One of the questions Christians keep asking the Lord is, “What is your heart, Lord?” The problem is that we think that we have the option to decide whether we will go His way not. It is for that very reason that God is not in any way obligated to share His secrets with us if we are not 100 percent fully committed to obeying the direction He gives us. David tells us just who it is that God shares His secrets with:
Ps 25:12 Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses.
Those who are in “fear” of the Lord are the ones with whom He shares His heart; in the Hebrew “yare” – fearfully reverent. They are the ones who are determined to obey His secrets. But sometimes Christians say that they are not being directed by the Lord, that they don’t know what His will is for them. Sometimes we need to ask them the pointed question… “Have you obeyed the last thing He told you to do?”
It’s like a picture the Lord showed me about my life some time ago. He called it the cul-de-sac of life. He told me there is something He wants me to deal with and sends me off to deal with it. When I fail to do that and come back out of the cul-de-sac without being obedient, He is there to stop me from moving ahead and sends me back in again. And it happens over and over until I address what He has set before me. I keep coming out unchanged and there He stands, directing me right back to the same issue. It’s sort of like our email inbox. He will not allow our Spiritual Inbox to pile up. He only gives us one assignment at a time. And when we complete that assignment He gives us another. In other words, we don’t get any further instruction until we have completed the last.
We have no business asking what God’s will is for us because if we are honest, we already know. Paul essentially told us that in his letter to the Colossians:
Col 1:27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Paul is talking about the mystery of the new covenant, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Jesus lives inside every believer by His Spirit. And He is the One who will direct us as He writes God’s secrets upon our hearts; the things we need to be doing. One secret at a time, one email at a time. Answer it and we’ll get another, ignore it and it just sits in our inbox. The difference, however, is that we “cannot” delete it.
If you want to know what God’s will for you is, you have to be prepared to be obedient to what He tells you… perhaps the last half of verse 12 from David could be translated… Lord, you are my God, you are my King and what You tell me to do I will do by Your grace and with Your help. I am determined to do what You tell me because I want to know Your will for my life.
I promise you He will answer… Christ in you, the hope of glory!