Finding God’s Will Through The Foggy Path Of Life

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (‭1 Thessalonians‬ ‭5‬:‭16-18‬ ESV)

Well, this will be the last morning I will be using my brown ruggish devotional as a spring board for these blog posts. Interestingly enough after 32 days of different Bible verses, the devotional starts over again with the same verses. I am thankful for the time I was able to use the devotional and am very thankful to my friend for giving it to me. It is funny how this verse is the last one in the list of verses. It may be reminding me that I will need to be thankful that the 182 page devotional is really just 16 different pages stapled on top of one another 11 times over. 😉 Hmm, quite the marketing strategy. Anyway …

What is God's will for my life? This is a common question that we ask of ourselves. Sam Waldron describes two distinct aspects of the will of God in his book; A Modern Exposition Of The 1689 Baptist Confession Of Faith.

"The will of God in Scripture may have reference to two distinct things. The phrase, 'secret counsel and good pleasure of his will', is a clear reference to what may be called God's decretive will (also known less clearly as God's secret or sovereign will). God's ethical demands upon us, his law, may be called his preceptive will. These two aspects of the divine will are clearly distinct. The decretive will is what God has determined that he will do. The preceptive will is what God has commanded that man ought to do." (Page 71)

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 tells us one aspect of God's preceptive will; his commands given through precept. The three precepts are:

• Rejoice always
• Pray without ceasing
• Give thanks in all circumstances

We can get hung up on so many things trying to determine whether we are in God's will or not. Should I go here or there? Should I work here or there? … And so on and so forth … Maybe if we were consistently doing these three things; rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in all circumstances, God's will would become blazingly clear through the foggy path of life.