Text: John 7: 10-24
Focus: John 7:17
Sometimes we are faced with choices we simply don’t know the answer to. Should I continue with a business transaction or not? Should I take a new job, or will it cause me a lot of pain?
How do we know what the right choice is?
The content and structure of this passage remind us of 6:28 where the people ask Jesus, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” The answer Jesus gives there is, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Here in verse 17 Jesus says that you must be willing to do the will of God. Once your relationship with God consists of spontaneous childlike faith, there will be a spontaneous willingness to seek and do His will.
Paul writes: “… offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper 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.” (Rom. 12: 1-2).
The reason we often make wrong decisions is because we do not prayerfully seek and ask for the Lord’s will. Or we ask, but then follow our sinful desires instead of seeking God’s will. We put our own will above God’s.
So, to know what God’s will is, we need to do the following:
We must know God
Jesus says in verse 16 that what He teaches people does not come from Himself, but from God. I know the Father and there is a close bond between them.
It’s like two people who know each other well. It often happens in such a relationship that they know exactly what the other wants even before they have spoken to each other.
Our relationship with the Father should be like this. We must know Him!
We need to know that God’s will is best
We will only commit ourselves to doing God’s will if we see that His will is best for us. God’s will for our lives is always better than our own will and Jesus is an example of this. Humanly speaking, it does not seem to us that his death can bring any good. Yet the Father uses Jesus’ death to save us. How much more will He not use the bad things in our lives for good?
He alone is worthy to be honoured.
Jesus did not seek his own glory, but the glory of his Father. It is through His obedience that we are saved. Therefore, He is worthy to receive all the glory. Every knee must bow and acknowledge that He is Christ in the glory of the Father.
He is worthy, because He died for our sins and through this, He also comes to restore our honour. We become children of God.
Prayerfully seek the will of God in your life.
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