Thursday, February 01, 2007

You Are Internally Wired In Your Genes With the "Will of God"

"…Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…"

Ask most any Christian what he wants to do with his life and the most likely response is that he wants the will of God to be done. Whatever God wants is the Christian desire.

I spent many years of my Christian life searching and waiting for a "will of God" that was outside of me. My eyes were always on the future, waiting for a mysterious will to happen. BUT, AS CHRISTIANS, THE WILL OF GOD IS BUILT-IN RIGHT WITHIN US! When you think it through, you realize that this concept fits the Scripture a lot better than what many believe. Let me explain further what I mean.

God has made us marvelous individuals:
"You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit them together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous – and how well I know it. You were there while I was being formed in utter seclusion! You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book!"
(Psalm 139:13-16 Living Bible)

When it speaks of us being knitted together before our bodies were formed and all our days being written in His Book, I believe it is making reference to our genes, the basic personality that we were wired with by God through our parents.

Think of it! God made you who you are in your likes and dislikes, your talents and inner desires. The fact that you enjoy fishing or get excited at the prospect of building your own house, and the fact that I enjoy sports and have a desire to create with words, were all there before we were born.

Then sin came along and so distorted man that frequently the desires are warped and the person turned inward as a self-willing self.

But in the salvation that is in Christ, not only does His blood cleanse from sin, but by His Spirit He comes to live within us. He lives within YOU – your personality, your natural talents and all that you enjoy. He doesn't come in to make us into someone we don't enjoy being! He unites Himself with the personality you have basically been wired with and expresses Himself through our desires.

Every Christian is a unique expression of Christ; the uniqueness of Christ expressed through the uniqueness of me.

I know this sound almost too good to be true. Most of us think of God's will as that which is going to block our desires, not fulfill them. But remember that if you: "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the DESIRES OF YOUR HEART" (Psalm 37:4).

So often, you will hear Christians speak of their childhood dreams and ambitions in negative terms, as something to be given up and rejected. Those dreams were an expression of the you He made. They were not to be rejected, but CLEANSED AND LIVED IN BY TRUSTING IN CHRIST. Through THEM Christ would live out His purpose.

Do you remember Philippians 2:12, "For it is God who works in you to will and to do of His good pleasure"? The only way I can make sense of that scripture is by understanding that my will and desire are one with His, and He now wills His will in my will.

But certainly, anything a person wants to do could not be God's will. But the fact is that God put the "wants" in us at our conception, and then cleansed and redeemed them in Christ. GOD HAS WRITTEN HIS WILL INTO OUR GENES FROM BIRTH AND MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO FULFILL THEIR HIGHEST POTENTIAL IN UNION WITH CHRIST.

Think of it this way. There are probably two motives among Christian missionaries in Africa. One group sees no sacrifice in leaving the U.S. to go into the jungle and build their homes – they were wired and cut out for that kind of life. When Christ came to live within them, He willed His will through their basic desires. These missionaries love every moment of what they are doing. The only sacrifice is when the mission board insists that they return to the U.S. for a speaking tour.

But other missionaries are wired differently. In spite of their built-in desires, they decide that, to please God, they will go to Africa. They complain of the heat and conditions and always look back to the job they left in the States. They are in Africa because they thought that was the most spiritual thing they could do FOR God.

It is interesting to read the book of Proverbs and compare the wise man and the fool (the term "fool" means lack of moral sense, not mental lack). The fool is always likened to the lazy man or sluggard. You will soon see that the world is full of lazy fools who never get to the purpose for which they were made and wired. Unfortunately, Many Christians use different terminology but have much the same attitude to life as the world.

We live in the age of the TV game shows where our children watch wealth and possessions fall into one's lap by chance. They walk out into life dreaming of the ultimate show host handing them a check containing all their wishes and dreams come true.

The age also contains "gambling fever" – wager your possessions to hit the big jackpot – ignore your God-wired desires for a genuine life and look for the fun and excitement of a dream life. This is a generation of dreamers whose life is a fantasy of tomorrow.

Many Christians are the same, because they wait for the elusive will of God to be made known. They constantly wait for "what God will do some day". This way of thinking produces crippled Christians. They have little because they never set out to really use the talents and desires God wired them with. And so, rather than using their abilities FOR others, they lean ON others as they dream of the day they will someday have.

"The sluggard is full of excuses: 'I can't go to work!' he says. 'If I go outside I might meet a lion in the street and be killed!'" (Prov. 22:13). This gives a vivid picture of a man in mental and spiritual inertia, paralyzed because he has no purpose and therefore no reason to be doing what he is doing.

Let me ask you – where are you going in life? If you don't know or aren't following your God-wired desires, you are drifting dangerously near the fool of Proverbs. You are wasting the unique life that God gave you in which to celebrate Himself. What have you always wanted to be and do?

What urges have risen within you SINCE your new birth? Think about it, and realize that within those dreams is God's purpose for your life. Don't be led astray by that prayer meeting you go to where they are praying to find God's will like a mysterious bolt out of the blue. That may actually be leading you away from the purpose of God that is already built in within you. Don't let a pseudo-super spirituality lead you from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Let me give you some practical instruction as to how you can exit the world of dreaming fools and become a wise man.

First, get some time alone, maybe a walk in the woods, a day on the beach, or whatever, away from all distraction. Listen to who Christ is in you. In doing this, it will be helpful, for that day at least, to forget the expression "the will of God". In fact, stop thinking about what God wants because that leaves you dreaming and waiting for a revelation. Remember, He is ONE with you; so you are listening to the desires He has placed in you from birth, now cleansed and made His own in new birth. Ask yourself, "What do I (in your genes) want to do? Where am I (in your genes) going in life?" After a while, the purpose wired within your genes will be sorted out from all the foggy wishes and dreams that clutter up your mind.

In doing this, do not be phony! Some Christians would come back from such a retreat saying that they want to enter some form of full time ministry. Do you really? Realize that all born-again Christians are priests (1 Peter 2), which means that whatever we do in life we are doing it unto God, a MINISTRY for His glory.

He expresses Himself through our basically wired desires, whether that is by a housewife and mother, businessman, accountant, dentist, sailor, farmer, fireman, secretary, professor or whatever. Whatever is your true heart's desire, God is saying that is THE particular world He wills to express Himself in, through you.

We are made in God's image. We see in Genesis and onward through the Bible that His wisdom called on His Almightiness to bring to pass what He had purposed. We function at a finite level in exactly the same way. You must know by how you are wired where you are going in life, then go and bring it to pass.

Formulate your purpose in life by opening yourself to the mind of Christ, by nakedly and honestly avoiding all religious terminology that keeps you from the truth of how you are wired. You now call upon who you are to implement that. Remember, Jesus Christ lives in you, strength of your weakness, and you are going to draw upon His ability to carry out your built-in desires.

God did not keep His purpose locked up inside Himself. As each step was to be accomplished, He announced it. God created the world and each day announced to Himself what was going to be that day. He then announced to Adam and Eve what He was going to do in terms of the salvation of man. He did this with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and each generation that followed. We call it prophecy. But it was really God announcing to Himself and those it involved the next step to be taken in bringing about His purpose.

Similarly with us. We set out to put the purpose into practice. We then ask ourselves what is to be done this year, this month, in order to bring our life's purpose to pass. Sit down every week and ask of yourself what must be done during this week, and finally bring it down to what must be accomplished this day.

In setting out our wired purpose clearly and going out to achieve it, our built-in desires are fanned into a furnace. The simple commitment of ourselves to do it will release untold energies in Christ that will bring it to pass. WE WILL NOW BE FLOWING IN HARMONY WITH OUR GENES IN UNION WITH LIFE HIMSELF. People will come into our lives to help us on our way. Opportunities will present themselves, resources will become available to us. Creative ideas arrive in our head out of nowhere that bring us continually closer to the fulfilling of the purpose.

In all our doing, we REST in the fact that God is at work in us and using us the way He made and wired us. And we are resting in the fact that He is our ability.

For the Christian FOLLOWING HIS GENES, every detail of life becomes exciting. An inner dynamic energy, not present in the dreamer, fills his mind and body.

Our English word "enthusiasm" is made up of two Greek words, en theos, which mean God in us. The wise man who follows his desire and God-given wired-in purpose lives his life with ENTHUSIASM – with trust in the power of God through Christ within.

Harness your genes to a purpose.
Grab on to your built-in desires.
Then trust in Christ within.
And you will celebrate life!


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