Adventures In Spiritual Living

Living Life as an Adventure of
Spiritual Exploration and Discovery

Seeking God's Will

Guidelines For Seeking God’s Will

Kaye Cooper

Discerning ​​the will of God for our lives often seems to be an intimidating challenge. We hardly know where to begin. I want to tell you about three guidelines I have identified that can help to reduce the immensity of the task: (1) Love is always God’s will; (2) We have to do our part; (3) Exercising faith is important.

Love

Many times we are intent on seeking God’s specific will in a situation. Does he want me to do this or do that? Should I take this job? Should I start this project? No matter what particular actions we might be contemplating, we can be sure that God’s will is always love. That may not resolve everything, but it can narrow the field of possible choices. It’s like trying to find your hotel room. If you aren’t even in the right hotel, you can be sure you won’t find the right room. If the action you’re considering is not loving or is selfish, you can be sure it isn’t God’s will. Deciding whether various alternatives are loving, may eliminate some, leaving a smaller number from which to choose. 

Of course, accurately applying the criteria of love requires that you know what love is. Many people use the example of Jesus’ life to guide them in understanding what love is. Three definitions of love from The URANTIA Book are very useful: (1) the desire to do good to others, (2) friendliness, (3) unselfishness. Used in various combinations these definitions improve our judgment. For example, to do without necessities in order to give your children unnecessary luxuries may appear to be unselfish, but it is easy to see that such an act is not good for them, and so it is not loving. Sometimes being loving requires us to say, “No.”

Our Part

I have run across people who were unwilling to seek God’s guidance very actively.

They felt that they should make their own decisions, not take the easy way by asking God to make those decisions for them. Actually, seeking God’s will is not the easy way. God does not give us the answers with no effort from us.

We are in partnership with God and we have to do our part in the decision-making. Sometimes our part involves gathering information about a situation. It usually includes projecting the various alternative choices.

We may need to get the reflections or even advice of friends. We may assess the choices as to whether each one is loving or not. We have to get our selfish will out of the way and sincerely dedicate ourselves to choosing the best alternative (God’s will), perhaps even before we have decided what that will is. Our part in seeking God’s will always involves prayer. Prayer prepares us to receive God’s input into our lives. There are times when our part is to imagine living out a possible choice. 

I can recall discussing a possible course of action with friends one evening. One finally suggested, “Let’s just consider that in detail for a while. Let’s start making our plans.” So we did. We discussed how we would proceed, divided up responsibilities and made lists. By the end of the evening, I knew what was best for me. I couldn’t proceed with our plans. I couldn’t live that way. Ultimately it would require us to behave in an unloving and unfriendly way. 

Truth is distinguished by its livability. When we can’t live out a course of action while remaining loyal to our ideals, it isn’t God’s will for us. Discovering God’s will requires a very active person. If we haven’t done our part, God doesn’t have much to work with, and we aren’t going to be very successful at finding his will. On the other hand, the mind which has stretched its capacity to find and consider all the alternatives it can, has a better chance of finding a good one. The soul who seeks God’s presence in prayer is more likely to receive helpful insight. The one who has assessed the lovingness of each alternative, has removed the selfish choices from consideration. The person who has dedicated himself wholeheartedly to doing God’s will, regardless of what that is, has an excellent chance of discovering that will.

Faith 

Once we are actively working on our part of the partnership we have with God, then we can be sure we will receive help from him. In fact, we need to feel confident that he will help. Exercising faith is important to the process of finding God’s will for us. I can remember one of those red letter days in my life. You know, the ones that jump out at you as you scan your memories. On that particular day in prayer I had somehow mentally meandered across the idea that it would be fun to see with God’s eyes. So I asked for that way of seeing. Then I started acting as if I were doing just that, imagining how God would see a certain person and expecting God to give me insight. It probably wasn’t much faith I was exercising, but God seemed to count it enough. All of a sudden I knew I was seeing with God’s eyes. My attitude about the person was transformed. I saw him as my spiritual child, loved him weaknesses and all and yearned for his growth and maturity. The effect was electrifying in a quiet way.

The experience would never have happened without my faith being such that God was real to me. I acted expecting his response. When he responded, it was much greater than I’d expected. But then, God’s gracious gifts usually are. Exercising faith is so important to finding God’s will, because if we don’t really believe it is possible, we have little chance to succeed. Faith is also going to carry us through the times when it takes longer to find God’s will than we think it should, times when it seems no one is listening to our prayers. It will carry us through with relative calm and poise. Then when we finally catch a glimpse of God’s will, we won’t miss it because we have given up on our expectation of guidance. 

Faith will also give us the courage we need when it’s time to act and we still have doubts about whether we have, in fact, found God’s will for us. And when we discover through the test of living that we have not found his will, faith gives us the persistence to start looking again and eventually triumph. If we are using the highest standard we know, that of love,if we are doing our best to do our part in seeking God’s will, if we are exercising faith in his reality and his help, then we will begin finding God’s will for our lives. He’s going to see that it happens!

 

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