When God created man He gave us freewill. Consequently, we can choose to do whatever we want to do. God will not stop us (That includes our choosing eternal life through Jesus, or death, but that’s another post). Throughout scripture there are examples of people doing it their way with disastrous results. That’s why we want God to “co sign” what it is we want to do. That's the real reason we want God to say “My will is whatever you want to do”. That’s backwards….we need our will to match His will.
God won’t stop you from doing things your way, but you may not like the outcome.
How do You Know If I’m Acting In My Will Or God’s Will?
When trying to figure out if we are operating in God’s will or trying to make things happen ourselves and trying to get God to go along with them, ask Him these two questions.
1. God, am I trying to do my will or Your will?
2. God, am I trying to do things under my own power or Your power?
There are four possible responses for these questions;
1. My will and My own power- Results;: alienation, loneliness, butting your head into wall after wall,
2. My will under God's power - Results: frustration, superstition, anxiety— God won't be manipulated this way! A lot of Christians think “if I just have enough faith” God will do whatever I ask.
3. God's will but under my power - Results: burnout, putting God or others on my timeline, overplaying my role, messiah-complex ( messiah complex is a state of mind in which an individual holds a belief that he or she is, or is destined to become the one who saves the day….sort of like the Mighty Mouse song “here I come to save the day”) being judgmental toward others.
4. God's will under God's power - Results: peace, sense of safety, perspective, poise, energy at the perfect time, just when you need it.
What Happens If You Make The Decision To Act Outside God’s Will?
The first thing to remember is that you’re not powerful enough to really mess up God’s will for you.
Making a poor decision doesn't mean we're forever out of God's will. There are many examples, in scripture, of people who made bad decisions, but God still used them mightily. Just look at Abraham and David.
Abraham (Abram at the time) went to Egypt when there was a famine in the land God told him to leave his family and go. While there he lied to save his own skin while putting his wife, Sarah (Sarai at the time) in a compromising situation (Genesis 12:10-20).
Later he and his wife decided to help God out in giving them a son by Abram sleeping with Sarai’s slave, Hagar, instead of waiting for His will to be done (Genesis 14:2-4, Genesis 16). Both bad decisions with bad results.
We all know about David’s affair with Bathsheba and the problems that resulted from it (2 Samuel 11-12:23). The result of this decision by David was the murder of Bathsheba’s husband and the death of David and Bathsheba's child.
He made another bad decision when he depended on his military might rather than God and that decision cost the lives of seventy thousand people (2 Samuel 24).
Both of these men did things clearly outside the will of God, but God worked through them to accomplish great things.
God can use all of our decisions, whether they're right, wrong, in our will or His will. However there are consequences for all of our actions and those include the times that we operate in our own will and outside the will of God. The great thing is that the story doesn’t end with the consequences. The consequences may still be there but the story doesn’t end.
Romans 8:26-28 MSG Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. (emphasis mine)
1.God can see things you can’t. He can see the past and the present and the future all at the same time. He created time, so he is not subject to time.
2 God is good to you even when you’re cranky. You may have been going the opposite direction from God, and he still covers you with shade. God cares about your comfort because that’s the kind of God he is. He loves you even when you’re unlovable.
Isaiah 55:8-11 MSG “I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.” God ’s Decree. “For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, Doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, So will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.
3. God is in control of every detail of your life. Your plans don’t fail randomly. God has a purpose in everything in your life. Jonah shows us that God uses both the big (a large fish) and the small (a worm) to direct our lives, but he is in control of it all.
4. God wants you to focus on what will last. Most of what worries you won’t be around tomorrow. God wanted Jonah to care about the salvation of the people of Nineveh, not a plant that would die the next day. Above all else, focus on getting God’s Word into your heart and bringing people into his family.
Just because your plans aren’t turning out the way you want doesn’t mean God isn’t intimately involved in every step. Ask God to help you see his hand in your broken plans, and trust him in his goodness as he shows you the way forward.