His Perfect Will

Scripture:
"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will."
(Romans 12:2)

Most of us would probably agree that things like murder, adultery, stealing and the alike are not God's will for our life. In the same manner, we would probably agree that reading the Bible, going to church and doing good deeds is God's will and we should do these things. But what about everything in between? Does God want me to buy a new car? Should I sleep in on Saturday? Should I wear a white shirt or a blue shirt today to work?

Now there are a lot of ways to address these types of questions. Some might say that God does not care about these kinds of things. Others might say it all depends. Still others might have a whole list of requirements for determining what is or what is not God's will.

This was true with the Pharasees. They had over 600 rules they had to follow to do the things that they should. Even Jesus was questioned a number of times about "working" on the sabbath when he healed the sick or giving "to Caesar that which is Caesars and giving to God that which is God's" (Matt. 22:21). At the same time there are many who have their whole list of things to do or not do and the list are either larger or smaller or interpretted differently, creating a plethora of doctrines and demonimations and rituals.

Today's scripture makes it very clear what we are to do to know what God's will is and that is to 1) not to be conformed to the world, that is not to do what the world does and 2) be transformed by the renewing of you mind. which basically is saying that we are by nature going to be like the world but we need to take the initiative to tranform ourselves and we do so by renewing our own minds away from the world and onto God.

After you do that, then you will be able to test for yourself that your life is closer to the will of God and others will be able to see in your life as proof that you are doing God's will. But how do we make ourselves that we are not like the world and how do we change our minds to do this?

Well some might say the answer is simple, you saturate yourself with the Word of God and with praying and with going to Church, etc. And in part that is true. However, I think that if we focus on these good Christian things so that we do them, that we might be missing the mark a bit. You see the rest of the verse points more to the final goal of all this, that is so that we may do what is God's "good, pleasing and perfect will".

So yes, we need to do all these things that are in this verse like not conforming and renewing to test and prove ourselves to see that we are doing God's will, but I don't think we should be focusing on these to do's. I think that we need to focus on the last words, God's "perfect will."

I would be like following the direcctions that we got from mapquest or google maps. In order to get the directions we need to give it the final destination and then the map tells you what you need to do to get there. I think the same is true with this verse, in order to do all that this verse encourages us to do, I think we need to be heading for the final destination before, during and after we begin, that is we should be desiring to arrive at God's perfect will .

Request:
That God would countinue to bless Avery which in turn is one of the ways God is blessing us.

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Thank you for hearing what is in our hearts and for sending the Holy Spirit to comfort us. Lead us into your perfect paths and glorify your Son in our lives. In Jesus name. Amen