“Behold, they do not desire that the Lord their God who hath created them should rule and reign over them; notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them, they do set at naught his counsels, and they will not that he should be their guide.“
Among those who claim to believe in God, there are very few who truly take his counsel seriously and receive him to be their guide. For the most part, we have our own goals that we set out for ourselves and hope that God will help us to accomplish our goals. We want something, or to have some status or standing among our fellow man, even when that standing appears to be a good thing, and then hope that God will help us obtain our desire. We may even think that since it is a good thing that we want, that it should fall within the realm of things that God would want for us and should help us to obtain.
But it may not be so. Our vision for ourselves and what we would like to become, may be quite different from the vision that God has for us. Yet we don’t really understand or obtain God’s vision for us, so we go on our own judgment, however well intended that may be, and hope that God will support us and help us to get where we think we want to be. But that may not be the vision that God would have in mind for us at all. It may not be by a long shot.
Rather than obtain and understand his vision for us, we instead, go off our own and ask him to help us obtain the vision we have for ourselves. Then we would like God to be a helpful servant for us, who will make things happen that will bring about the goals we’ve set for ourselves. Rarely to we question whether the goals that we seek or the things we pursue, are truly what God’s goals are for us. Rather than let God be our guide, we want God to be our chauffeur, as we tell him where we want to go and expect him to take us there.
At a minimum, it would be wise to keep in mind the example of Jesus in saying, “nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done”.
Looking closely at the ministry of Jesus, it’s interesting to see how much he refers to himself as seeking to do the will of his Father. As Jesus said, “the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do; for whatever things he does, the Son likewise does these also, for the Father loves the Son and shows him all things that he himself does.”
The more that one studies God’s interactions with mankind and the life of Jesus, the more clear it can become in seeing what it is that Jesus is and has been doing. As you do the things God would have you do, it is easier to see what was actually going on at different points in history and at various points in Jesus’ own life and ministry. The details become more clear as you live and experience the same thing in your own life. You begin to see the things that Jesus does in a new light, and with new appreciation as the same kinds of things unfold before you and happen in real-time as you experience them. Just as Jesus could do nothing of himself without seeing the Father’s life unfolding before him, you can begin to see various parts of the life of Jesus unfolding before you.
There are those in scripture who were a “type” or “shadow” of Christ. Looking back, one such figure is Joseph who was sold into Egypt by his brothers. At the time Joseph was sold into Egypt, he didn’t see how that was going to turn out. It was probably hard to liken himself to living a life that would be similar to the life and mission of Jesus. He could hardly see how he would one day be a “savior” among his people, and even of his own brothers who sold him into slavery. But he submitted, as a child to what God saw fit to inflict upon him. His life did not go the way he wanted it to. It was not what he had in mind or would have chosen for himself. He didn’t want to be a slave. He did not want to be in bonds. When that became his life, he had no idea how he would ever escape that. But it turned out, that he came to know and understand God by accepting the life he was given, rather than the one he would have chosen for himself.
On the one hand, you can have your own goals and ambitions of things you’d like to achieve and even believe them to be righteous desires. On the other, you can try to humbly submit to whatever God sees fit to inflict upon you, even as Jesus submitted to his Father.
If my or your life could be fulfilled by having our own goals and allow God to help us achieve them, or by receiving the kind of life that God would want us to have, which would we really take? How few are there who truly desire that the God who made them should rule and reign over them?