God's call on our lives seems harder to figure out than it actually is. God calls us to follow Jesus, to walk humbly, to have mercy, to love people, to be conformed to the image of His Son. Along the way, we will get married or not, move to this place or that, have this job or that, spend our time on hobbies, service, learning, relationships and work. We often focus on the part of God's call that is very specific to our temporal, immediate reality (the what, the when, the how) - when who it is that He calls us to be is eternal and will transcend all of these other things that so occupy us.
I'm not suggesting that these other things are not important, that we should sell everything and become a monk or a nun (necessarily), but that in focusing on what is difficult to discern, we exclude what God calls us to that is plain - and that puts all of the other pieces of our lives in His proper perspective.
4 comments:
So what you are saying is, our focus should be on serving God in the eternal, general commands ie. Great Commission. Not to get overly focused on missing God's will for us in the small decisions in life?
Yes - but the temporal decisions we have are not always small (some are smaller than others). They may be significant, but they are, after all, temporal. If we are exclusively focused on them, we miss what life, eternal life, is really about. If this happens, it doesn't really matter if we are getting all the temporal decisions right (whatever getting them right would mean in that case).
Do you think, from an eternal point of view, we can ever be out of the will of God. It seems to me that if God is sovereign, that the temporal decisions that we make will fall in line with the eternal (or at least more long-term) plan God has for us.
In other words, if you're focusing on the eternal plan God has for you, do you really need to be concerned with marrying the wrong person, taking the wrong job, etc.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." Proverbs 16:25
I sincerely mean to speak this truth in love, regardless of how brash it may seem. Whenever we sin, choose to think or act in a way that is outside the character of God, we are outside His will.
The sovereignty of God means that He can work through sin and righteousness to bring about His ultimate good, but by no means does that excuse our responsibility as His followers to seek out the righteous ways of living. Romans 6:11-13
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