“The Will of God”
by
Leona Evans
What is God’s will for us? Too many of us live our lives with a recurring sense of uneasiness because we can’t be sure we are fulfilling God’s plan for us. What is our destiny? How can we be certain we are in alignment with what God wants us to do?
Traditional Christian theology asserts that God is a person with a plan for each of us. Part of that plan is to be baptized and saved. After that we are instructed to pray for guidance before making decisions and follow that guidance to the best of our ability. Of course, the problem is that sometimes our actions result in painful or negative outcomes, and we begin to doubt our ability to interpret our guidance. We are left with a sense of confusion and uncertainty. “What does God want? How do I know that I have God’s approval? If only I could be certain of God’s will I would be at peace.”
Our Unity/New Thought philosophy presents us with a different perspective on the nature of God’s will, which enables us to broaden our perspective of the nature of God and experience a deeper level of comfort and inner peace. First, we assert that God is not a person, but the Universal, Omnipresent Source of all life. Each of us is a thought or idea in God Mind, unique, whole and complete. Through the process of introspection we learn to understand what our spiritual gifts are and how to use them wisely and well. In other words, as the acorn has the blueprint of the oak tree within it, so each of us has our own divine design which is ours to discover and nurture. It stands to reason, then, that God’s will is for each of us to be exactly who we were created to be, and to express our divine potential in creative, powerful, and loving ways.
This is why self-knowledge is such important an important part of our spiritual journey. The more deeply we know who we are, beyond our self-doubts and insecurities, the better able we are to align ourselves with activities and behaviors that reflect the deepest desires of our heart. We also come to realize that we are capable of expressing our spiritual gifts in a variety of ways. This means that God’s will for us goes beyond whether or not we pursue specific goals. God’s will is for each of us to find creative fulfillment, and to have the freedom to express ourselves in many and varied ways. In other words, God is not “disappointed” if we do not become an engineer or an opera singer. Spirit doesn’t provide a map to get us from one location to another. Spirit provides us with talents, abilities, and endless opportunities to choose how we will express ourselves at any given time.
We need to realize that our will is not separate from God’s will. Our will is an individualized expression of God’s will. While it is personalized for each of us, it is not so specific that we need to suffer anxiety about making “wrong” decisions. In other words, if we are taking a trip to New York from Los Angeles, we will arrive there whether we go East or West. One way is much longer, and is likely to contain more challenges along the way, which can result in valuable opportunities for growth and learning. On the other hand, we can go the shorter way which will be more expedient and hassle-free. However, we will not have as many opportunities to have new experiences or discover our inner resilience and flexibility. The truth is, we can learn just as much or more from hard times as we do from pleasant ones. What is important to remember is this: Divine Guidance can be experienced in many ways, and no matter where our guidance leads us at any given time, the Unconditional Love of Spirit is continually with us and within us. We are always the beloved of God.
