God's will.

Someone went out of their way to pick me up for bible study yesterday night, and I'm glad. The topic shared impacted me a lot. Not an explosive impact that'd die down sooner or later, but rather something that I want to allow to sink into me.

There are three 'wills' of God, basically. God's Providential Will, God's Moral Will, and God's Personal Will.

God's Providential Will concerns things that are going to happen. These are things that are already given in the bible. Fullstop. For example, there's no questioning that Jesus is going to come back. There's no questioning that there is heaven and hell.

God's Moral Will includes things such as the ten commandments. For example, do not commit murder. You don't have to pray and ask God if it's His will that you murder someone tonight to get cash to save this dying pastor. It's already clear, in the bible.

Finally, but not least, God's Personal Will. The one I want to know about the most. Search and look all you want, you won't find specifics in the bible for your individual life. Things such as, where I'm going to live, what subjects I should be taking, who I should get married to, etc.

Jinho got us thinking. Not that I haven't already over thought about this, but again, I thought. What can we do to find out what God's personal will for us is? Why do we want to know anyway?

"Because we know God's plan is the best plan."

I don't want to, as Jinho put it, sit down one day when I'm 45 years old, and wonder where my life went to.

"Study hard, play hard, then study study study study study, cram, EXAM. Next up, college, play hard, active, study, study, study, study, study, cram, EXAM! Next up... And then get a job. After getting a job, work hard at getting promotions. Then get a new car, nice house. And then plan marriage, get married, and then next, focus on the children.............."

It's all fine, going to church and getting involved in church activities. But.

Right before Jinho started sharing, he borrowed Joshua's iPod and proposed to put it under one of the table's legs to stabilize it. Joshua was, of course, more than unwilling.

Jinho showed us how a life that is lived without its purpose being fulfilled is like an iPod being used to stabilize a table.

Something so precious, able to do so much more,
wasted on something so comparatively trivial.

Will putting the iPod under the table's leg be useful? To a certain degree, yes, the table will not be wobbly anymore. But at what cost?

Back to the question. What can we do to find out? The obvious answers: Pray. Read the bible. Pray. Pray somemore.

But that doesn't seem to be working. It's not clear enough. We don't hear the audible voice of God on a daily basis. Sometimes never.

So, Jinho led us to something that I'd been figuring out for a long time:

If you want to know what God's Personal Will for you is, then you'll have to make it a point to know as much as you can about God's Providential and Moral Will.

Why?

Because if you are truly sincere in doing God's will, you'll want to know and do all three. Not just God's Personal Will for you, but also God's Providential and Moral Will. If you don't care about the first two, then it's very unlikely you'll find out about the third.

Jeremiah 6:10

"To whom can I speak and give warning?
Who will listen to me?
Their ears are closed, so that they cannot hear.
The word of the Lord is offensive to them;
they find no pleasure in it."

That was when we mentioned Lady Gaga. Jinho didn't bash her up verbally, in fact, he was quite loose about it. But he did make a few points. When people start to fill up their minds with oh-la-la instead of the word of God, guess what's going to distract them from listening when God speaks to them?

So, to find out about God's Providential Will and Moral Will, we read the bible. Consistently. With an open heart. We pray about it. We apply what we learn. We ask the elders in church. Go for bible study. The better we know God's Providential and Moral Will, the more sensitive we will be towards God's voice in our lives concerning the specific decisions we make.

Amen.



"Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul." 1 Peter 2:11

"If you were of the world, the world would love his own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." John 15:19



Signed, Carmelia.


Feeling, tired.
Thinking, it's okay to be lame, it's okay to be too much, it's okay that they talk.