You don’t have to “do” anything to earn God’s favor—but He does have plans for you, a will for your life. It’s His desire that you live in a way that glorifies Him and brings honor to His name.
Take a look at Romans 12:1-2 where Paul says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. Do not conform 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.
So what is God’s desire for your life?
The answer seems straightforward, to engage in true worship. But what constitutes “true worship”? Offering all that you are and living sacrificially for Him.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought it was unreasonable of God to ask you to yield your life in its entirety to Him and to live sacrificially. But in reality, He’s asking to be given the right to possess what’s already His—you come from Him, you live through Him, and you ultimately return to Him. You are His. And that’s incredibly good news—because in Him is Life!
We have the human tendency to be primarily interested in what pleases us. But then we begin to understand what God in His grace has done for us—and that He now lives in us to empower us to pursue what pleases Him!
He empowers us to yield to our own pursuits because what starts to matter more is what He desires. Some days are good, and some are bad. Some are glorious, and some are testing. Some are pleasant, and some are decidedly unpleasant. But what we discover in all of it is an inner sense that God is good, and His will is good, and He’s working through us to do His will.
When we live yielded, non-conformed, and transformed, God finds it relatively easy to move us into places of His choosing, and that’s where we want to be.
So, the next time you’re asking, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” Remember what Romans tells us. God wants you to live a life of true worship. To evaluate all that makes you you, and hand it over to Him to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You step back, He takes over, and He works in you to live a sacrificial lifestyle that brings Him glory. That’s His will for the life of every believer.
And that’s His will for you!
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