Lord, Teach Us To Pray! Part 86

Answered Prayers continued...

Even though God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not as our thoughts, we can still know the will of God for our lives, not only as believers in general, but as individual servants of the Most High.

We learn the will of God for our lives by praying He reveal His will to us. The will of God is not an unknowable component of our journey, it is not a mystery that will forever remain beyond our reach – it is something God reveals to us if we desire and ask that He does.

Colossians 1:9, “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Paul writes to the faithful brethren who were in Colosse, and informs them that he does not cease to pray for them, and ask that they may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

If the will of God were an unattainable and unknowable thing as some claim, if we could never pierce the veil and perceive the will of God, then Paul’s prayer would have been worthless at best.

When you write to an entire church informing them of your prayer on their behalf specifying that your prayer is petitioning God that they might be filled with the knowledge of His will, then it is only reasonable to assume that Paul was praying for something attainable.

Psalm 143:10, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness.”

If God reveals His will to us when we ask it and we must ask to know His will, we must likewise open the word of God and familiarize ourselves with His will. God reveals His will in His word. We cannot separate knowledge of the word of God, from knowledge of the will of God, nor can we expect to know the will of God without knowing the word of God.

It is high time we left childish things behind. It is high time we stopped listening to the whispers of the enemy when he speaks through men and says we need not read the word of God any longer, for we have grown beyond the need to know what His word says, and are now juggernauts of spirituality wherein we are plugged in to God Himself.

Psalm 40:8, “I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.”

If the law of God is within your heart, you will delight to do His will. If the law of God is within your heart, then the will of God will not be a cumbersome endeavor for you, it will not seem stifling or all consuming, but rather it will seem a light and joyous thing.

So if it’s that easy, if we discover the will of God in the word of God and by praying He reveal His will to us, why is there so much confusion within the church? Why are there twenty thousand denominations, and just as many opinions concerning any given doctrinal precept, and why is there so much infighting among believers concerning the simple truths of the gospel?

The short answer is, because many people treat the word of God like an oracle, picking one verse at random when they desire to know the will of God, or picking an entire chapter from the Old or New Testaments.

We can’t play Bible roulette, reading scriptures until we get the answer we wanted in the first place, nor can we interpret the word of God to suit our preconceived notions or ideas concerning a certain thing.

The will of God is discovered in the word of God, but in the word of God as an ensemble, as a complete composite and no just a fragment.

This is why so many individuals get in trouble when it comes to understanding the will of God via the prism of scripture – because they pick one verse, they make it their verse, and they run with it until they start to foam at the mouth, and their heart is racing a mile a minute.

A perfect example is the tour-de-force back and forth I’ve been having with a lady, who insistently rebuked me for teaching repentance, because she found the word propitiation in the Bible, and in Romans it says that Jesus by His blood became that propitiation.

The existence of the term propitiation in Romans does not nullify the need for repentance we discover in every other book of the New Testament.

No matter how much I tried to explain this simple truth to her, she clung to her scripture in Romans with a Charlton Heston-like death grip, and refused to acknowledge all the other scriptures that speak of repentance, the need for holiness, righteousness, and a walk worthy of the Lord.

‘You’re teaching legalism and bondage by teaching repentance, because I’m free in the Lord, and because He’s my propitiation I can do whatever I want.’

And so, we have the perfect example of someone who sees the will of God not as a whole, not as an ensemble or a composite of the Scriptures, but as one verse that defines and overshadows all of scripture, and brings the entirety of the gospel under its bearing.

Not only are such practices foolish, they are dangerous for the spiritual wellbeing of individuals, because if you really try, and nitpick verses, and choose one verse to represent the entirety of God’s will for your life, you can justify anything, at any time, for any reason.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.