An essay journey to finding purpose and living life inside of the Will of God
“I’ve come in the volume of the Book - it was written about me, to do Your will O God” - Psalm 40:7
The Creator and his creation
Why does a Creator make a thing? - except that it should accomplish the purpose set out for it from the beginning of its time, with a precision in function and an exactitude in timing. Arguably the singular reason anything that is was ever created, is that God’s will finds expression. For many believers whose hearts yearn for complete alignment to that of the Father - and that Heart is the LORD Jesus - the will of God still remains an enigmatic perfectionist goal that we yet aspire to. Yet permit me to attempt to simplify this concept, in the order of Jesus, who concerned himself with expressing the complexities of God and His Kingdom in the simplest of ways - fully loaded with truth and practicality.
“For I (Jesus) have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me” - John 6:38
I recall the night I first received the revelation of Jesus as the Heart of the Godhead: I was in deep worship, meditating on the progression and composition of the Trinity. The Father (the Holy), the Son (the Hallelujah) and the Spirit (the Amen). This revelation transformed my prayer and worship life in that season, as it mirrors the pattern our LORD set before us as the perfect way to come to God in prayer:
First we approach our Father in awe, hallowing His matchless Holiness, then we declare our desire to see the Kingdom of heaven come down - which it did once, for all, in the Son Christ Jesus. It is in that coming of the Kingdom that the Will of God is perfectly fulfilled, as the next line says “thy Will be done on earth as in heaven”. This tells us that when the Will of God finds expression, what follows is a mirror image of God’s Glory (Heaven on earth). This Glory lies dormant in all of us unless activated, as we are all created in the image and likeness of God, in His Glory - even when it does not appear so in our current reality. And so continuing in the Lord’s Prayer, with the foundation of our Faith laid bare in Holiness and the glory of a Salvation we can only attempt to be worthy of, we then ask God to “give us..” whatever we need to continue to express His Will on earth, in the similitude of the One who showed us the Way.
I choose the Way of the Lord
So the will of God begins with His ways, and I must confess that I thoroughly enjoy the practicality of the ways of God. They are not lofty standards set far apart from the realities of daily life on earth, but embedded in God's ways is Life itself - and how to live its highest and purest form. The first compendium of the revelations of the Will of God - and of His ways - was captured in the Law of Moses. We are familiar with the Law: going beyond the 10 commandments, it laid out sets of instructions to Moses, for the first of those called by God. It attempted to teach them who God is, how to live with each other and even how to stay healthy in their bodies and in their homes (the priests were instructed on how to quell the spread of disease and to promote cleanliness, which is indeed dear to God).
Of which, I urge you to make a habit of journeying Scripture, with awe and trembling, and a vivid visual imagination.
So the Law was established to mirror the perfect Will of God, and yet its limitations abounded greatly in its inability to impart that Will upon the heart of anyone, to truly transform and produce in mankind the reflected Glory we discerned in the Lord’s Prayer is our birthright (reproducing Heaven on earth) - because the Law was not alive.
As it was for our forerunners, so it is for us. The Law in itself, or the mere knowledge of good vs. evil is unable to produce in us the reflection of God’s Glory, because the Glory dimension of God is activated by Life. This is what Jesus Christ embodied, the Living Word (the Logos) and Perfect Will of the Father. There will never be a better expression of the Will of the Father than His Word. This is the reason the Living Word, the Logos Christ Jesus is the only way to impart that Will upon the heart of a man, in a way that the Law cannot. The Logos brings the Word of God alive by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why studying the Bible without the Help Ministry of the Holy Spirit is futile.. it is the Spirit that quickens. This is the Spirit of God and of His Christ. This also helped explain why, in my spiritual journey I met people outside Christendom with relative expressions of “power”, yet all their knowledge and philosophies were unable to make them better people, or to truly transform their lives (of which we must know that transformation begins from the inside and reflects outwards).
The Perfect Will of God
In the beginning of this journey, we agreed on the reason that a Creator makes a thing, and established that purpose as the singular basis for that thing to even “be” at all. God’s Will for any life, is that in the end that life conforms to the script written from the beginning. Jesus himself, the Logos of God, only began ministry with an understanding and declaration of His purpose, when he walked into the Temple and found the place where it was written about Him in the scroll of Isaiah, and read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free..”
By now we are all familiar with our severe human limitations - especially in the followership of Jesus. Just ask anyone who has ever attempted a 40 day fast, or as consistent a prayer life as Jesus had. My point is, it is more challenging for humans to identify the volume of the scroll that is written about us. The good news (truly the Gospel in every way) is that God makes provision for our every weakness, and even in this thing - the purpose of life for we who walk in His Will - did he prove exactly that:
“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—” Romans 16:25-26
In this letter to the Romans, Paul attempted to capture what that journey of faith, or that obedience of Faith looks like: we are strengthened in the footsteps of Jesus, as we live out the teachings and the hope of his gospel. And only in those steps - in keeping with the way He lived and executed Purpose - can we catch the revelation of the great mystery of our own purpose here on earth.
"Follow Me"
The Obedience of Faith for me, and for Paul and every one of us who believes in him, is captured completely in Jesus’ most passionate words when he says to us: “Follow me..”
“Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” - Hebrews 5:8-9
In what life scenarios do we follow Him today? And in what others do we need to let go of human understanding, to let in the fullness of the Wisdom and Power of God? Because that is indeed what the office of Christ is - the fantastically brilliant system of the wisdom and power of God, as Paul remarks by the Spirit, in 1 Corinthians 1:24. Will we follow Jesus to joy and paradise, but not carry the cross to Calvary? God forbid - that would make us bad friends, at least. Yet our cross must precede the Glory. For this reason the best of us, the 12 chosen and the 1 called by the most immense grace (Paul), counted it pure joy - a joy that bubbled over without reason, the kind only the Spirit of God gives - even in many sufferings. This joy found expression in all their trials and victories in life and ministry, and yet the more expressed, in their countenance even in the face of death. Because they understood that the Glory ordained for the sons of God who follow the firstborn of our dispensation, does not stop with death. No, quite the contrary - then it begins.
Grace-Grace.
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