If we worry all the time, we form a habit of worrying and thus get really good at it.  So, in order to have a trust without borders, we must break our habit of worrying about the future.  This will take time and discipline but I can't wait because it will be so worth it. 

So, join me today in disciplining your mind to have a habit of trusting God instead of worrying about he future, and a habit of focusing on today and not the tomorrow.