Bayside Church

One of the things I've struggled with previously in my Christian walk is knowing if I'm in the will of God today. When I wanted to move out of home in my early twenties and into my own place, I sought God about whether it was the right decision. I went to His word and there wasn't anything that was telling me not to, but I felt held back because believe it or not my parents wanted me home. I finally decided this is something that I wanted to do and I had to trust God in it. And I pretty much told God if this wasn't cool with Him, then He was a big enough God to get me back on the right track. It sounds hilarious now that I think about it. I sweated over this because in my mind I thought God's will as this restrictive thing. Ps Rob shares that God gives us guidelines and guideposts for life but with that comes an enormous amount of freedom.

Have you sweated over small things trying to work out if it's God's will for you? What are some of your examples?

Yes.
Your right. I think God does give us freedom. But i think sometimes DISCERNING the freedom is harder than the freedom itself! We can do everything or anything, but at the same time not everything or anything is helpful for us... This can be said i believe for this any where from unhealthy relationships (unmarried people) to as far as activities such as Yoga (not a Godly practice).
I think we need to be careful where we take our new given freedom! Both of these things many people today say are 'ok', but i believe again discernment is required along with Godly wisdom from friends that are older.
Things like moving out of home for someone for the first time can be tough, but usually talking to someone who is good with wisdom will be able to tell, or give help (and we also need to be prepared in case they say 'No', when we really were expecting them to backup our expectations for a yes, or vice versa).

Freedom is great. But with great things also comes great responsibility! And great responsibility is inseparable from great freedom!

Freedom is also great when you know what the freeing, Godly response is (not the easy way out)!

There are some great teachings on 96.3 Rhema FM about this - Focus On the Family / New Begginings
(www.rhemafm.org.au)/(Also have webcast)

Hope this Helps

mH

I believe scripture itself says God's will is impossible to understand, and that which we know of it is only what he has revealed to us. For example, Deut. 29:29 "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.

Often God takes the worst in our life and makes it the best, look at the story of Jacob and Esau. Remember, God has sight of the whole picture.

I don't agree that we should micromanage every single little thing we do, but we should instead follow everything from a general moral code. The same way a martial artist fights his battles from his general repertoire of moves. We shouldn't look at a situation as what God has planned, but what God would have us do instead. I believe that at the core of every Christian is the 10 commandments. I agree with Ps Rob, God has given us Guidelines and rules, but outside of that we don't know every little single thing in our future. Good thing God does. We know the obvious pointers, God wouldn't want us to kill anyone, and if he did it would be with a big booming voice in the OT, and such hasn't been the case in NT. God has been doing all the smiting in NT (Thank God).

I'm not saying we shouldn't pray and ask God for things which we are worried about. But we shouldn't fall into the dangerous trap which we constantly hunt for what ol' Ps Rob calls, The Dot.