Diminishing The Darkness By Lifting Up the Marvelous
Light Of Jesus Christ
| From
The Editor
-- by Tim Greenwood |
July 2009 |
Just
What Is The “Will” Of God?
Each year I try to get away and go
on what I call an Advance to spend some time alone with God. During one of these Advances while asking
some questions concerning His will, He stated the following:
“What I do is what I will.
What I will, I do.
What will I not do?
What I will not, I do not.
Outside of covenants,
testaments and promises, My will (what I will) differs from person to person,
based upon what they will, but it is always within My written will or Word.
What will you do?
What do you will?
When these two line up with My
will, My general, universal will, My written will, things get accomplished.”
What this taught me, among other
things, was that God will always DO what He SAYS.
Therefore, what He does and says
IS His will. It is His will that the
perfect reputation of His Word, as recorded in the Bible, remain
unblemished. His Word is good and
always will be. His Word is His
will.
We do not have to wait to see
what God does, to know His will, after the fact. We can know both his will and what He will do just from reading
His Word.
What God is interested in is, what your will is,
whether or not you will line up your will with His will in order to do that
which will accomplish the things that will be mutually beneficial for both you
and God.
Window
On The Word
-- by Tim Greenwood
|
Obedience
Versus
Commitment
|
Believe it or not, God is not seeking your obedience as it relates to compliance and submission to His authority.
Now the Old Testament is ALL
ABOUT legislated obedience, compliance and submission. The
mandatory sentence for disobedience and noncompliance was death by
stoning. But all that changed under the New Testament.
The word obedience is used eleven times in the New Testament. In every case it is the Greek word hupakoe (G5218) attentive hearkening, or possibly, (by implication) compliance or submission: - obedience, (make) obedient, obey (-ing).
Twice, in 2 Corinthians 7:15 and Philemon 1:21 the words compliance and or submission best fit the context referring to being submissive or compliant to Paul through his positional authority.
Three times, in Romans 5:19, Hebrews 5:8 and 1 Peter 1:2 the words compliance and submission
best fit the context due to the fact that Jesus had to be 100% legally
compliant to the Old Testament to qualify to be our Savior and had to
submit Himself being beaten, broken and brutalized to qualify to be our
Redeemer.
But in the remaining six locations where the word is used, (Romans 1:5, 6:16, 16:19; 2 Corinthians 10:5-6), the word attentiveness best fits the context referring to being attentive to Good Faith and to the teachings of Paul.
God wants you to line up your will with His will, come into agreement
and voluntarily commit to that agreement by signing on the dotted
line.
That is actually how you got saved! You read His Word as recorded
in the Bible or heard that Word preached from the Bible. You
heard that God, in good faith, was offering to set aside all past acts
of bad faith (sins) and to legally expunge (remit) your entire record
of wrongs done. You heard that all you had to do was to make
Jesus your Lord and King and that you would be saved. And by
publicly saying so, you voluntarily committed to enter in to a legally
binding contract between you and God. This mutual good faith
contract is the basis of the relationship between you and God.
Voluntary commitment is not just what God wants. It is what
everyone really wants. Your spouse wants it, your kids want it,
your Pastor wants it, your employer wants it and if someone makes you a
promise, you want it too.
Compliance to most people means just getting by, living on the edge,
compromising your integrity but not enough to get caught. It’s
doing just enough to keep your job or keep from being yelled at.
Compliance is a step in the right direction, but it does not often
reach the goal. No one desires a noncommittal spouse or a
noncommittal employee.
Commitment means reading and understanding that you are legally
accountable to fulfill all the responsibilities of the contract before
signing your name on the dotted line, signing it in Good Faith and then
keeping your word and fulfilling your part, no matter what
circumstances arise.
The Bible is filled with thousands of promises but each one is a
contract that God wants you to voluntarily commit to fulfilling your
part of.
God is no longer seeking man’s legally legislated obedience or
compliance. It is just not enough. What He is looking for
is your voluntary commitment to keep your promises, to keep your word
and to act in Good Faith, no matter what.
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