How can we live in God’s will, and know it? As we learn to “live in the present”, the fourth thing we can do is recognize that even our faith is a process. Indeed, life is a process. I am still in God’s classroom each and every day. I am ever learning and GROWING in response to my life with Christ.
As I look back to my own longing for a better life, longing to be FREE from my addiction, longing to be FREE to be who I AM, NOT who I have been–I see that it has been a process.
For me, God had me to go back in the military a second time. The second time I made a career of it. God had me to leave my OLD life behind and start anew. Did I do it alone? NO. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit in our lives as we accepted Him. We must look to Him for strength, discernment, refuge from our daily reality. I was given the strength to get through each step. There were times I began to fall in different ways, but Jesus was there to help me up and to carry me on.
How far have you come in this process? As you look back on your life, do you see where Jesus was there to pick you up? If you haven’t been able to see His presence, talk to someone around you who has–there is an untapped strength in Christ that you might be missing. God is concerned about more than what we “have done” He is concerned about what we ARE DOING.
As we learn to “live in the present”, the fifth thing we can do to live in God’s will is to recognize that God continually confronts us with some “moment of truth” to which we must respond. In our response we demonstrate our FAITHFULLNESS to Him and our TRUST in Him.
“Today”, insists our author of Hebrews, “today, if you will hear his voice do not harden your hearts.” The present tense of “TODAY” is used over and over in these Scriptures, indeed, the present tense of TODAY is used throughout the teachings of Christ. “TODAY, if you hear His voice”, encourage one another daily, as long as it is called TODAY.
Living in God’s will is “Living in the present–living in ‘TODAY’”. Living in God’s will means recognizing God is in control. Living in God’s will means making the best of bad situations. Living in God’s will means maintaining your principles even when inconvenient. To live in God’s will means recognizing the presence of God in your life.
“Believe”, “trust”, and “obey” are present-tense verbs. They are what we do between Egypt and Canaan (the journey to the Promised Land), between redemption, and that rest. “TODAY, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
I will leave you with this final thought: There was once this woman who was bitter, who was angry at God, who was unhappy with her life and did not understand why everything around her was in a shambles. Angry at God over what had happened to her. She defiantly protested, “I wish I had never been made.” A wise friend responded to her resentful cry with words that capture the essence of our faith and trust in God–indeed–our trust and daily walk with Jesus Christ. He replied, “You have not been made, you are still being made.”
Hebrews 3:7-9 (TNIV, God’s voice speaking)
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did.
May God bless you as you follow him through the desert on the journey of your life–never looking back, always looking at where you are today and longing for His promise of “rest”, indeed, a promise of a relationship with Him, our Father, through His Son, our Savior–Jesus Christ!