His will?

Mathew 7: 21

“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter"

We can do so much in the name of God and still not enter into the kingdom of God! The very thought of this is humbling and a warning that religion, spirituality, the manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are no guarantee of spending forever with the Master.

It is apparent from Mathew 7: 21-23 that a man can move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead and do so many things in the name of Jesus and not be in God’s will and could be in complete disobedience to God. Verse 23 calls such people wicked, evil doers, and other descriptive words depending on the version of the bible you read. Healing, raising the dead in themselves are God’s will because they are based on his word; the life of the person through which these signs and wonders are accomplished is what is brought to question in this bible verse. What matters to God as verse 21 explains is that we are obeying God i.e. that we are in his will for our lives. It is just as 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 explains about love; we could do all kinds of admirable things but without love, it is nothing. Why is it nothing? Because the love command, which is the will of God is more important to him than the acts that are suppose to portray love.

In our days, very little time is given to personal bible study, which is the number one place where the will of God is made known to us. There is also the will of God for each person’s life that is unveiled in his presence, but spending time to know the will of God has been overlooked, and sometimes the very principle of waiting on God to know his will has been left only to pastors. So many Christians depend on their pastor to know the will of God for their personal lives; I do not despise pastors confirming what we have received from the Lord, but basing major decisions of our lives solely on what a pastor tells us to do without receiving a confirmation from God ourselves is not for the new testament believer. Many people are in trouble or serious problems because they made a major decision solely based on what someone told them that God “said”! Let us spend time in his presence to know what he thinks about various situations in our lives before we make a decision. If we are truly his child, we will hear him speak to us. We will not be going into more details in this area of God’s will because this article is not focused on knowing God’s will in regards to decisions like choosing a career, where to live, who to marry and things that are very specific to our individual everyday life decisions. This article is more directed towards God’s will written down in the scriptures for us to understand. 
 

We cannot live a victorious Christian life if we are not a student of the word of God. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith (1 John 5:4).  So, if our faith is the key to victory, we have to meditate on God’s will (his word) because faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17); faith is absent when the will of God is not known. Knowing the will of God requires a level of sacrifice that many of us are not willing to pay; the time to spend in the scriptures to get to know his will, the time to be quiet in his presence, and the humility to accept his Word to be the only way. There is only one way to knowing the written will of God, and that is to spend time in it. Because of the lack of study of the word of the Lord, there are a number of things people believe about God’s will that are not scriptural. For the remainder of this article I would like to talk about some things that some believers have come to believe to be God's will.

I have heard it preached a number of times that there are three levels of God’s will i.e. there is a good will, the pleasing (or acceptable) will and the perfect will of God. This is usually supported by quoting Romans 12:2. The bible passage reads as follows:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. 

I am not an English language major, and neither by any standard can I claim to be an authority in the English language; however, I know that the comparative and superlative of good is better and best respectively. One of the definitions of the word Good in the dictionary is “that which is pleasing”, and another definition for good is “complete”. One definition for perfect is complete. So, we see that the three descriptive words used in this passage were referring to the same thing. There is nothing like three levels of God’s will, there is only one will of God concerning situations, circumstances, and our life and we need to find it out and not settle down with just anything.

I have often heard believers say that a sickness or disease is God’s will to teach them this or that; this is not scriptural. It is never God’s will for us to be sick or have any sort of illness. This state of mind only prevents us as believers from exercising our authority and living a life free of sickness and diseases. 

Galatians 3:13 reads:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”.

Sicknesses and diseases are under the curse, why do some believers then believe that it is God’s will to use sickness or disease to teach them something? How does sickness and disease in the life of his children bring him glory? James 1:17 clearly states that Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. Sickness and diseases are not a good or perfect gift; they are not from our father. How would a father put sickness on his child? Matthew 7:11 also explains: If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him. Our God gives us good things and not evil. 

Isaiah 53: 5 reads:But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 

Another school of thought is that it is God’s will for them to suffer for sins committed in the past; my brothers and sisters, the scripture above clearly shows us that Christ paid for every single one of our sins. 2 Corinthians 5:17 also states Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! Halleluyah! When we come to Christ, our old man that committed the transgressions is gone, and the person we are in Christ never sinned! However, there is a kind of pain and suffering that believers will have to endure, and that is the pain and suffering that comes from persecution due to our faith in God. 2Tim 3:11 shows that this is the kind of pain and suffering Paul suffered and Rev 2:10 talks about the same kind of suffering.  There is no scripture to back the belief that God teaches us lessons by bringing us under the curse. It is the devil that does this and we have been given the authority to live above him, his agents, and his appearance in any form or shape, which includes sicknesses and diseases.

Ephesians 1:20 – 21 and Ephesians 2:6 reads

Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places^, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.

We need to give ourselves to the ministry of the word to enjoy the fullness of life that God has for us, because only in the Word can we become acquainted with his will. The bible declares “and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. How free we are depends on how much of his will we know and live by. It is not enough to know his will; we have to live out his will. Only in obedience to his word do we get the promised results. Isaiah 1:19 reads: if ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.  

Lastly let us remember verse 21 of our text: “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter" Sons and daughters of God, let us not be foolish; let us understand what the will of God is (Eph 5:17).

What does the cross of Jesus mean to you?

The world has set aside days of the year to recognize the birth and resurrection of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. However, little is known about what these celebrations symbolize in our lives. Many see these days as days off, and some go to church only on these two days in the year.

What does the death and resurrection of Jesus mean to the world? What does the sacrifice of a guiltless man mean to the world? To answer this question, we will have to go back to the book of Genesis and take a look at the first Adam: God gave dominion of the earth to the first Adam when he commanded him in Genesis 1:28 to ...subdue it...have dominion over...that is still God’s plan today. However, man in Adam, gave over the rights to subdue and have dominion on earth to Satan when man disobeyed God and as it is written in Luke 4:6 

“And he said to Him, To You I will give all this power and authority and their glory (all their magnificence, excellence, pre-eminence, dignity, and grace), for it has been turned over to me, and I give it to whomever I will”

So the first Adam lost it to Satan when he disobeyed God, but God’s plan was and still is - for man to reign as kings in this world (Romans 5:17), he (God) had to redeem man back to his rightful position. You know when God commanded that man should subdue and have dominion in the beginning, he meant it and his words never go back to him without yielding fruits/results. In order for God to pay the ransom required to redeem man, he had to sacrifice his only begotten son.

Now, the first Adam was made in the image of God as it is written in Gen 1:27, so, man’s spirit was a reflection of God because God is Spirit and so his image must be spirit and not flesh because man’s body was formed from dust (Gen 2:7) to be a tent for man’s spirit (2 Pet 1:13).  Before the fall, as the image of God, Adam was a son of God (Luke 3:38).  That is why when man ate from the tree God had told him not to eat, he died like God had told him (Gen 2:17) he would if he ate of the tree of good and evil. As we know, the flesh of man did not die that day but his spirit did (became separated from God). Death began to reign in man through the first Adam; as man had children, the children were born as sinners and as his children had children, sin continued to reign (Romans 5:17) because the seed of Adam had been corrupted.

To redeem man, Jesus could not be born of the seed of man because death reigned and the state of death was passed on through the seed of the man. Matthew 1: 18 and Luke 1: 35 explain that Mary became pregnant with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, Luke’s account reads:

“Then the angel said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you [like a shining cloud]; and so the holy (pure, sinless) Thing (Offspring) which shall be born of you will be called the Son of God” (Amplified).

Jesus was born without sin and he never sinned, this made him the perfect sacrifice for the sins of man. A sinless man had to be punished for the sins of the guilty, hence the ransom for man was paid; man was redeemed when Jesus was crucified. In the Old Testament, the sins of man were covered each year with the blood of animals that had no blemish; the blood of animals could not erase (blot out) the transgression of man but the blood of Jesus blotted out our transgression once and for all (Hebrews 10: 1-18). Verse 18 of Hebrews 10 states something very important: 

“Now where there is absolute remission (forgiveness and cancellation of the penalty) of these [sins and lawbreaking], there is no longer any offering made to atone for sin”

Hallelujah! Unlike the Old Testament where sacrifice had to be made year after year, Jesus has paid for our sins once and for all. This also means that we don’t have to punish ourselves or be punished for our sins, he paid it all. When the enemy brings our past to us to make us feel unworthy to approach God or feel guilty, we need to remember that Jesus paid it all and that all sins are forgiven, forgotten and blotted out when we accept the sacrifice that Jesus paid on the cross.

Now, Jesus did not only bear our sins, he bore other things, which were a result of the fall of man. Isaiah 53 explains the sacrifice of Jesus explicitly; verse 4-6 describes an amazing truth:

⁴ Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
      it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
   And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
      a punishment for his own sins!
 ⁵ But he was pierced for our rebellion,
      crushed for our sins.
   He was beaten so we could be whole.
      He was whipped so we could be healed.
 ⁶ All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
      We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
   Yet the Lord laid on him
      the sins of us all. (NLT)

So he took our weakness, sorrows, rebellion, our sins, our infirmities – He made us whole again. All that is needed to be restored to our rightful position is to believe in him as John 1: 12 reads: But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. This is so because Christ is a life giving spirit as 1 Cor 15:5 (AMP) reads:

"Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being (an individual personality); the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit [restoring the dead to life]"

We are restored back to life, back to son-ship from the state of death by the sacrifice Jesus paid because in him is life (John 1:4).  We are not only sons of God, we are co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17) meaning that whatever Jesus has, we have and all that he did on earth, we can do too. 

1 John 4:17 reads “In this [union and communion with Him] love is brought to completion and attains perfection with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment [with assurance and boldness to face Him], because as He is, so are we in this world.”

As He is, so are we in this world? Amazing! As Christ is now, so are we in this world. We are to reign in this world as Christ reigned over everything; we are to live a victorious life. As children of God, we are not hopeless sinners because Christ paid it all for us. We are like him, we have been restored to his image and his likeness, and we are kings. For as death reigned through the trespass of one man, the sacrifice of Christ means a lot more. Romans 5:17 (AMP) reads:

"For if because of one man's trespass (lapse, offense) death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive [God's] overflowing grace (unmerited favor) and the free gift of righteousness [putting them into right standing with Himself] reign as kings in life through the one Man Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)"

As believers it is time to live in the fullness of life that Christ has given us (John 10:10). One thing is certain, to get the results he got, we have to pray, fast, and give ourselves to the Word like he did.  If you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and saviour; the time is now, he loves you and paid the price for all your sins, invite him into your heart today.