Thursday, December 15, 2011

Love and Cooperation, God's Will and God's Best

The Christian life is one of cooperation. God does not use you. You are not a tool. You are His friend not His slave. You are not to be passive but empowered. God will say to you "Will you do this with me?" if you say "No" God will not force you to do it, He will not hold it against you, He will not love you any less, He will not curse you, you will not lose favor with Him. You will however have to live with the natural consequences of not cooperating with your all wise, all loving, all knowing Father.

God knows what is best for you. Amazingly what is best for you is best for everyone, God, yourself, and others. This is possible because God is love and all about love. God's best for you does not mean second best for others. His best always involves people recognizing His love and His love being shown through His people cooperating with Him.

By "God's best" I do not mean "God's perfect will" as it is so often taught. The teaching I am talking about says "God has a plan A and if you miss His plan A then you go to plan B" and so on. That false notion of God's will says that His purpose means more to Him than His people. God's purpose is His people! God does not curse you for your disobedience or lack of cooperation by putting you on plan B. This idea of God's will says that God condemns you forever for your mistakes, not true! If Jesus can redeem you from your sinful state then He has no problem redeeming your mistakes and failures.

God's best (His will) has you experiencing and seeing His love no matter where you are. His best empowers your successes, redeems your failures, and has His love pouring out of you for others. You, God's dearly loved child, get to work with your amazingly loving and affectionate Father. When you understand that serving Him equals working with Him as Jesus did you will not experience the burden of obeying like a servant but the joy of willingly working with a friend.

Jesus said, "I only do what I see my Father doing. Whatever my Father does, I do also. My Father loves me and shows me all he does. I never act alone, I always act with my Father." (John 5:19-20)

See this post for a closer look at John 5.

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