One of the most often asked questions in the church is this: “What is God’s will for my life?”
Generally, someone asks that question when they have come to a specific decision point in their lives. They need to know if they should move or not move. Or if they should get married or stay single. Or if they should change jobs or stay where they are. It’s a wonderful thing when a person wants to know what God wants them to do in that situation. To be sure, God cares very much about the answers to these very specific questions.
At the same time, though, the general answer to the question of God’s will has already been answered. His will for every Christian is the same - it’s for that person to become like Jesus:
Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him (Eph. 1:3-4).
As church leaders, we can confidently say to anyone in the congregation that this is what God wants for them. His will is for their discipleship. But even as we say that, we have to recognize that discipleship isn’t something we can manufacture.
Despite our efforts, intentions, and programs, the process of a person being confirmed to the image of Jesus isn’t something we can do. That work is the work of the Holy Spirit and Him alone:
We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).
This is an important thing for us to realize as church leaders. What we can’t do is the actual work of transformation. Are we able to look inside a person? Are we able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart? Are we able to change desires, tastes, and behaviors? If we think we can, we are destined to live with a sense of frustration and failure. Not only so, but we also are robbing the Lord of His glory through our misplaced efforts.
But the realization of our limitations shouldn’t put us in a posture of passivity. Just because we can’t do the work of transformation does not mean we can’t do anything. It might be helpful to think of it in terms of farming.
Can a farmer make the rain fall? Or the sun shine? Or both of those things happen in the right proportion at the right time? Of course not. And yet the farmer is responsible for all kinds of other things. He is, to put it another way, responsible for setting the conditions he can control to be ready for what he can’t.
This is what we can do in discipleship. We can set the right conditions, and we do that in all kinds of ways. We do it through teaching, through connecting people together, through providing resources, and through empowering other leaders. All of these things are meant to set the conditions and environment. It’s all we can do.
In a sense, all of these things we do in order to set the right conditions are acts of faith. We believe that God will do the work of discipleship transformation, and as an expression of that belief, we set the conditions. And then we trust.
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By Michael Kelley, Rooted Network Executive Director