Finding God’s Will for Your Gift

A lot of times I hear from people wanting to know God’s will for their creativity and for that matter their lives. They want to know if they’re really hearing from God about how to use their gifts or they’re just being selfish… Here are a few things I have found:

1. Have You Prayed About It and Are You Continuing to Pray?: There are no shortcuts on this one. The best way to know God’s will is to ask Him? Pray. Ask God to guide your steps. Ask Him to open doors to good opportunities and close doors to the ones outside His will. Ask Him to help you faithfully pursue the things that are His will.
2. Are You in the Word of God?: God wants us to know Him so He gave us a book and as we read that book (The Bible) we come to understand what God is like. The more you know Him the easier it is to follow Him so read His Word.
3. Are You in Christ?: Have you asked Jesus into your heart to be your Lord and Savior? If not this needs to move to the top of the list. You see when Jesus is Lord of your life, His Holy Spirit comes into your life and helps you and guides you. If you haven’t done this yet contact me and I’ll guide you through it.
4. Do You Love Doing What You’re Doing?: A lot of people see this as a selfish question, almost as if God doesn’t want us to be happy. Friend, God is a loving Father. He does want you to be happy. More than that, He wants you to be joyful. The Scripture tells us “The joy of the Lord is Our strength.” Will you always be happy? No. Should you quit at the first sign of unhappiness? Only if you never want to succeed anything you ever do. But who do you think wired you to like the good things you like? Who do you think gave you your gifts and talents? I’ll give you hint, the same one who has a plan and a purpose for your life. God didn’t design you for drudgery, He loves you.
5. Are Sou Sinning?: If you are, quit now. God’s will for your life will never include sin, period. Repent and turn around now.
6. Are You Being Faithful?: If you feel like God might be leading you in a direction, pray and then begin to take action. Try it. Do what you can with what you have right now to begin doing what you believe God might be leading you to do. Get started and take the next right step in the direction you think that God is leading. Ask Him daily to guide you in the process and follow Him.

At the end of the day, it’s this simple. God loves you. He wants what’s best for you so trust Him and follow Him today. Move into His will and allow Him to steer.

There’s a passage in the Bible that tells us how to be in God’s will. It’s Romans 12:1,2: Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

It’s this simple really. Because God has shown us mercy by giving Jesus to die for our sins, we should offer our lives to God for Him to use as He sees fit. When we do this, we trust Him fully and our lives become and act of worship. We stop going the way the rest of the world is going and we pattern our lives after our perfect Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When we pattern our lives after His we will know and understand God’s will.

Are you living in God’s will? If not, why not take the first right step today.

Knowing God’s Will Part 2

Well today we’re back to looking at finding and living God’s will for our lives and while last time we said that we don’t really know exactly what that will is when it comes to projects and things like that, it comes down to this, the first step in living out God’s will is submitting your will to Him. The purpose of our gifts and talents is more than just doing great projects. The purpose of our gifts really comes down to using what we have, not just our gifts and talents but our very lives to honor and glorify God.

Because it’s all about honoring and glorifying God we can’t really talk about God’s will for our lives without talking a little bit about our character. After all if we are not living righteous lives, our lack of righteousness is going to overshadow our gifts not to mention the image of Christ in our lives, no matter how talented we are. If we have submitted our wills to God we may not be perfect and we won’t be, but we should be moving toward a more Christlike life. You can’t really glorify God if you live like the devil.

Ephesians 5:15Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

1 Thessalonians 4:3It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

If we want to do God’s will, we have to honor God with our lives. We have to live with integrity, saying what we do and doing what we say. Otherwise we will reflect badly on God and on Christ and people will be turned off to the great things God has for them. Remember 2 Corinthians 5 calls us God’s ambassadors, Christ’s representatives in this world and how we represent Him matters. To honor God with our gift we must also honor Him with out lives.

Knowing God’s Will

A lot of people ask me how they can know God’s will for their lives and since I deal so much with gifts and talents what they are really looking for from me is how to spent their lives, how to use their talents, in short what does God want me to do. I’ve wrestled with the same thing for years and the truth is I can’t really give you that. Wait, don’t tune out. I can’t give you that because I don’t know the specifics of your life. What I do know is there are answers in the Word for how to know what God’s will is. Here’s the first one.

Romans 12:1 and 2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. The first step in finding God’s will for your life is not finding a project. It’s giving your whole self, your gifts your talents and everything you are to God. That’s what true worship is.

It also involves changing your way of thinking. We don’t follow the world anymore, we follow God. We want the mind of Christ. We want to know what God thinks is important and do that and be that. The Scriptures say “We are not our own we were bought with a price.” When we give everything to God and we follow Him and draw close to Him and seek Him by reading His Word and in prayer, we’ll start to think like Him, then we can test and approve what His will for our lives is.

See I can’t tell you how God wants to use your gift exactly. I can’t give you a list of projects to accomplish to get to where God wants you to be. What I can tell you is it all comes down to giving your gift to God and saying, here it is God use it. We can know what God wants for us and from us. The first step in living out His will is submitting your will to Him.

This is the first in a series on finding God’s will for your life and your gift. I really encourage you to subscribe to this video blog to follow it and please keep in touch, I want to hear from you and I want to see the viewers of this video blog begin to communicate with each other, share with each other and encourage each other so leave a comment on the video blog and join the amokarts e-list. I’ll put the link on the screen. I’m revamping the amokarts.com website so soon all the information will be more convenient to you. Thanks for joining in on this journey, I pray that God uses your gift mightily as you live out His purpose for your life.