Have you ever sat with someone as they cried out in frustration… “What does God want?” If you are like me, you can hear those words echoed as they came out of your mouth. Questions, frustration, anger… they all seem to be part of that equation. There are times when we feel like we have done everything we can and yet that question hangs in the air… “What do you want me to do?”
Perhaps it goes back to something that we learned in days gone by that we allow the enemy to cloud over. Listen to Paul:
Rom 4:1-2 What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 2 For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. KJV
Did Abraham receive any benefit whatsoever from anything that found its source in himself or in anything that he did? Ok, so it’s not about works. We get it that it’s all about faith. But what am I supposed to do?
Abraham is the lesson that the one thing we can never attain we can still obtain. That which it is impossible for us to earn we can receive. God counted righteousness to Abraham with the very answer to our question. It’s not about what we are to do, it’s about what we are to believe. It was simply Abraham’s faith that allowed him to obtain God’s righteousness. And that’s where we get all tied up in knots. What does God want from us? It’s the same thing He wants in every facet of our Christian life.
God just wants us to “believe Him.”
Our heavenly Father longs for us to simply take Him at His Word and believe what He says. Since it is totally impossible for us to provide our own righteousness, which is what He wants (demands), the only way for us to obtain it is to allow Him to give it to us. Nothing else matters… not one wit of what we do! We need to believe His Word and utterly cast ourselves on His promise. When we do, He will begin doing all His work in us to bring us along day-by-day. Letting us experience what it is to be conformed into the image of His Son; conformed into Jesus’ character.
What does God want? Exactly what He wanted in the moment before we gave our life to Him. He wants us to believe in Him every minute of every day. And you know what that is?
It’s the Rest of Christ. We all need to Wake Up and Rest from time-to-time!