God's Will for... (Part 1)

Elisabeth Elliott writes in her book “Discipline, The Glad Surrender”

“The unwillingness of the part of men and women to acknowledge the helpless dependence is a violation of our humanity. Both are a declaration of independence and, whether physical or moral, are essentially atheistic. In both, the answer to the call is no.”

Do we ever think of the consequences of our saying no to God’s call of obedience? I am not talking about our saying no to something big, or excusing us if God hasn’t called us to something extraordinary in our lives.  What I am talking about is when we say no to the small things in our lives, those opportunities we have in life. Most might say that they don’t say no to God, but wait a minute, how many times during the day do we not seek God or comprehend our dependency upon Him. How many times do we seek our will, our reason, and make our desires without His input? We live life as if God is up in the heavens and is only interested in the big things in life, so we leave Him out. Out of our relationship decisions, friendships, work, vocation and other things we want to have control of in our daily life. All the small decisions we leave Him out of can be an indicator of our desire to be independent of Him; an independence that is driven by our sinful desires to be on our own, and not to be dependent upon Him for life’s decisions.

When we think about how we leave God out of the smaller things, we must then understand why He may withhold the big things from us. We may look back at our lives and wonder why certain things haven’t happened to or for us. We will come before God and He may say “I had all this for you, but you settled for something less, something you wanted to control.” And how do we settle for less, by holding on to our lives and keeping our decisions to ourselves. We want this life to be our own, to live as we want, to pick and choose as we please. Leaving God out of the small things eventually adds up to leaving Him out of the big things. We say to ourselves, “I will choose what I do with my life and who I’ll do it with, that is my decision,” then we forget we were bought with a price, our life is no longer my own. (1 Corinthians 6:20)

In every decision there is a consequence, good ones and bad ones. With our decisions we must remember that others will suffer or will be blessed with the consequences. We aren’t free to live a life that won’t affect those around us in our obedient or disobedient to God’s Will. Like a drop of water in a peaceful pond which brings ripples, so does our obedience and disobedience to God’s call.