God’s Will

Peter 3:17 It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 
1 Peter 4:19 So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good. 

We are all put here for a purpose. This purpose is to glorify God and to love and serve Him. Most of the time, however, we need more direction on how to carry that out. I would like to talk about some steps that we could use to see if our dreams and plans are really of the Lord. 

The first way that we can test if our plans are of the Lord is by the desires that He puts in our hearts. These will always agree with Scripture. In one way or another, God will use these desires to give us guidance.
– We should take inventory and reflect on our desires and dreams. 
– These desires should bring delight to others as well as ourselves. God’s desires will always build the kingdom of God. These desires will always cause us to delight in the Lord. 
– As we delight in the desires that God gives us, we also will begin to dream about them in our minds. We will plan and make note of how these desires might succeed. Have you taken time to dream about the desires of your heart? Offer your dream to the Lord and watch how He might make it happen. 
– Your dream will become stronger and stronger when it is God’s will for you. Events in your life will confirm you are going in the right direction. 
– This should naturally lead us to the point of decision, yes or no. If the above conditions are true, the Lord will bless our efforts to try. To really follow the Lord, we must not be afraid to make a mistake! 
– If our dream is from God, He will also bless us with the determination to carry it out. This does not mean that we won’t become discouraged. But it does mean that we will not always be overwhelmed with the task of bringing it about. If our dream is from God, we should experience deeper and deeper peace. As we do it, there will be something in us that will not let us give it up.
– If our dream is from God, we will experience dedication to our dream. We will not be easily swayed by events and circumstances. We will more and more want to fulfill our dream to please the Lord. 
– If our dream is from God, He will give us discipline to give up the things that stand in the way of our dream. We will even surprise ourselves with our efforts. 
– God will give us diligence if the dream is from God. This means constant and careful effort. A righteous man may fail several times, yet still push on to reach the dream. 
– When God gives us a dream, it will cause death. Many things may be crucified in us so that Jesus Christ will be more in us and more real to the people around us. After all, our dream is not just for us. It is also for the kingdom of God and the people of God. 

A dream that comes from God will always lead us to a greater desire to be like Jesus. To accomplish this, we need to be in God’s Word, praying, and seeking out others that are like minded. Does our dream cause us to seek out and develop the good in other people? And most of all does it reveal the goodness, kindness and mercy of the Lord to us, or did we feel that we accomplished it ourselves, and that we deserved it anyway? At the end of our dreaming, is Christ greater or are we more important? 

Jesus is the only one who can make our dreams into a reality. Without Him, we have no strength or ability to accomplish it. The world says if you work hard enough, your dream will come true. But it is out of the kindness and graciousness of Christ that anything good happens at all. The dreams that God gives us will stand forever. What man has created will come to dust. We have the privilege to choose God’s plans and to be part of eternity; or we can choose the world and have our dreams and deeds crumble in the dust.