Am I Doing God's Will?

“Who told the sun where to start in the morning,
Who told the ocean, ‘you can only come this far’
And who shows the moon, where to hide ‘til evening?
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?”
(Nicole C. Mullen’s “My Redeemer Lives”)


By: Indra

That song verse reminds me how everything in this world will not happen if God does not allow it to happen. Since it is written in the Scripture that God will never plan evil for us, that means, everything that happens to us should bear good fruits. But how?

I often have this question before I make important decisions, “How do I know if it is God’s will?”

A priest in San Diego once told me that no matter what decision I make, as long as I make it with good conscience, God will bless it. God has chosen to bless our lives. God has chosen to send his only begotten Son to redeem us from sins so that we might have abundant lives. We should choose to live in abundance. We are the one who should make this choice.

One of the tricks of the enemy is to trick us into fearing the Lord excessively. Fearing the Lord is a virtue. Not wanting to disappoint someone we love is a virtue. Wanting to make our Father in Heaven happy is noble. However, when this fear started to cripple us, preventing us from making decisions because we are too afraid, then it become evil.

There are two evil fruits from this excessive fear that I can think of right now. The first one is that we never move on with our lives because we are too afraid to make any important decisions. We become like the lazy servant who hides the master’s money in the ground (Maybe he is not necessarily lazy. Maybe he is really afraid of his master that this excessive fear prevent him from doing anything).

The second one is that we are blaming the Lord when we make a “wrong decision”. We put the responsibility on the Lord’s shoulders to make our decisions right while the responsibility is on our own shoulders. The Lord has blessed our lives. We are the one who should choose to lead a blessed life. We are the ones who should choose to live in freedom. Freedom from fear, freedom as the children of God.

Since nothing can happen unless the Lord permits it, and the Lord has chosen to give us freedom to chose, we also have the freedom to make our choices to be blessed. Any decision that we make in good conscience is blessed by our Lord. Even the decisions that we have to make though we are still unsure of are blessed by our Lord. How great is that? The key is that we have to make a commitment to make this decision right. We offer our lives, including our choices for the greater glory of God. Even when it turns out later that our decision is not the best one, we can rest assured that the Lord has blessed it. There will always be good fruits from our lives since everything comes from him, through him, and will never come back to him empty.

Live joyfully, for our lives are blessed lives!!!

God bless you all,
Adrianus Indra Setiadi

Visit Indra's blog, "A Moment of Inspiration"