Living God's Will for Your Life

I left ended the Coming Home series by describing how a parent can develop a plan of action for transitioning from the workplace into the home. I didn't continue on with describing the execution of the plan because I hadn't reached the point yet of fully executing our own plans. Now that we've made the transition into our home its timely to now put pen to paper to describe my experience with following God's Will for our family.

How does a Christian decipher God's Will for their life? What school to attend, what person to marry, what college to attend, what City, State, or Country to live in? There is a complete and thorough message on this subject by John MacArthur that I highly recommend on the subject of knowing God's Will.  

For the Christian, God is clear on His will for our lives and as you seek to know the Lord in His Word He will make it plain to your heart what He desires of you. As you follow Him, He will give you peace that surpasses all understanding. I recall a time in my life where my thoughts were full of questions regarding my life's decisions. Had I gotten it right? Was I doing what God desired of me? It wasn't until I searched the scriptures that God began to reshape my life and burden my heart for the things that He desired of me. One of those burdens was clearly for my children; to be home with them and to educate them myself. This reconfiguring of my life required a plan which I documented in the Coming Home series.

While development of the plan was words on paper, execution of that plan was a different story. Leaving a growing career behind, selling a home that I thought I'd live in forever to live with my in-laws for an undefined period, giving birth to a third child, embarking on homeschooling my children, and building a second home, all in the matter of 18 months was no small feat. If I had to put encapsulate the execution of our plans into a four letter word, I'd use t-e-s-t.

I didn't realize it at the time that we were developing our plans, but God was sending me into the most challenging test of my life and let me just say that I hadn't studied for this test. I walked into the classroom without a pencil and hadn't spent a moment preparing for it.

I believed that since I had come to this place of knowing God's Will for my life, God would hand His Will over to me on a platter, all ready to live out happily. Instead, I found myself tripping over and getting one answer after another wrong.

One of the first steps on our plan was selling our home. Entering into the home selling process I thought the house would sit on the market for a few months and we'd have a buyer within a short period of time. Well, it wasn't until eleven months after listing our home on the market that we had a buyer and was able to sell our home. In those eleven months I struggled with God's Will. If we were doing what God desired of us, why didn't things happen quicker? While our house sat on the market we searched for a rental home for our family to live in that met our needs, but in the end we found it most cost effective to stay with our in-laws. To have to give up having a personal space was difficult for me. During this period of having to give up personal space, I struggled with God's Will. As we embarked on the journey of building our second home, the land process lingered on for an extended period of time with what seemed like endless paperwork and a 9-month building process turned into an 18-month long journey to the final completion of our home. During those 18 months I struggled with this test that God was giving me.

What's beautiful about this whole journey of living God's Will is God knows what He's doing. In our puny little brains, we try to figure out what's happening and in the midst of our attempts of figuring out what's happening, we allow our emotions to become entangled and if we're not careful in our journey to living God's will our pride can get the best of us.

As we execute the plans that God has for us as part of His Will we need to,

1) Remain in God's Word.

2) When we don't understand what's happening, we need to examine our responses to the bumps and humps in life. If there is any part of our heart or mind that is being disobedient to God, we need to confess it and ask the Lord's forgiveness.

3) As we seek the Lord, we need to trust His plan which is always good.

While in the journey of executing this plan, I was given the opportunity to take a Bible Study on the book on James. This one study transformed how I was viewing God's Will in my life. In life we will be tested and God's Word promises that He will not put more on us than we can bear and as we're tested God will give us a way of escape. I believe that this study on James was my way of escape to the Lord. During my days in the study of James and in the studies that followed on God's grace, God came to my rescue in the midst of my trial and He taught me. Just like a loving Father teaches his child. He never left me and God will never leave you as you strive to do His Will. He came to me in the midst of my test and guided me along and granted me peace and grace.

I was also encouraged during this journey of executing our plans by the lives of other obedient servants. In addition to the heroes of faith in the Bible, I read stories of women like Katie Davis and Joni Eareckson Tada. These women have been through and continue till this day to experience extremely difficult hardships in life as they live out God's Will, as they execute the plan God has for them. Their stories inspired and reminded me of God's faithfulness in the midst of difficulty and uncertainty. In each of their lives, they are victorious in their own rite.

My prayer for you is that as you execute God's Will for your life, you will be drawn closer to know your Maker in an intimate way and experience His peace and love as He molds and shapes you into who He wants you to be.