Will of God

God’s Creation does not stop at the wilderness. His mountains are majestic, His oceans breathtaking, His sky grandiose, but is not the best of the nest builder yet too His Creation? And the ant’s and termite’s home a part of His Creation? Why then are not the cities of man any less the creation of God? Man can plan but God disposes, as He will. If He takes a mind He can stop any Tower of Babylon He wishes. So why do so many disdain the works of man as outside the will of God?

Cannot you find His plan in the ways of the people going about their daily lives just as well as you can walking in a park? By the way, that park is not natural; it is an artifice of man made to look as someone thought a natural area should look. God did not put those wooden planks on the ground that you walk on, nor did he pick the path the trail is laid out any more then He picked the twist and turns in the ant’s tunnels, but He did make the builder, and he does have a plan.

Is a hermit living in the wilderness somehow holier then an office girl making an honest living? What make denying your self a holey act? Was not the Last Supper a feast? Did not Christ perform his first miracle at a party, and made the wine so they could party on? I do not know how one could live a live outside the glass castle and not become a bit jaded. We sally forth with great expiations only to meet defeat time and time again. The victories that we do manage are dwarfed by the dauntless on the task yet to be realized, one day at a time, just one step at a time is the way of the trip, but we want the world, and we want it now. In is in the accumulation of small gains in which our progress is made. Got the kids through high school, paid the taxes, the rent is paid. Ah, life. Mundane and prosaic! It is in the details that we live, but in the dream that we score.

The dishes have to be washed, but to dance away the night, to watch the sun set over the Pacific from Hawaii. But tomorrow work, and another day spent just to get to the next day, into the boredom of existence because the joy to be found in the mundane is lost in the dream. The dishes are to be washed because a fine dinner was just eaten. You have to work to pay the rent on the house you wanted so badly. In your work is there not joy to be found in the serving of those who are willing to pay you to do what they cannot readily do for themselves or prefer not to do? To live a joyful fulfilled live, you must rejoice in the details, dive into where the Devil lives, drive him out and make it your joy.

If living outside the castle is hard, consider living in one, your privileges can well can lead you to believe that you are the source of your wealth and that you are the captain of your soul, and the maker of your fate. Even if God is not the Creator one can see, if one cares to look, that everything that happens was dependent on something else happing.

"You see, the past is past and the future is yet to come. That means the future is in your hands - the future entirely depends on the present. That realization gives you a great responsibility." -- h.h. the 14th dalai lama

If this is, as the 14th Dalai Lama asserts, true then the present is totally dependent on the past, and everything we do is determined by that which has passed before. You were set on the path that you now find yourself at the dawn of creation. Being born in the U. S. provides one set of actions that are not available in India. You are free to choose, but only to choose from that which is presented to you to choose.

The poor person choices are vastly different from those of a rich person but both are shaped by the circumstances they find themselves. The rich person may follow a path that leads his to desolation while the poor person may find a path that leads him to riches and fame, but neither is free to shape himself as he sees fit, rather his act are determined by what acts upon him.

If you find yourself having to “try very hard” to stay on the right path then you have yet to come to an understanding of what the right path is. And the problem with living God’s will to the best of your ability is that God does not choose, you do. How are you to know what God’s will is. Does He tell you? How? Through the Bible? Through preachers?  Through your parents? Do you truly understand scripture enough to take guidance from it? Does not the preacher’s have the same problem knowing God’s will as you? Are not your parents the children of their culture just as you are their child?

How many times have you heard a preacher praying for the forgiveness of sins? Is this not praying in vain? Does that question strike you as strange? Why? Why should you have to pray for something that has already been given? If Christ died so that your sins could be made as white as snow, what work do you have to do to receive this? Rather then asking God for something He has already granted, we should be thanking Him for so great a gift.

What can you, a mere human, do to negate the Will of God? If He has willed that your sins be forgiven what can you do to put this asunder, by not accepting the forgiveness? But Christ, Paul, and John say in the New Testament, the believers are God's elect. They are called the elect because God chose them to be saved Matt 22:14; John 6:37, 39; 15:16, 19 ; Acts 13:48; Rom 11:5; Thess 1: If God has chosen those whom He will save, how can anything you may or may not do changes God’s will?

What did Christ call upon you to do? He said that you were to accept Him as the Way, profess His name before men, and to treat you neighbor as yourself, and to love God above all else. Does this sound like a hard path to follow? And remember, you cannot work your way to heaven! If it is your acts that earn your salvation, then why did Christ die? If you acts cannot save you can they damn you?

When Christ forgave your sins by way of the cross did He only forgive the sins that you had committed up until you accepted Him? Or did He forgive all of your sins? If He forgave all of your sins how can you backslide? As Paul said, in Romans 11; v6, “Now if by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.“ And in v32 :”For God has imprisoned all in disobedience, so that He may have mercy on all.” And in Romans 4; v5: “But to the one who does not work, but believes on Him who declares righteous the ungodly, his faith is credited for righteousness.” And lastly in Romans 5; v14: “For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under law but under grace. v15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! v16 Do you not know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey--either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness?”

It is not the act that enslaves you, rather your desire to do the act that leads you down the wrong path but how much is the choosing of that path is in the hands of the walker? “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” Rom 9:21.