Saboteurs of the Will of God for Your Life, Part 2
The will of God is not as elusive as we think. We often miss out on it because we allow certain things into our sphere of living that sabotage it. Last time, we discussed four of eight “saboteurs” of the will of God for your life: misguided “shoulds,” ignorance, toxic religion and toxic relationships. Here are the four more:
1. Personal Pet Sin
Well, that’s the obvious one, ain’t it? But it’s true. Sin clouds spiritual vision. It’s like throwing dirt on your glasses. Confession and cleansing are the only effective “wipes.” Sin is like wax build-up in our spiritual ears. And worse, sin furthers its own effects, taking us further and further from God’s specific plan for us. Billy Graham once said, “The most devastating effect of sin is that BY sin, we are blinded TO sin.” In other words, sin not only blinds us to the will of God, it blinds us to itself, thus exacerbating the problem.
There’s an old saying, “when you steal a penny the devil makes a fortune.” The reason that sin keeps us from finding and doing the will of God is because sin is, in its essence, the will of Satan. We can’t embrace God’s will if we’re embracing the very antithesis of it. Adam and Eve thought they could have their fruit and eat it too, so to speak, only to find out they couldn’t. That’s why people who live in the flow of God’s plans and purposes for their lives also understand the important of regular confession and cleansing from personal sin. That is the confession and cleansing of the very things that are NOT the will of God for us.
2. A Men-pleasing Disposition
Have you ever noticed how unpopular the great men of God were in the Scriptures? Jeremiah, Isaiah, Paul. Even Jesus. Jesus basically said “the only thing I do is whatever the Father tells me to do and I don’t do anything else.” And they crucified him for it. If he had been running a popularity contest, he never would have gone to the cross. The same for all those guys. Approval of others and the will of God are usually incompatible. Thus, to have one is the sacrifice the other.
Just like God wanted Moses, Joshua, David, Jesus and Peter to do some pretty hair-brained against-all-odds stuff, he’s sooner or later going to ask us to do the same. And that one thing will become the “line in the sand” with our family, friends and often even fellow church members.
If we are holding up our finger in the wind, if keeping people around us happy is our priority, mark it down: we will miss the will of God. If we’re addicted to men’s approval, hey, we’re not even open to what God might want us to do. I wonder if God sometimes doesn’t even REVEAL certain directions to us because he knows we won’t do it anyway… and the reason we won’t do it is because no one around us would like it—and we know it.
You’ve got to be willing to take some flack to be in the will of God. My mentor spent 30 years traveling in a bus preaching in churches on both coasts until God opened the door to be the spiritual advisor to a secular business organization. He took a lot of heat from others in the Church because of it. Some even said he had left the ministry, though that is simply not the case. We spoke on the phone just today and told me they had seen over 3500 professions of faith over the last month of weekends at the conferences where he is preaching at the organizational meetings. Had be been an approval addict with a man-pleasing disposition, he’d still be traveling church to church, but he never would have seen that kind of fruit. And worse, he would be outside the will of God for his life.
3. Fear
This is a big one for most of us because it’s most common. In Scripture, God asks His people to do some pretty strange things out of sheer faith – everything from casting nets on the “wrong” sides of boats to marching thirteen times around a wall as the only means of tearing it down. I’ve always struggled with this because I know that there is a fine line between faith and stupidity… and God often asks us to walk that line right down the center of his will.
So we will get (as they say in Comer, GA) “skeered” sometimes. And there is a lot to be afraid of: the mockery of others, failure, embarrassing God if we’re wrong, personal loss and the list goes on. But when we know – or even suspect strongly – that God is telling us to do something, even something “stupid” or seemingly absurd, we will do so usually not in the absence of fear but in spite of it.
Fear is not a sign that something is not God’s will for us, it may be a sign that something great is about to happen. Often you’ll see crows perched ON a scarecrow because they have figured out that there must be something good around if the farmer is trying so hard to scare them away. Hmmmm. Maybe the Devil is using fear in your life because he knows the blessing that will come to you or the Kingdom if you step on out in faith.
“Where God guides, He provides.” There is really nothing to fear. Even failure is not worth fearing. God certainly isn’t worried about it. When Jesus told Peter to come on out and walk on the water, he knew he would sink to begin with. It’s good to know that when His voice is there to call us, His hand is there to catch us. Fear not!
4. Emotional Attachments
If we already have an emotional attachment to the wrong decision, we’re already closed up to what God’s will is.
Often, we’re faced with a decision and we’ll find ourselves going through creative mental gymnastics trying to justify the decision we’re about to make—a decision that wrong and we know it.
And if we got honest long enough, we would have to admit that the will of God would be just about anything BUT the decision we’re about to settle on. We so have in mind what we want to do, what we want the will of God to be, and we’ve become emotionally attached to that idea. At that point, we’re in the danger zone because we’re not really seeking the will of God anymore, we’re seeking God’s blessing on our own will.
Good news. The will of God is valuable, understandable, and findable. Don’t let these saboteurs sabotage the will of God for your life.
