Most of us have probably heard the poem by Myra Brooks Welch called "The Touch of the Master's Hand." It's a poem about an old, battered and scratched violin being sold at an auction. No one was willing to bid on the violin until a gray-haired man came up out of the crowd, dusted off the bow, tightened the loose strings, and then played a "melody pure and sweet, as a caroling angel sings."
After hearing the beautiful song played on the violin, the bidding started off at one thousand, then went to two, and finally to three thousand dollars. And while the crowd cheered that the violin was sold for so much, some asked, "What changed its worth?" The reply was, "The touch of the Master's hand."
We often look at our own lives the way the crowd initially saw the old violin. We are well aware of our faults, shortcomings, and the general mess we have made of our lives. And we wonder if we will ever be able to have the kind of life that we've imagined for ourselves. And when it comes to having that life, just like for the violin, we all need a touch of the Master's hand.
When Jesus was baptized by John in Matthew 3:15-17, the Bible tells us that when He came up out of the water, John the Baptist saw the Spirit descend on Jesus in the form of a dove, and a voice spoke from heaven, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
There are a lot of people talking about something called the Law of Attraction. It's become popular because of the movie called "The Secret." The people who were in the movie have been on Larry King live, and even on the Ellen DeGeneres show. And as much as I think that there is some value in the teaching about this law, it tends to miss some very important truths.
According to the Law of Attraction the universe has been created for our pleasure. We are to spend our lives asking and expecting the universe to do our bidding and give us all that we want. What is missing in the teaching is the truth that God, not the universe, created us all and that He created us for one reason, to bring Him pleasure.
But before we begin to think that this means we are supposed to spend our lives in servitude to God, we should realize that God is pleased with our lives when we have faith in Him. He is most pleased when we believe in, and trust Him, and when we look to Him to do great things in our lives. God is pleased when we experience the joy of receiving all the blessings that He has for us.
We have all had fathers in our lives that were varying degrees of good to bad. But if we think about the perfect father, one who loves his children, it's easy to imagine that this father would want to see his children happy. How could any father feel good if his children are miserable?
Does that mean that a good father has to give his children everything they want? After all, we can be like three-year olds going through a toy store and "wanting" all the pretty packages, and anything that catches our attention. So, no, it doesn't mean that the father bows to every whim and fleeting desire that his children have. He is a good father because he takes the time to understand what the child really needs and wants, and then he makes sure to give it to him or her.
God knows us better than we know ourselves. He created us and placed desires in our hearts the moment we were created. Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." God made us and sent His son to die for us so that we could be set free from our sin and do the works that He prepared for us. Our entire lives have been influenced by God working in us and preparing us for the works that He wants us to do.
There are times when we assume that God's will for our lives must be something awful. We look at it like medicine and believe that, if it's good for us, it will have to taste really bad. So we end up reluctant to think about what God wants for us.
But that is a completely wrong picture of God. God is the perfect, loving father who wants what is best for His children. He knows what is in our hearts; the deepest desires that we have, because He is the one who put them there. His greatest joy is to see us fulfill those desires.
Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart." God's purpose for us is to follow the desires that He put in our hearts. When we do that, we will please God and find a sense of joy and fulfillment that most people never experience. Too many people are trying to make other people happy with their lives. They try to please their parents or friends; they waste their lives trying to make everyone happy but themselves and God. It's no wonder that they end up unhappy and frustrated.
God's Will
When we think about God's will, it's natural that we should look to the Bible to tell us what it is. What is it that God wants? Why did He create us?
The tenth chapter of Hebrews talks about Jesus coming to fulfill God's will. That will was for Him to die on the cross and shed His blood so that we could be forgiven. Ever since man sinned in the Garden of Eden, God's will has been to redeem us from our sin. He wants us to be His children so that we can please Him and glorify Him.
When we look at all the other religions in the world, they all have one thing in common. In one form or another, they all teach that people have to do works, and that we have to work hard to earn favor with god, or spirit, or whatever. Christianity is the only one that I know of that teaches that man is hopelessly lost, and that our works will never be able to gain us favor with God or buy us a place in heaven.
But God wants us to be with Him forever, and Jesus even defined eternal life as knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He sent (John 17:3). And God has works that He has prepared for us, not works that earn His favor, but works that are the result of His grace working in our lives. But before we can come to know Him, and before we would be able to do the works, He had to solve the problem of our sin. And He did it the best way possible; He made it a free gift. We receive forgiveness and salvation simply by believing in and accepting what Christ has done for us.
Once we have done that, God's will is that we should remain in Christ, and allow His word to be in our lives every day. And as we do that, we will naturally do the things that please Him. The really great part is that He asks us to do things that bring us joy. God did all the work for our salvation, now He works in us to accomplish His will on earth, and we get to enjoy doing great things that fulfill the desires of our hearts.
John 15 tells us that God is the vine and we are the branches. The branches cannot bear fruit by themselves; they have to remain in the vine. But something we often forget is that the vine cannot bear fruit without the branches. In order for God to accomplish His will, to bring greater blessings into the world, He has to work through us. And that happens as we ask Him for the things we want, as we ask Him to give us the true desires of our hearts.
In Psalm 67 the psalmist writes and asks God for His blessings. The reason is so that His ways and salvation will be proclaimed throughout the whole world. God's will is to bless us so that everyone will know that He is the perfect Father. He is a Father who loves His children and wants what is best for them. In other words, a Father who enjoys fulfilling our deepest desires.
Perfecting Our Faith
All of us have beliefs that keep us from going to God and receiving the blessings that He has for us. Essentially those beliefs are based on things that we have learned in our lives, and they create doubt in our minds when it comes to God and His promises.
When we look at Hebrews 11:6, we see that God wants us to believe that He exists, and to believe that He rewards us when we diligently seek Him. The rewards that He gives us are what John 15 refers to as fruit in our lives.
God is glorified when we bear a lot of fruit. In other words, when we receive what we want from Him, He is the one that gets all the praise and honor. But the only way we will be able to bear fruit is if He can prune us and take away everything in our lives that isn't bearing any fruit. What He has to do is remove the beliefs that we have that keep us from going to Him with our desires.
So part of God's purpose for us is to perfect our faith. He wants to remove all the doubts and fears that we have so that we will bring Him pleasure by believing in Him. And when He has finished, and our faith is complete, then He will do great works through our lives.
God has never stopped creating. He wants to continually create more and more abundance in this world through us. And that will only happen when we have complete trust and faith in Him for everything in our lives. When we ask Him for the things that are in our hearts, and fully expect Him to give us those things, to grant us the desires of our hearts, then He can bear much fruit through our lives. The blessings of God will flow into and through our lives and enrich the world.
How does God perfect our faith? He does it by allowing trials and tribulations to come into our lives. He does it by searching our hearts and then testing us so that we can see the doubts that are there (Psalm 139:23-24). James 1:2-4 tells us that we must make the decision to consider the trials that we go through as good things. We need to make up our minds in advance that we will rejoice when God tests our faith, because we understand that He is perfecting it. The ultimate goal will be that we will never lack anything we want, and God will be very pleased with our lives.
God and Suffering
Some people may have the belief that God wants our lives to be full of suffering. I even heard a Sunday school teacher tell his class that God brings suffering into our lives so that we will look forward to heaven. I'm sorry, but how does God making my life miserable while I'm on earth help me look forward to spending an eternity with Him?
But suffering is a part of life. One of the consequences of Adam's sin was that man, and all of creation, fell under a curse. Romans 8 tells us that creation is groaning, waiting for the day when God's children will be revealed, because when that happens creation itself will also be redeemed from corruption. But until that time, there will be pain and suffering.
The Bible promises us that God will wipe away all the tears when we get to heaven, and that implies that until then, we will cry. There will be times when we suffer because we are doing the right thing, and in those times Peter tells us, "For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God." (1 Peter 2:20)
Now before we begin to think that God wants us to be patient and just suffer through life, let's put what Peter says in context. He is talking about people who persecute us when we follow Christ. He isn't talking about suffering through illness, bad relationships, or financial lack. He's talking about persecution.
But what are we supposed to think about those things? What should we do when we find ourselves in circumstances that are not what we want? Should we just grin and bear it?
Romans 8:37 says, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." In all of those things, the sufferings that come about because we live in a corrupt and sinful world, we are to conquer through our faith in Christ. Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
John 10:10 tells us that Christ came so that we would have life and abundance. And we read that everyone who came to Jesus was healed. But we have also seen times of sickness and lack in our own lives. So how do we balance our experience with what we see in the Bible?
The simple truth is that we should never rewrite the Bible to fit our experience. Instead, we should look to the Bible to know what God's heart is, and when our experience falls short of that, we then rely on His grace and mercy to help us through so that we can grow in our faith. We always remember that God's will is for us to experience an abundant and healthy life, and when things aren't going that way, we remember that it is His grace that helps us through every situation we might face.
The problem comes when we make the assumption that everyone will get healed and be rich. In other words, we make the mistake of believing that everyone should live a prosperous life that agrees with our definition prosperity. Or we make the opposite mistake of believing that everyone else might experience abundance, but that it isn't for us.
The more realistic view is that God always wants us to trust Him no matter what is happening, and that His power is greater than any circumstance or problem in our lives. In order for us to experience His blessings, we will need to have faith. And there are times when the very difficulty we are dealing with is being used by God to perfect our faith. And when that happens, we need to continue trusting Him for the answers to our prayers, and remain fully convinced of his love for us.
God's Purpose
God wants us to succeed. Some people will struggle with that idea because they have the wrong idea of success. In their minds, really in their beliefs, successful people have compromised their integrity, or sacrificed family, friends, and values in order to make a lot of money.
But in God's eyes success is when we grow into sons and daughters who are the spitting image of His first-born son Jesus. So for Him, success means that we lay aside all the things that would hold us in this world, the earthly lusts, and live a life of faith and prosperity. It's the kind of prosperity that comes from receiving and sharing God's blessings with the world.
We are most successful in life when we are in touch with the desires that God has placed in our hearts. As we yield to the passions that He gave us, and fully use the gifts and skills that we have, then we will find His will for our lives. Romans 12:1-3 tells us that it is by becoming a living sacrifice, completely giving ourselves to fulfilling His purpose for us, that we come to find God's will.
And while many people are waiting for God to speak to them out of heaven and tell them what they are to do with their lives, He is waiting for us to get busy doing what is in our hearts. God's will is not some secret that we have to worry about discovering. Instead it's using what He has given us in the circumstances and opportunities that we face every day. As we follow our hearts, He molds our desires into passion and motivation that become the driving force in our lives. We become unstoppable in our pursuit of His glory, and He is able to bless the world through us.
God's purpose has always been to have a people who are zealous of good works. A people who have the faith to receive all the grace we need in every area of our lives, and even more then we physically need, so that we will have an abundance for every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8).
As we trust God, and He works through our lives, our faith will bring joy to His heart. And in the process, He will give us the desires of our hearts so that our joy will be full.
========================
If this article has blessed you, please take a moment to donate to this site.
Get two chapters from my book, Taking On Goliath for free when you sign up for my free newsletter. Click here to sign up today.
Recent Comments