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Knowing God's Will


And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2 NASB) 

            Sometimes it seems hard to figure out what God's will is. Sometimes, I'm sure that I'm going to miss His direction. Once, when I was whining at Him about my belief that I was going to do just that, He brought my early days at college, when someone I didn't know approached me to talk about a survey that I hadn't taken (another Karen on my floor had.) Did I miss God's direction there? No. He brought to mind the day I started working toward my masters' degree. Did I miss His direction there? Well, no, that was pretty clear. Event after event in my life in which His direction was evident followed those. Then He asked, "So what makes you think I'll let you miss the next one?" When He puts it that way.... Part of our struggle is that we believe our following God's will for our life is somehow all up to us.
            Another part of the struggle is that we believe following God's will for our lives will somehow set us apart from everyone else in some mystically spiritual manner. A friend and I went to see one of the Lord of the Rings movies, and during the movie, she commented about how noble the characters were. Noble? They were covered with dirt! After thinking about it for a while, I realized that my idea of noble was wrong, that what is noble is not separated from reality at its ugliest. Noble can be covered with dirt. I think we sometimes have the same "separate from and rising above" view of God's will. Somehow, we think that doing God's will is clean, neat, and somehow "above" all those mundane aspects of life that result in our being dirty or struggling. In Practicing the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence wrote of finding God's will to involve washing dishes.
            I think this idea that God's will is somehow disconnected from the rest of life makes "finding" that will particularly  difficult. There are things we know to be God's general will. He wants all of us to live by the principles laid out in Scripture. But that individual, God's-plan-for-my-life will somehow should be dramatic. A pastor once said that he would gladly go out and slay a dragon for his lady-love, but when it came to taking out the garbage, somehow that didn't express love. Someone I know used to complain regularly about not knowing what God's will for his life was. He also complained about some things in the church that he thought wrong, but he shook his head at the suggestion that the fact that he noticed these things might be an indication that God wanted him to do something about them. "Do the obvious" or "fix the problem," seem to be good ways to do God's will as long as they are done in keeping with God's general will of loving Him with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
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Birthday of
Louis Agassiz

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