I am often asked about the will of God. What is God’s will for my life? Is this God’s will for me? If I do this, will I be in God’s will? If I make a mistake, am I out of the will of God?
There are a lot of books on the bookshelves about finding the will of God for your life as an individual. I’ve read teachings on the perfect will and the permissive will of God. I heard an idea that if you get entangled in sin, you forfeit the right for God’s best, and must settle for God’s second best will.
The Bible at least to me, seems silent in some ways about the will of God. It is evident that we are to know God’s laws, His precepts, and His word, and that He expects us to obey those. But when I try to survey Scripture to find answers about the “will of God” as we often define it, whether we should go here, or do this, or buy that, I am often at a loss.
I find three things quite clear, however. The first is found in Romans 8:29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.”
It is the will of God that we are conformed to the image of Christ Jesus. Whatever God needs to do, whatever He needs to use, everything He does has one singular purpose … to make us like Christ. He’ll use successes and failures. He’ll speak, He’ll woo, He’ll challenge, He’ll convict us to move us closer and closer to the likeness of His Son. The ultimate thing I know from Scripture is that God’s will is to make us like our Savior.
Romans 8:29-30: reminds us “those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” The work that God began in us will be completed. God set this work in motion, and He will use everything to accomplish His will to make us like His Son.
Our part is to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” to no longer conform “to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing” of our minds. With that offering of our bodies, and that transformation of our minds, Paul writes, we will be able then to “test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” [Romans 12:1-2]
It is not about what we are doing, where we are going, what we are buying, or other such things . . . it is about who we are becoming.
