The question, am I really doing God’s will, is not an easy one to answer. And it’s not because God was unclear concerning His will, for “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:3). Rather, it is a difficult question to answer because we often make it challenging to give a sincere, honest, and truthful answer from genuine self-examination and judgment. The world has taught us that we should not be judged, not by anyone, and therefore, there should not be a need to go through the painstaking task of judging ourselves. But, like it or not, the reality is that we will be judged (2 Cor. 5:10), but “if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged” (i.e. condemned, 1 Cor. 11:31). And the word of God has always taught us to examine our hearts, in fact, by the power of God’s word, even simple time in attentive reading will stimulate the genuine Christian to self-examine. But how can an honest look of our lives reveal whether we are doing God’s will? As we considered in the previous bulletin, doing God’s will is no mystery, nor is it done by accident, for the will of God is concrete, absolute, unchanging, having been revealed to us in the plain language of the bible. Just as Paul explained that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The scriptures can make us “complete” and “thoroughly equipped” for “every good work” which is to be found in God’s will, i.e. His revealed word. We don’t want to have lived our lives seemingly for God, only to find ourselves in the same predicament as “many” others who called upon the Lord and did many works for Him, but had to depart from Christ eternally, because, in Judgement, they were found to have not really done the will of God (Matthew 7:21-23). This brings us back to the question we began with; a question that will require us to judge ourselves honestly and completely. May the rest of this article provide some considerations to help us sink into deeper self-examination.

            I’ll start with an example that I’ve used for years to help myself reconsider the actions of my heart. Think of a father who owns a property, and has asked his grown, able-bodied son to build upon it. The Father has provided his son with his “will” for the property; he wants a farmhouse to be built in a certain location, and to be of a certain size and style. His will is for a well to be dug near the house, accessible just to the right side. He wills that a barn be built on the opposite side of the property, with a corral to the left. So the father’s will looks like this:

The son reads the blueprint (his father’s will) and begins to build upon the property. He thinks that the spot his father has selected for the house is simply perfect. Likewise, he thought it wise to have the barn on the opposite side, so the animals would be furthest from the living space. As for the water well, he found a slight hill behind the house that made for a beautiful, aesthetically pleasing scene. So the result looked like this:

As we can see, the end result is almost identical to the father’s will, with the one variance being the location of the well. So, the question is: where did the son do the will of the father? Today’s mainstream Christianity would likely answer that he did the will of the father, for every piece that the father desired is what his son built for him. This must be how they can claim to be God’s servants while completely altering nearly every aspect of the work and worship of the church. Someone more level-headed may answer that he did his father’s will with the exception of the placement of the well, in this alone did he fail to accomplish his father’s will. That may likely be the most popular answer given, particularly among members of the Lord’s church. However, it is still an incorrect answer to the question. For if we take this approach in our own lives, we may count many things that we do in our work and worship that align perfectly with God’s will in the scriptures, but our self-examination is filled with fallacies if we conclude that we do the will of God simply because we are doing many things commanded in the bible. The right answer to the question, where did the son do the will of the father, is nowhere. Nowhere did the son do his father’s will; in everything, the son did his own will, according to his desires, and his desires just happened to also be the will of his father most of the time. So then, things are not always what they appear. If we judge our lives by the appearance of what we do, and not by the will of the heart, we may well conclude that we are doing what God has asked of us, when in actuality, it is our will that we’ve yet to abandon. As Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). To illustrate this, let me raise several questions. Do you worship without musical instruments because you like the sound of acapella music? Do you partake of the Lord’s Supper on the first day of every week because that is when the congregation that you are a part of happens to do it? Do you have family ties or an upbringing that connects you to a certain type of church or worship, and makes you feel good to engage in that which you’ve traditionally known? I hope these questions help us recognize that we can be at the right place at the right time doing the right acts, and still not doing the will of God, nor surrendering our own will. Many are deceiving themselves when they judge according to appearance instead of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Article by Tanner Campbell