What Does God Want From You? 

How do you know that what you are doing on a day to day basis is what God desires? 

Back in the late 1800s a bishop from his pulpit and in the periodical he edited said that man taking flight was both impossible and contrary to the will of God. But the irony was that Bishop Wright had two sons, Orville and Wilbur! Wright was wrong. Sure of himself, but wrong. 

So many claim to know the will of God, and yet how can we be certain? People have struggled with discerning the will of God since the beginning of time. 

Adam and Eve, Noah, Israel, and 2 thousand years of Christianity. David was able to recognize what God wanted in regards to Saul. He had many opportunities to overthrow Saul and become king, but he waited and did what God wanted of him. 

Have you ever been faced with a difficult decision, one that you were torn between, and wrestled over in your mind? We want to know what the right decision is. Maybe you even prayed that God would tell you which way to go. How do you make God-fearing decisions in your life? Sometimes God will shut a door and bolt it, but we will try and climb through a window. Other times God will give us multiple open doors and let us choose.

God expects us to follow His Will for us. So what does God expect of you as an individual in His Family? We have a hard time grasping this idea of God’s will and yet in the church you hear about it all the time. “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” What does this mean? I’m not talking about the creek rising part, what DOES the Lord will? 

For us to comprehend this topic we need to look at what scripture defines as God’s will. Study it with the end goal of understanding what God expects from us. 

The will of God…this is a complex topic. We are talking about the mind of God. 

Mankind trying to explain this is like a rocking chair telling a carpenter how to be a human. It is, and forever will be a complex subject. That being said, scripture isn’t silent on this matter. There is no better source to go to in learning about God than His own words. Everything we know about the Creator was given to us by Him. He wants to be known, but we will only be able to know so much. 

In general it appears that in scripture God’s will is spoken of in two different ways. 

There are two different meanings to the will of God, and we need to know them and discern which will is spoken about in regards to our obedience. 

Ephesians 1:11 says, “In him [Christ] we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” The will of God in this passage is God’s sovereign plan of all that comes to pass. In fact, there are many other passages in the Bible that teach that God’s providence over the universe extends to the smallest details of nature and human decisions (Matthew 10:29, Proverbs 16:33). That’s the first meaning of the will of God: It is God’s sovereign control of all things. Some refer to this as His “sovereign will” or His “will of decree.” It cannot be broken. It always comes to pass.

There is a second way His will is defined in scripture…God’s Will of Command

This is His will in what He commands us to do. This is the will of God we can disobey and fail to do. This is the sovereign will we do whether we believe in it or not. (E.g. Pharisees, Herod). 

For example, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Not all do the will of his Father. “Not everyone will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Why? Because not all do the will of God.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” Here we have a very specific instance of what God commands us: holiness, sanctification, sexual purity. This is his will of command. 

But many do not obey.

What God expects of us is found in His will of command. He has revealed this to us in the New Testament. Our new agreement (covenant) with God is founded on our willingness to obey His commands. In doing so we can know that the blood of His Son cleanses us from all sin.