Your Will Be Done

The last three or so weeks we have been going forward and back about the purchase of a used Jeep and a campervan from just across the road from the car.
It isn’t yet a done deal yet, either way. We are happy with the level of investment involved and are agreed that they would suit our purposes of going touring into the future. Where we are hesitant to proceed is that we are not entirely convinced that this is what the Master has in mind for us specifically.
Even with listening to a Joyce Meyer presentation on faith about getting what we need as God’s gift this afternoon we still have an issue. Joyce used the analogy of a nagging child who needs shoes. The mother who may have been getting ready for the shoes in a couple of weeks, she suggested, may decide to put the shoes off for an extra week to teach her daughter the gift of patience.
What is currently holding us up from just going ahead with the arrangements is a call to “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven.” It is not that we are being wilful, not that we are aware, the car seems to be really good and the cost is pretty good. And we haven’t been frantically thrashing around looking at this or that Jeep, the time just hasn’t been right over the time and yet we have just come upon one jeep after another more or less.
This does raise a question in terms of a paradigm shift in terms of how far to go talking about how interested God is in our lives. Simon Peter after being commissioned to look after the Master’s sheep and the promise of suffering in his later years asked about another disciple’s fate/future. Jesus answer is that it was none of Peter’s business. So it is with us at the moment. We do not know what is going on but our business is to follow Jesus and to seek that God be honoured in our lives.
This is the lesson of Peter. It doesn’t matter how god a deal it may be, it doesn’t matter how much we may want it, if we proceed against Fathers plan then there can only be two outcomes. First we will be settling for less than our Father’s best for us. Second regardless of the outcome we will not be standing in a God honouring position, this is the opposite outcome that we seek.
There are some parts of the Good News that can be hard to hear, understand, and apply. Seek first the Kingdom of God is just one of these. Our title “Your Will Be Done” is another. Both are absolute, they both have the notion of finality, it is not we have a “by your leave” or “if it suits you”. In fact there is not even the promise that “this is for your best”. In the Old Testament God is reported as saying of the People of God “My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are My ways your ways”. Isa 55:8
This is the point of these “Hard Sayings of Jesus.” Just as He embraced the Cross, for our sakes, so we need to always remember that we owe the quality of our lives, as believers to our Master obeying His Fathers will and choosing to seek first the Kingdom Himself. I do not see that we can do any the less than live by the rules He applied to His life.
I would love to hear your responses to this blog.