First and foremost... I'm not taking an ounce of credit for this little tid bit. My new friend from Fuge, Becca Bradley, one of the most loving, gentle spirited, Christ like people I've ever met, shared with me a revelation that the Lord had given her about His will and His want. The thing about God's will is that it's not the same thing as His want... Get ready...
I think we put God in this little mind bubble and try to figure Him out and why He does things... which is understandable. We're human... we have a thirst for knowledge and we always want to know "why?" However, this mind bubble we throw God in, often distorts our view of Him. It leads us to believe that God is a puppeteer of sorts... a puppeteer who doesn't care about our needs, our feelings, or our lives... but that is the absolute opposite of who God is.
Even in the case of Jesus Christ, our Savior, it was God's will for Him to pay the debt for the sins of the world on the cross... to be completely separated from God and feel His wrath. If Jesus would have just lived his life as a good man and died at the age of 83... well, I probably wouldn't be here writing this blog, would I? Though it was God's will and mysterious plan for Christ to die for us, it doesn't mean that God was in heaven WANTING His only son to feel His wrath and be tortured so that we wouldn't have to spend an eternity without Him. It had to happen so that we could be reconciled to Him in the most beautiful way possible.
That's another thing we throw into our God mind bubble, these days... God's wrath. Lately, all you ever here is, "Well, Jesus loves you, man..." Which is completely and totally true, and I love the fact that Jesus loves me. However, we're always very hesitant to talk about God's wrath because it might make some people uncomfortable. And it should. So we usually just avoid it altogether. However... I've found a remarkable beauty for God's wrath... without God's wrath, there is no point in the cross. If God wasn't rescuing us from something... then all that Christ did was in vain. And the greater truth is that NOTHING Christ did was in vain. It was all for the beautiful purpose of reconciling us to God so that we could boldy come to Him as his child. We belong to God... he calls us His.
Because we are His... we can rest when we come upon trials and sufferings. God's will is something that none of us will fully figure out... but I think the important thing to remember concerning God's will is that God is a GOOD Daddy, and, even if He doesn't want to see us hurt, He is always using everything to work together for our good... Why? Because He loves us more than we will ever know or understand.
"I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God." -Ephesians 3:16-19
