John 15:16
You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.
Bible Gateway Link: John 15:16 (NKJV)
Bible Gateway Link: John 15:16 (NKJV)
ReplyDeleteKim, I read your thoughts and wondered how many Christians struggle with God's will. I thought as a child and youth that it was some esoteric super spiritual ethereal (you get my drift) concept that connected deep theological dots.
It isn't and it doesn't. God's will is very simple. And I've studied and worried this line of thought for 50 some years. It came to me last year when I was struggling in every sense of the word, following Elizabeth's death. Grief is a profound worker of confusion and inimical disambiguation. When the disconnected components are lying on the floor, it is very hard to re-systematize them.
The point is this.
1. God created everyone of us in His image.
2. He gave us gifts to exercise. (the church has gone a long way toward confusing those gifts)
3. He called us to function.
Given that frame work, we Christians have a very difficult time congealing the three to bear one result. I have seen lay people who have chased that 'rainbow' for most of their lives, and die unfulfilled. Missionaries who have left field and following to seek a desk job or pastorate here, because they felt failure overwhelmingly. And having had the same confusion, I realized it lay the feet of poorly communicated truth from God's word.
His will is very simple, each of us has it prewired into our hearts. Those gifts God sewed into our brains and DNA....in my case writing, music, photography, love, touching others...are really God's will. I function best, most expertly, more lovingly, when I and I working in one of my gifts. We ALL do.
If you pray for God's will, start with what you have. Study it, work at it, perfect it. Invest in it. This is not about money, it is about passion for what you do. God is glorified when man operates in what God designed him to love. For me, it was engineering, imaging, writing, music, helping, evangelism. Some concrete, some spiritual.
It is up to us to manage those things, develop those things, excel at those things. Your husband became one of the most respected journalists in the world and truthfully in history, because he had a passion for words and truth. He speaks and millions of us listen. That's a spiritual gift.
I have a passion for words, music, helping, and images. I work at a place that lets me use my expertise in photography to color match TV cameras. My sense of music helped me create jazz recordings that two different record companies licensed. My writing enables me to communicate truth to my family and friends, books for a legacy, and poetry into songs. My Barnabas attitude puts me in places to calm the hearts of people with poetry.
Last year, when I finally crumbled in October, my question to God was, "What do YOU want from me?"
"What do you, Wayne, love to do?" That question provided the direction for my life. Peace overwhelmed me, through all those tears of sadness and grief, as confusion melted into connection.
God’s will is not hard. We make it hard. We don’t believe God when He tells us to excel. No, it is not easy to start. Sitting down and penning what we think we have, what we know we can do, and what we love pursuing occupationally, we can develop what God’s will is. It is not a crapshoot nor a roll of the dice. It is right in front of our noses if we will just stop frantically chasing the every changing target of feelings.
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Dear Wayne,
ReplyDeleteI have come to the same conclusion. You have expressed it perfectly using your God-given gifts.
Love, Kim