God's Will....to be accepting is to be knowing.

"God's will is exactly what I would choose, if I knew what God knows" (unknown).

It is good to realise that God is always at work in situations in our lives if we trust in Him!
I have been pondering and perhaps even struggling a lot recently in my mind and heart regarding God showing us His plan and revealing His will for our lives as believers.... and so, as I quite often do, I looked up the 'Revive Our Hearts' website and happened upon this Biblical advice. Just when I needed it!

Well, what happens when we seek His will time and time again, and perhaps years later there are still no answers?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss gives this reply:-

When we come into these circumstances, we can lift our eyes up and say, "God, I don't see. I don't understand. I can't comprehend how this could possibly turn out for good, how this could bring You glory.

"But I trust that You know and that You are at work in this child's life, in this husband's life or this parent's life or this situation. You are fulfilling eternal purposes. I surrender myself with thanksgiving to those purposes.

By the way, faith and praise go hand-in-hand. The ability to praise is based on trust that God knows what He is doing.

John Wesley said that our task is to give the world the right impression of God.

The way that we respond to our circumstances, whether it is cancer, car wrecks or wayward children or as Elisabeth Elliot has said: "Suffering can be anything from traffic jams to taxes to tumors and everything in-between."

The way that we respond in those circumstances is always giving those around us an opinion of God. We can give the world a right opinion of God if we will receive those circumstances and give thanks.

That's why we are reading Psalm 50:23 where it says that the one who offers thanksgiving as a sacrifice glorifies God. We give thanks in circumstances where the world can't imagine giving thanks.

What do we do? We give the world a right opinion of God. We glorify Him. Ultimately, that is what it is all about. That's why we live. That's why we exist. We were created to bring Him glory. That's how we do it.

We would all say, "I want my life to bring glory to God." But that's how we do it. It's in the nitty-gritty everyday life. It's major and minor trauma and upsets in every circumstance and situation.

The way that we're responding is either bringing glory to God or it's giving the impression that God is not a good God. He has fallen down on His job. He's not come through.

We don't want to give the world a bad opinion of God. That's why we need to praise, to be thankful people and to smile. (Even when it's the last thing we feel like doing.)

I think that if anyone knows how to smile, it ought to be Christians even in circumstances of life where it's a challenge to smile, to reflect a heart (and I'm not talking about being giddy, always laughing and always being light-hearted). (Although I believe it's beneficial to pour our hearts out to God, and even to seek His face in a passionate plea for answers and help.)

There are circumstances and seasons of life that some of you are walking through right now where there is no way that you could be light-hearted and you shouldn't be. But there can still be joy. There can always, always, always be praise. Always!

Thank You, Lord, for the opportunities that You give us to trust You, to wait on You, to look to You, to give the world a right opinion of You.

Help us to do that today in the circumstances that we know about and in the circumstances that are going to happen that we don't yet know about.

May it become our instinctive super-natural reaction, by Your grace, to give thanks in everything that You may be glorified. "


Oh, I can see this is going to be hard,... hard and perhaps, if I tried to do it on my own, impossible! But I can see that I must if I am to be accepting, walking in truth and always trusting that His ways are perfectly patterned out!


How can we glorify Him and be a shining light in this dark place? Give thanks in everything, leaning upon His guidance, accepting His ways are not our ways, even when the circumstances seem beyond our comprehension. May we always look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.