I have often found that the phrase "The Will of God" comes up in relation to all manner of everyday experience.


People talk very loosely about the Will of God. As when an obituary notice for a young girl run over by a drunken driver ends "Thy will be done". Or else we tag the phrase on to the end of our prayers and it is often just a "catch all" opt out. Hedging our bets so that whatever transpires can be interpreted as God's will.


For myself I find it helpful to make some distinctions.


The Intentional Will of God. And what God intends is clearly expressed in the teaching of Jesus. Wholeness of body, mind and spirit for every individual. Also a world-wide community (the Kingdom of God) which is characterised by justice, love, joy and peace.


But the world we live in and people in it are far away from that. The reality is that we live in a violent world and we are imperfect people.


So I think in terms of the Circumstantial Will of God. By which I mean trying to do what God intends in circumstances where the only choice open to us is between two evils. War is the classic example. Warfare can never ever be a Good. But it might be Right to engage in it to avoid an even greater evil. So we choose what is the lesser of two evils. In which case we can be said to be doing the Circumstantial Will of God acknowledging that what we do in such circumstances is not what God intends.


Out of this comes a third category of understanding. The Consequential Will of God. This means working in all circumstances to do God;s will and it often happens that out of evil circumstances some constuctive good emerges. The Marshall Plan which put Germany on its feet again after the Nazi debacle is an example of this.


If we make these distinctions we can begin to talk about the Will of God in a meaningful way and avoid all suggestion of fatalism and pessimism.


Relating this the Cross of Christ I dont believe that the Cross was the Intentional Will of God. It was an evil act by sinful men and it happened because Jesus remained absolutely loyal to God's Way and God's truth. So I understand the Cross as representing the Circumstantial Will of God. And the "salvation" which we find through the Cross represents the Consequential Will of God.

I wonder how others see it.

Another good question!

I will get my thoughts together and respond but on initial impact - I think that I live in the expectation that God's will is more important than mine, and that it is key to trust his will being done!

I link this to vocation, where I thought that is was my will that would make it move on quickly, I very soon accepted that in God's time and when God wills it, I might discern what his will for the call to serve is pulling me.

But more to follow!

I believe that Jesus is the God/Man and that the Crucifixion of Christ was the Will of God. This passage of Scripture came to my mind: "But God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him." (Acts 2:23)

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Welcome Michael!

<creeps out>

Perhaps you are right in this, people do say that the Will of God is being expressed, when something happens - although, my understanding is that we should always be looking to see "How is God working in this?" or perhaps, "What would Jesus Do?" In this context, I might find something that happens while not directly being God's will, it might be a consequence of it.



I wonder - to be honest, I have never seen this particular tag applied in the circumstances you describe. Recently, one of a Church Wardens succumbed to Cancer. I would not have attributed that as being God's will for her. In her suffering, she fought hard against the disease right to the end - she never accepted that it was God's will for her. I believe that she and her husband came to accept that the Cancer was something that is a consequence of being human, to be fought or lived through or to die from? I spoke to her a few days prior to her death. She had struggled to church and was honest in her appraisal of her circumstances - and told me that she felt lousy and very low. For the Celebration of her life (or funeral) she asked that everyone wore bright colours to remind us of her and to remember her as she had been and was now A brave thing to do.



I am unsure of the intentional will of God or even the circumstantial Will of God. Expressed in those terms, it appears that God has a Master Plan or Template from creation to the end of all things - which we should live up to and act on. Our failure to do so is the result of deliberate disobedience?

My understanding (which is admittedly limited) is that we were given free will to live our lives in a way which takes account of Creation and the world he made for us and the freely given, unstinting Love of God for us and we are to love, praise, thank and worship him in return. It appears to me that our failure to live up to that covenant is the cause of our trouble between mankind.

This does not account for natural disasters which have devastating consequences for mankind these are part of Creation, where the world reacts do natural evolutionary change, and intrinsically, appear to be not God's will or the will of man - just natural disasters.



I can see that this understanding fits with circumstances. I would be interested to hear more on this. If man's freewill is the cause of issues between mankind. Somewhere in all of this is the conception of Evil (or the Devil). My understanding of evil may be flawed, but I had thought that evil lives within each of us - and we have the freewill to either go with it, or to go the other way. But Evil can be multiplied as was the case with Adolf Hitler whose Evil philosophy was accepted and spread to cause his Evil intent to become the NAZI regime and consequential wars etc.

The Marshal Plan might be conceived as an altruistic effort by the USA to rebuild Europe after the devastation caused by the NAZI's, equally, it could be construed as a power building attempt by the USA and others to dominate trade and culture in opposition to the Socialist Culture of the Soviet Union. By doing the Marshal Plan, the USA gained allies against a new enemy (and evil tyrant (Stalin) and built a shield in Western Europe between themselves and the USSR.



I had thought that God had through the prophets forcast the sacrifice on the cross - I am unsure of the references but it made sense. The act was predestined, but committed by mankind. Have not seen anything to contradict this?



I hope we can move this on further as I find it a most interesting discussion.

Ernest. I would like to reply to each of the responses you have made. But it would open up the discussion and provide for a wider response if I waited for the thoughts of others. Which I hope might be forthcoming.

Thank you for your welcome, Pastor Pam. Thank you for starting this discussion, mfundisi. (Do I recall your "name" from the i-church of three or four years ago?) I think the Will of God is a very important subject because it goes right to the root of who God is (Sovereign) in relation to His creatures. I think that to some extent we have to concede that God's Will is sometimes inscrutable ( "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine." Isaiah 55:8). I think that one of the more difficult things for humans to understand is that sometimes the Will of God might hurt us in the process of making us more like Christ.

Thank you, mfundisi for sharing your thoughts and starting this thread. I agree with what Michael said above. BTW Michael.

Ernest, thank you for your long post. Good food for thought! I find myself mostly agreeing with you. Especially thank you for sharing the (sad) story of your churchwarden - "she never accepted that it was God's will for her. I believe that she and her husband came to accept that the Cancer was something that is a consequence of being human" -I believe this is a healthy and accurate view.

I don't have much own thoughts to contribute at the moment. One thing I'd like to say though is that I find it -hm, difficult, when people believe that literally everything that happens and exactly how things happen is the will of God...

Just a poem which I found about the Will of God.


http://www.milesrausch.com/paula/?p=74



http://www.inspiringthots.net/movie/wog.php

Thank you Ernest - a great Poem.

Yes, a wonderful poem, Ernest!
I will share it with others.
Many thanks!
Peace and blessings,
Joe

Thank you for a stunningly powerful poem Ernest

Christine

That's great Ernest.

Unfortunately we can't place the attachment on the site because the copyright is far from expired - I'm sorry about that. However, the link is fine - that site is nothing to do with us, so people can see the poem there with no problem.