TO WILL HIS WILL

J. Grant Swank, Jr.


There are those who are forever seeking to decipher the divine plan. What is God doing with my life? How does this situation fit into the plan? What should I do about that? Why did this drop into my day?


And so the questions continue for a lifetime. What fury.


It is not trying to figure out what God is doing with our days that should consume us at all. That is not our turf.


When one reads the personages of Scripture, one realizes that over and over God does this and that with a dedication which, at any one point in time, would have not been clear to that disciple.


Take John the Baptist, for instance. He was the warrior for evangelism. He was even biologically related to the Messiah. He had grown up with Him.


Yet when John was sitting in the dank prison cell with rats about his feet, he told his followers to inquire of Jesus as to Who exactly He was. In other words, John was trying to figure out the identity of his kinsman as well as the plan of deity for His life's work.


How close that sword blade came to John's psyche until one day it sliced off his head. Now how was such apprehension and final tragedy plugged into the "grand will of God"?


So it may be in your life. You wonder why you are in such straits. You have done your best. You have yielded your life for The Work. There are others who seem "to get ahead" while you languish in the dust--lost, tired, unrecognized.


Of course it is only in your private thoughts that you permit your confusion. Public anguish would be out of image for the happy-go-lucky evangelical of today. However, there is such pain at times in wondering
what is happening with your life.


The short of it is this: What is God doing with these weary days of mine? Why am I sitting in this jailhouse? Where did the rats come from? Is this the Super Plan promised. In other words, Who are you Jesus--the One you said you are or do we seek another?
Stop. Wrong track. Get off it.


The right track is this: realize that since you are serf and He is King, you have no right to know anything about an overall plan. That is the trouble with westernized thinking. Each thinks he is the Chief Executive Officer. No, not when it comes to the eternal Kingdom of the Almighty God.


God is God. We are love slaves. He is in charge--totally so. We take orders; He gives them. We bow down; He commands. He knows what He is doing for the "over-all"; we simply comply with the next directive.


Now when you size up life in those terms, you are starting to get back on track.


Consequently, that also brings you back to square-one regarding time. It is not your prerogative to spy into the future regarding anything, especially your personal grand scheme of things. The tomorrows are the property of God alone. That is why you cannot get into them. He alone can get into them.


As far as the past is concerned, you cannot get into it either. As soon as last minute's time frame vaporized before you, it left you for good. You will never return to a minute ago. It likewise belongs to God alone. Make certain then that it is under the blood of Jesus Christ.


So where does that leave you? Right now with this fleck of time. That's all you have. And even that, you do not have in the sense of ownership. It is on loan to you.


Why then are you fretting about your place in the sun? Being a success? Catching up with the others? Making it? Discovering God's secret scope for your existence?


Cease from such nonsense. It only yields more of the round-and-round of worry, self-introspection for self's sake and eventual exhaustion of soul.


Say to yourself: I do not own me. God owns me. His blood bought me. I am not in charge of anything except my consecration. Therefore, if my all is surrendered to the One in Charge, then that is all that is necessary. This fleck of time will fold into the next one and all of them strung together will eventually yield a plan. All will add up to "the will of God" for my life.


The bottom line then is this: you do not psyche out His will. When you surrender moment-by-moment to Him, YOU BECOME HIS WILL.


Imagine that! What a thrill that is! That is the concept you want to
implant in your head from here on out. When you surrender moment-by-moment to Him, YOU BECOME HIS WILL.


Your searching days are over. No more straining to figure out the divine hand. No more deciphering your biographical spectrum.


The journey ends and starts with total surrender to the Master--one moment at a time. This is His will. You become His will.


In that, you have come home. In that, you have peace. In that, you have joy: TO BE HIS WILL.