Simple Will

God Gold of the Day

“1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

-Romans 12:1-2

Had the opportunity to sit down with a pastor today and received some extremely helpful and wise council. It’s crazy how God sets people in front of you to speak the words of encouragement and words that you are in great need of hearing. Today, these words I received were words that broke through a lot of my own weakness to see the awesomeness and freedom in this life with God.

I had mentioned to this pastor kind of a rundown of the last few months of my life. Facing bigger decisions than I’ve ever made before I can honestly say I struggled but in the struggle were great lessons to be learned. I kept trying so hard to seek God’s will, find out what God’s will was for me in these decisions and the next steps I needed to take. I looked so hard to see where God wanted me to go and what God wanted me to do that I overlooked the simplicity in God’s truth. In Romans 12:1-2. this pastor referred to these when speaking about God’s will today. Of course most Christians may have heard these verses, I mean I’ve heard them a bunch and even wrote God Gold messages about them but today I heard it explained in a little different way, a simple, and straight from God way.

If you haven’t learned yet, we as humans can be our own worst enemies at times. If you would have asked me what these verses meant or ask any other believer, you would probably get a wide range of answers because most would be based off of our experiences instead of GOD’s simple and literal truth. During my time seeking out God’s will with all of these big decisions, I have had so much of me in it that I made God’s will extremely hard to see. Pastor Mike today mentioned how we so often see God’s will as this big mystery where we have to uncover the truth out of it’s mysteriousness. We see it as a mystery because from my example, I couldn’t seem to figure it all out so I kept trying harder and harder to decipher this special code or formula that is God’s will but in my effort it only led me to be more blind from seeing the simple truth in front of me. We do things our way, we choose what we want, we try to make God’s will fit the desires we have and then trying to actually see what God’s will is, we’ve made it so hard wrapping it up in what it isn’t that we look right over the SIMPLE TRUTH. We over complicate it, we over analyze, we do this so much that in my case I spent months scared to commit or take a next step because I wasn’t completely sure what God’s will was. I guess I thought that this miracle or heaven opening experience would happen where God speaks out probably in a super low voice. Well that’s just how I imagined it but He would say, “Jordan go here, Jordan do this, Jordan this is my will.” Hate to say that never happened. I was far from impulsive but that caused me to live scared, live stuck in the mud, bogged down to make any step out of my comfort zone for God.

On the other end, people are so impulsive that we don’t care to know what God’s will is, we just act in whatever seems best or whatever is more enticing in the moment, never praying about or seeking guidance from God’s Word just doing. Both can be harmful and leave some nasty scars between a person’s view of “God’s will.”

What Mike told me today was that God’s will is not a mystery and in these verses, God’s will is shown so simply and true to us. Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, don’t live for self but live for God in every way. That means to find out what is pleasing, perfect and good, you have to get yourself out of the way. Don’t over complicate it or not care enough but seek what is good, pleasing and perfect to God. You find that all over God’s Word and when dug into, you seek what God wants, what God says is good, what God wants you to do, how God wants you to live. You see I said God, not Jordan right?

And instead of over analyzing this “mystery” just stay grounded in scripture, constant in prayer and watch how God works in your life on the daily. Pay attention to all that God is doing in  your life, it’s not a heaven opening momemt but it’s literally just God placing you in situations He wants you to be with opportunities that move you farther into His will for your life. Attack what God has placed in front of you. I saw this so true the last couple of months as I made such a mess of things. I made the big decisions and I know without a shadow of a doubt it was in God’s will because I didn’t think too much I just stayed more constant in prayer, more active in His Word and God placed things in front of me. I just did it, I attacked them and honestly had no idea I was until after the fact sitting there with such a peace about me. I became so fearful to mess up during this time but learned that God’s will isn’t meant to confuse us or scare us, it’s every day making decisions that honor God and moving in what God places in your path. Before you know it God has moved you so much farther down the road than you would have ever been by doing it your way.

So simple but we make it so complicated. Don’t be conformed to this world is simply telling us not to listen or declare that anything is truth unless it’s from God in His Word. We can easily be swayed to think we’re supposed to be a certain type of person, do a certain thing or told different opinions on what God’s will is but don’t buy in. Buy in to what tells you throughout the pages of His Word, through moments of prayer growing deeper with Him, through what He has placed right in front of you in your life. You can easily go a million different directions but God gives us the tools and the power of His Spirit within us to decide what is He saying and doing compared to outside and personal influence tells us. A million different options, but only ONE option is good, perfect and pleasing to God, only ONE option truly brings us to freedom of fear, freedom of doubt or worry, only ONE option leads us to LIFE and truly LIVING, that ONE option is God’s will and He’s told us so simply what His will is. Walk in it, live it, and love it! God just made our rocket science into a kindergartners homework. Have fun today in God’s will!