Will Of God 1 – Two things

Thy will be done (Matthew 6:10).

Most theological questions I field from people have to do with one enormously important yet maddeningly elusive subject: the Will of God. Really the Will of God is not just one, but two things, although they are intimately related in surprising ways.

There is the question of What is God’s will for me? What am I supposed to do with my life? or what should I do in the next five minutes? Then there is a second question, which doesn’t look forward to what I’m about to do, but instead looks back to something that happened, usually something awful – but not always. My husband was killed in a crash. The boss fired me. The tsunami destroyed tens of thousands of lives. Somebody offered to buy my business. Cancer was diagnosed. My marriage dissolved. Was it God’s will?

What was God’s will? How do I make sense of suffering and evil if God is good and has a plan? How many thousands of times have we muttered “Thy will be done”? What exactly have we been praying for? And what might the answer look like?

In this series, we will explore these questions in some depth. Be patient! We can’t just leap ahead to know what God wills for me tonight, or why I have this awful disease. Stay on the road with me. Read, reflect, reply to me, talk with somebody you live or work with, pray, reflect some more. Share with others and converse with them. Together we’ll make some progress on the only question – well, the only two questions that matter.