"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. . ."
There are four principle driving forces we use to direct our daily lives. They are our emotional needs, our logic and reason, our personal willpower, and God's will. You may have noticed that I started this series with the one most commonly used to govern our lives---our emotional state. Few of us use our analytical reasoning, but even less of us utilize our willpower. The last driving force is the one we least employ: God's will. God's will, however, should be the primary direction for our lives since it provides us with a moral code and clarifies what is important.
So, what is God's will for our lives? That is a huge question. There are many wonderful books written on this topic, but it can be simplified for the purposes of this article. According to Jesus, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, body, and mind, and to love each other (Matthew 22:37, paraphrased). Loving God and loving each other should be the guiding principles to everything we do. We should start each day with those two goals. We need to willfully (using driving force of will) choose these goals and logically (reason) determine how to go about achieving them. We will discover that pursuing God's purposes will lead to lasting personal fulfillment (emotions). We will find that it is only when we deliberately put God's will first, our will second, and our logical reason third, that our emotional needs are met.
Most of us, however, approach life using these driving forces in the opposite order, with emotions directing the show. This approach rarely achieves the personal contentment and satisfaction we seek. Real enjoyment is only possible when we live under God's rule. This may seem illogical to most of us. Why doesn't pursuing pleasure lead to happiness? Despite the reasonable of this idea, it doesn't work.
God desires us to experience real joy, but such emotional state is only possible when we seek his will. This is a hard truth. Most of us resist submitting ourselves to another's plans. Putting God's will first requires us to sacrifice our own pursuits and to trust that God's way is better.
If this is a new concept, I urge you to try it out. Spend some time reading the Bible, find a local church group and get involved, and start to have regular conversations with God. Ask him to help you get to know him better. All of these steps are a great way of making God's will the primary driving force in your life.
Matthew 6:9-10
There are four principle driving forces we use to direct our daily lives. They are our emotional needs, our logic and reason, our personal willpower, and God's will. You may have noticed that I started this series with the one most commonly used to govern our lives---our emotional state. Few of us use our analytical reasoning, but even less of us utilize our willpower. The last driving force is the one we least employ: God's will. God's will, however, should be the primary direction for our lives since it provides us with a moral code and clarifies what is important.
So, what is God's will for our lives? That is a huge question. There are many wonderful books written on this topic, but it can be simplified for the purposes of this article. According to Jesus, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, body, and mind, and to love each other (Matthew 22:37, paraphrased). Loving God and loving each other should be the guiding principles to everything we do. We should start each day with those two goals. We need to willfully (using driving force of will) choose these goals and logically (reason) determine how to go about achieving them. We will discover that pursuing God's purposes will lead to lasting personal fulfillment (emotions). We will find that it is only when we deliberately put God's will first, our will second, and our logical reason third, that our emotional needs are met.
Most of us, however, approach life using these driving forces in the opposite order, with emotions directing the show. This approach rarely achieves the personal contentment and satisfaction we seek. Real enjoyment is only possible when we live under God's rule. This may seem illogical to most of us. Why doesn't pursuing pleasure lead to happiness? Despite the reasonable of this idea, it doesn't work.
God desires us to experience real joy, but such emotional state is only possible when we seek his will. This is a hard truth. Most of us resist submitting ourselves to another's plans. Putting God's will first requires us to sacrifice our own pursuits and to trust that God's way is better.
If this is a new concept, I urge you to try it out. Spend some time reading the Bible, find a local church group and get involved, and start to have regular conversations with God. Ask him to help you get to know him better. All of these steps are a great way of making God's will the primary driving force in your life.
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