It recently came to my attention that Christians will ask about God’s will, but we never really consider the devil’s. I learned a long time ago that understanding the opposite of something will improve my overall understanding of it, so you’d think I would’ve clued into this concept sooner, but better late than never… and let’s be honest, I’m sure I’ll soon forget this idea and need to relearn it again in the future. As the bumper sticker on my wife’s parents’ car once said: “Been there; done that; forgot most of it.” Either way, it’s good to learn and challenge our brains, so let’s jump into this.
Tip: The devil’s will would be for us to give up learning because we assume we won’t remember it anyway (or we already know everything). The truth is we don’t know what will stick and what will inspire our own ideas in the future making every learning moment valuable. On top of that, we need to be challenging our brains for our overall health, so learning is always valuable no matter how much you retain in the long run.
A Not-So-Quick Aside: When discussing God’s will it’s helpful to understand His “plan” as well. When I was young, I asked questions like “What am I supposed to do?” “What career does God want me to have?” “Who should I marry?” which follows the idea of “What’s God’s plan for my life?” but the answer is pretty simple. What does God want me to choose? To make good choices based on directions from the Bible (e.g. the Golden Rule), and to be aware that if He has something specific He wants me to do, He’ll make it pretty clear, the bigger the challenge the clearer the push. Besides that, like any good parent, God wants us have a say in how our lives look. He wants us to have a sense of independence and self reliance while keeping our hearts connected to Him. He wants us to develop our skills and find a career path that will honor those skills because He can use us whatever we choose to do and wherever we choose to go.
Tip: Many times people want God to tell them what to do because it removes the responsibility of making a decision themselves. Unfortunately, being a healthy person means making informed decisions and dealing with the benefits and repercussions of those choices.
Growing up going to church in the 80s and 90s I remember people asking about God’s Will for their lives. As a more informed believer, I now know the answer to this is pretty simple and directly answered in the Bible: “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” (1 Thes 5:18) That’s it. God’s will is for us is to be thankful. The Apostle Paul calls believers to be thankful over 40 times in his letters, and counts vary between 100 to 200 times that thankfulness is encouraged in the Bible as a whole. What’s great about God wanting us to be thankful? Psychologists have found the key to happiness is to be thankful, which means God’s will for us is ultimately to be happy. This isn’t the false idea of happiness people often think about, which is more about excitement and adrenaline rushes. That means this isn’t about winning a championship or being the best at something. It’s about a grateful heart that includes contentment and peace.
I should point out that being thankful doesn’t mean you should be a pushover. We shouldn’t casually accept mistreatment. Being thankful in a proper way means you still have boundaries, and you try to make it easier for yourself to be thankful. Thankful people recognize bad situations and will find ways to get out of them. Being thankful doesn’t mean you’re foolish. It means you look for things that make it easier to be grateful. Having a thankful heart gives you a better foundation for handling the trials that come and helps you recover quicker. A thankful person will still get discouraged, but they’ll face less times of discouragement and be quicker to recover because they can see the good in all situations.
Tip: Being thankful puts God first and values all He’s done. This builds trust toward Him, which, in turn, gives the person increased confidence and reduced potential anxiety.
On top of thankfulness, the Apostle Paul also frequently wrote about having self-control, which is listed as the final blessing of the Fruits of the Spirit. These two concepts, thankfulness and self-control, work together because being thankful helps us have more self-control and more self-control helps us be thankful. It’s like God knew what He was doing.
Fortunately, God doesn’t just tell us to be grateful and not help with that. As the Apostle Paul wrote: “And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts.” (Col 3:15a) God has given us the ability to have peace in our hearts. Of course, just because we have Jesus doesn’t mean we will always have peace. We just have an increased potential for it. We still have to choose to put Jesus first. After all, our brains are in constant battle between love and selfishness, and a thankful heart helps us be a step closer to choosing the side of love rather than selfishness.
When someone is thankful, what kind of person do they become? A good one. They’ll be someone who is encouraging and helps you feel better about life. That’s pretty great. Being thankful means the person won’t need to put themselves first or manipulate others to get their own way. They won’t be a whiner or self seeking. Of course, I should note that there is a difference between venting and whining. Thankful people will vent and get their frustrations out in order to lead back to being thankful and be in a better headspace. Ungrateful people will whine as a way to manipulate others into feeling sorry for them, which is a backhanded way of gaining power.
Because thankful people are good people, they end up developing good relationships with other good people. Sure, there’ll be those who don’t like them. After all, those of the dark will hate those of the light, but it’s better to be hated for being good than to be loved for being bad. The benefit of this dynamic, good people not being liked by bad people, is it encourages good people to end up being friends with other good people. Of course, it can still be a challenge to find good people who have the time or energy to be friends (especially today), but at least there’s hope.
The Apostle Paul claims that as one body of believers we are called to peace (Col 3:15b). It’s pretty funny to think of a hand trying to attack a foot or an elbow trying to attack the head (both could be fantastic dance moves), but this is what happens when believers start attacking each other. It should be a ridiculous concept. The benefit of being thankful and finding peace within ourselves and with others (through Jesus) Is we’ll end up having less conflict to face thereby making it easier to be thankful. This leads to a very fruitful cycle that helps make life better.
This leads to the second part of this lesson: What is the devil’s will? That’s pretty simple: To make us UNthankful. An unthankful heart is selfish and bitter. It will never find contentment or peace, which means it will never be happy. It will chase happiness, but never find it because it’s not about being thankful; it’s about a feeling, a high. Even if this so-called feeling is found, it will be short lived and leave the person with some type of physical and/or emotional hangover. Ungrateful people are drawn to bad things adding to the chance and frequency of more bad things happening. At the same time, they’ll be okay with it because it’s now another thing to feel sorry for themselves about, which is ultimately their goal – power through sympathy. Being ungrateful is about saying the first thing that comes to mind and not considering other people’s feelings. It’s about having to be right or special even at the expense of others. It’s about division and isolation. Being ungrateful is all about self satisfaction, which ironically is never self satisfying.
So what does this look like?
Philip Yancey has been one of the most influential Christian writers since his first book, Disappointment with God, came out in 1988. His book, The Gift of Pain, actually changed my life. He recently publicly confessed and apologized for having had an eight-year affair, and guess how well that was received. Let’s just say he has received lots of inspiration for writing a book called Disappointment with Christians. Ironically, one of his most popular books was What’s So Amazing about Grace – oops. It’s shocking how judgemental and mean Christians can be. As one pastor said, “Christians are the one group who are more likely to shoot their wounded,” which is strange because that’s the opposite of the grace we’re told to have. Because we’ve been forgiven much, we should be ready to forgive others and ourselves, but this is rarely the case.
A few verses before the Apostle Paul tells people to “Be thankful in all circumstances…” he wrote: “For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us… So encourage each other and build each other up…” (1 Thes 5:9,11a) God chose “not to pour out our anger,” but that doesn’t mean He left that up to us; we’re called to be encouraging. Yes, Yancey is yet another successful Christian to fall to temptation in a major way, but the messages of hate and judgement being written by believers is disgusting. Yes, believers need to help each other stay accountable, but how is slandering someone online demonstrating the love of Jesus? These people are members of the same body attacking another. They are a butt trying to attack an ear (A dance move that my almost two-year-old has mastered). When Jesus said, “…let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” (John 8:7b), do they not realize that “stone” can be symbolic for words? When Jesus said, “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eyewhen you have a log in your own?” Jesus is referring to each of us. We all have logs in our eyes. We should be hearing stories like this and feeling sad that the devil’s will won, and then be thankful we have been spared of such a terrible situation.
And here’s the million-dollar (using monopoly money) question: Are these people slandering Philip Yancey for his sin following God’s will or the devil’s? The greatest tragedy of this situation is the devil’s will has spread and is being followed by those who are falling into their own temptation – hate, slander, and judgement.
This week may you consider the difference between following God’s will or the devil’s?
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.