Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 4, 2014

Jesus told us plain­ly that if we do God’s will, we will enter heav­en. Seems pret­ty sim­ple, right? We hear it again and again in scrip­ture and that rep­e­ti­tion indi­cates its impor­tance. Proverbs 16:3 “Com­mit to the Lord what­ev­er you do, and your plans will suc­ceed,” or Romans 8:27, “And he who search­es hearts knows what is the mind of the Spir­it, because the Spir­it inter­cedes for the saints accord­ing to the will of God.”

So why is this so dif­fi­cult to do? It has been my expe­ri­ence that the one per­son most dif­fi­cult to con­vince is usu­al­ly myself. I start out want­i­ng to do the right thing—to please God. I want to trust him and know that what he has in store for me is far greater than I could do for myself. I want to believe that when I ask to hear from him, he will answer me. But then I get rest­less. My expec­ta­tions are for God to answer me on my terms, my time­line, and in line with my desires. When he doesn’t, then I choose my way because that is what I ulti­mate­ly want­ed any­ways and it usu­al­ly comes with some imme­di­ate (albeit tem­po­rary) sat­is­fac­tion. That is not what Jesus had in mind when he shared his wis­dom. Doing the will of the Father is not always in line with our will. Fol­low­ing his will means being open to his direc­tion, to wait patient­ly for his response, and to accept with a thank­ful heart the path he puts us on. Be thank­ful that we have a God who cares enough to inter­cede so that we can expe­ri­ence a life of abun­dant blessings.