How Can We Find God's Will?

1 Thes 5:16 Be joyful always; 17pray continually; 18give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

As a spiritual director and teacher, I often have the experience of people asking me about how they can come to discover God's will for their lives. Actually, it is the most commonly asked question that I encounter among God's people. There is much to say about divine guidance. However, I believe the place to begin to get our bearings is not to fret about discerning the details, but to create the kind of atmosphere around our souls, our lives and our inter-personal relationships in which the Holy Spirit is free to express Himself--His "natural habitat" if you will.

The above 3 simple verses speak to the nature of this Spirit-rich environment. God's will for our lives is embedded and encoded in these three apostolic injunctions and...on a basic level, His "will" is the same for us all. God's will is not, first of all, about a geography, a vocation, finding a certain set of human relations, a task to do, a gift to utilize or a ministry to accomplish. It is, rather, something within the grasp of each one of us...even if we have strayed from God's will.

We begin by stopping in our tracks and connecting with the Trinity from the depths of our hearts. I actually like to work backwards through this "trinity" of commands to again find my centered-ness in God.

1. There is always something in our lives about which to be grateful to God. Locate those things and give Him your thanks.

2. Start, or restart, your running dialog with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Relate with Him in "real time" to everything in your life--the good, the bad, the sad, the difficult, the great, the small and so on. He is the Wonderful Counselor and He will be that to us if we only invite Him to interact with us in the intimate conceptions, attitudes, motivations, meditations, musings, responses, reactions, temptations, failings and successes within our souls that no human being can perceive. In addition to "saying prayers", there is a hidden stream of prayer that is well able to run its subterranean course beneath the surface of our busy lives that are occupied with so many responsibilities, pressures and spiritual warfare. Undergirding our occupations can be a marvelous preoccupation--talking and listening to God.

3. It seems to me that the only possible way we can actually find the grace from God to always be joyful is greatly dependent upon experiencing these first two things. The essence of joy, then, must be about simply enjoying a genuine friendship with God...right in the midst of a broken and very imperfect world... right in the midst of my sorrows and griefs...and even in the face of my trials, temptations and my various failures. Could it be that God is not intimidated by these things and doesn't back off from me...as I so often would if I were He? Maybe there is such a reality in this world as being "joyful always" after all.

If the third command (in my reordered list) seems too difficult for us to reach, let's try the first two and see where they may lead us!

Freedom from Bitterness

I learned something transformational from Larry Crabb a long time ago that I have passed on to believers in every culture in which I have ministered. (I haven't been in touch with him for a long time, but I have great respect for him and his amazing contributions to the Body of Christ throughout the years. If you read this, Larry, I miss you!) I recently had the honor and opportunity to share this among some of our persecuted brothers and sisters in another land and it seemed to really impact their lives and bring them liberation. It's a simple concept about how to avoid becoming bitter in the course of living life in a fallen world. Someone has well said, "We either get bitter or better."

This concept has to do with how we either react or respond to the injustices done against us in this life and we, as believers, tend to follow a cycle when we are sinned against. First we feel hurt and angry (not necessarily wrong responses). Then we tend to evaluate that this person who has wronged us has blocked our goal. Then, as we contemplate the offense, we become embittered and resentful toward this person. Then we realize that we've become bitter and that we should not be so. So...we pray prayers to forgive them and may even go beyond this and do acts of love and kindness to overcome the evil with good. However, this is an incomplete process and does not effectively free our spirits from resentment.

The problem lies with the second step where we evaluate what has happened to us. If we believe that a human being can block the real goals of our life, then we have given human beings too much power over our souls and bitterness will become unavoidable. If, however, we view the injustices as a "blocked desire" (maybe even a powerful, prayer-filled and passionate one) then the bitterness trap can be avoided. Someone else said that "bitterness is like drinking poison and thinking that the other person is going to die!" (Shades of The Princess Bride-ha) The key then is to adopt the proper goal of life and set it squarely within the "hidden person of the heart". And that goal, in my view, should be the same for every believer...to get to know God better...to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ..or however you want to say it. Then our bitterness will melt down to the level of a disappointment and our prayers and kindnesses will serve to lift it from us over time.