Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6).
One sure principle to understand about God’s perfect will for our lives is that God doesn’t give us power or position to be all we desire to be, but He wants us to be all He desires us to be because only His will is perfect.
Therefore, as we wait and trust God for His promises we must continually examine our hearts, pruning it with the word of God to a point of a perfect alignment with His desire for our lives.
The truth is that before we can arrive at the place of his perfect will, we must endure many Nos from the Lord. Why? Because the flesh which is the sponsor of many of our choices must be crucified and silenced before we can arrive at the place of God’s yes.
We find this principle clearly manifested in Jesus’ walk with His Father while on earth. In Gethsemane, against all odds, even as His flesh screams No at the prospect of agonizing death on the cross, this principle prevailed for Jesus.
At this point He knew what the Yes of the Father is, and His heart was aligned with the desire of His Father saying, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
The next question would then be this: why must the flesh have to die before we can clearly hear a yes from God? Because there is a constant battle between the born-again nature and the old nature of sin.
The Bible clearly states this: ‘But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law’. (Galatians 5:16-18)
Going further in the book of Galatians we come across a key issue (among many) which sits at the driving sit of why the children of God receives many Nos from God as they seek his face concerning their heart desires.
This key sin is selfish ambition which is clearly stated in James 4:3: “And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures”.
Again, let us look at the account of Simon the Magician and Peter. Simon, a popular magician in Samaria, already used to self-adulation became a Christian for the wrong motive- to use the mighty outpouring of the power of God operating through Philip and the apostles for his own selfish end.
To Simon it was all about selfish ambition and not for empathy therefore incurring the anger of Peter who called out his desire for power as “wickedness” (Acts 8:22). Peter and Simon both were motivated by seeing the Holy Spirit minister to people, but their dreams were fueled by very different desires.
The lesson here is that we must constantly submit our desires to God for pruning to see if they genuinely align with our Father’s will or if they are all about our self-glory.
We may be tempted to feel that our desires are legitimate and that we don’t need God’s second opinion on it. For example, the desire for promotion is legitimate but the question is to know what is driving that desire, self-glory, or God’s glory?
God knows the desire of our heart than we can ever imagined”. The Bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10).
Like Jesus, we must pray to have God’s will come to fruition in our lives and this is the path to receiving a divine Yes on any issue. We must pray until every hidden sin of selfish ambition is revealed and crucified.
Not until then can we arrive at the perfect will of God where we say yes Lord let your will be done, and where we hear His unmistakable Yes on all issues after they have been brought to the calvary for crucifixion.
Reading
Mathew 26:36-45
