Praying The Will of God
Have you ever wondered what the will of God is for your life? Is it possible to know, pray, and follow His will? Or must we go through life guessing?
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The Lord’s Prayer
When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He used what we now refer to as "The Lord's Prayer."
"Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." Matthew 6:9-13
Notice He said, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." So, it's biblical to pray that His will be done, but we don't have to guess what His will is. Jesus followed that statement with, "Give us this day our daily bread," which means our spiritual bread of THE bread of life – Jesus, the Word of Life.
Therefore, we can know God's will by praying according to the Bible. Sounds like we ought to be reading our Bibles daily, wouldn't you agree?
Knowing His Will
1 John 5:14-15 says, "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him."
For example, when it comes to healing, we can pray and believe God for healing in our bodies because healing is part of our "salvation package" – we can find it in the scriptures. 1 Peter 2:24 says, "Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed." I could quote you scripture after scripture about God's will to heal. There was never a time that Jesus refused to heal anyone who asked. He met them differently according to their faith but never refused to heal.
Therefore, if you can find two or more scriptures on a given subject (without taking the scripture out of context), you can trust that it's God's will for you. God's will is for you to be joyful, peaceful, blessed – spiritually and financially, in good health, and so on. It's also His will for you to love others like He does, be humble, patient, kind, walk in the spirit, pray constantly, etc.
Be Led By Peace
Those are all things found in the scriptures, but what about those not found in the Bible? Things or situations arise, such as whether you should take a job opportunity or not. These are areas we seek His will and direction for our lives. So, how can we know His will for these things? We find the answer in Colossians 3:15, "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful."
The word "rule" in this verse refers to peace acting as an umpire in our hearts. The amplified version of this verse says, "And let the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts [deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state]." An umpire's job is to decide if the ball is in or out or if a play is good or not. The peace of God acts the same way in our hearts.
When Bryce and I were first married, he had just graduated with his teaching degree and was in the application process. It was an exciting time in our lives as we played out in our minds the possibility of living in different locations. However, we wanted God's will for our lives – where He wanted us to go.
Bryce interviewed for jobs in three different states and got offered the position everywhere He interviewed. So, now we had to choose. We prayed and asked God which one He wanted us to take. In this particular situation, we felt like it didn't matter too much which one we chose (we found out later that it didn't matter because God was going to call us into the ministry shortly after that, and whichever path we had picked, we would end up at the same place going to Bible school a few short years later.
Although the choice didn't matter in the overall scheme of things, we still wanted to be in the perfect will of our Father. We decided to pray separately and write the town's name on a piece of paper, and then at the same time, we would show each other what we wrote. What were we doing? Being led by peace – which place when we prayed about it felt the most peaceful? Yes, we both wrote the same town on our paper and were very happy and grateful for our choice.
We have used that same process of being led by peace throughout our lives – it's the best way to live! There have been times when we didn't prefer where peace led us. In fact, we wouldn't be living in our current little town if we went by our feelings. No, we follow peace, which always leads us down His path and plans for our lives.
At the time I'm writing this blog, High School seniors are excitedly and nervously looking at their future with wild anticipation. The paths and possibilities after graduation are endless. There are many good things they could do, but God has a perfect plan for them. (Jer. 29:11) My advice to those seniors and anyone trying to follow the plan of God is to follow and be umpired by peace. If you stay connected to God through prayer and reading the Bible, He will direct you into His perfect plan.