How to Find, Follow, and Fulfill God’s WillGod has a purpose for every single person, whether they realise it or not. Sad to say, most people don’t live with a sense of destiny. They’re doing their own thing and asking God to bless it, or they believe that God’s will for their lives will just come to pass because it’s fate and they don’t have to do anything. That is not correct, and I’ll explain why.
All my life, I’ve had zero doubt that God created me with a purpose. This is huge because many people think they just happened. They believe in the theory of evolution and that their existence has nothing to do with God. I tell you, it’s tragic for people to have that mindset.
I remember being a kid and looking up at the stars and wondering why God created the world and what my part in it was. I had this longing to know what God’s will for my life was, but I pushed it to the back burner and was a typical kid goofing off until I was ready to graduate from high school. Then people would come to my school and advertise their college or trade school, and it rekindled my desire to know God’s purpose for me.
In my senior year in high school, I began to diligently seek the Lord. I read the Bible from cover to cover. I even went out and bought a Bible commentary to get inspiration. I knew that somewhere in the Bible, it had to have the formula to figure out what God’s will for your life was. I asked the people in our church, and they said, “you’ll just know” and “fate automatically happens.” I reject that 100 percent. People like Hitler and Mussolini didn’t live God’s purpose for their lives. God didn’t raise them up. God intended something totally different for them.
God has a purpose for every person, but it doesn’t just automatically come to pass. Fate, or sovereignty, doesn’t make it happen. If you believed that, you would have to credit God with all the rapes and the murders and the terrible things that happen.
To know God’s purpose for my life, I had to seek to find. I had to ask to receive. I had to knock before it would be opened unto me (Matt. 7:7).
After I graduated from high school, I went to college. I still didn’t know my purpose, but I was really seeking the Lord and studying the Word. I was at a church function over the Christmas holidays in 1967, and during his devotion, a man read Romans 12:1-2:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that [you] present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
The last part of that second verse jumped out at me. This is what I had been seeking, praying, and searching the Word for. God is there to reveal His will to you, but you have to approach Him and initiate the process. You have to become a living sacrifice and be transformed by the renewing of your mind to manifest to your physical senses the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.
For the next four months, I studied these verses in Romans. On March 23, 1968, I was in a prayer meeting, and God showed up and revolutionised my life; he knocked self-righteousness out of me. My life changed radically after this experience as I began to understand grace. And it all goes back to the fact that, for a year and a half, I had been praying and seeking to know God’s will. And for four months prior to that, I had been focused on Romans 12:1–2 and trying to fulfill the requirements listed there.
This powerful encounter I had with the Lord happened because I wanted to know God’s will for my life. Many of you are in the same situation I was in - you know there’s got to be more to life than what you’re experiencing.
You have to initiate seeking God’s will, and you have to persevere past any obstacles. Jeremiah 29:11 says:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
This passage is familiar to many people, but seldom do we put it in context. The next verses, Jeremiah 29:12-13 say:
Then shall [you] call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And [you] shall seek me, and find me, when [you] shall search for me with all your heart.
To know God’s purpose for you, you’ve got to get to a place where you say, God, I’m not moving. I’m not doing anything else. I’m not wasting any more time until I find out what Your will is. You’ve got to be intent on it, because as long as you can live without knowing God’s will for your life, you will.
You have to reach this place where you search with all your heart, and that’s when God reveals Himself unto you. These experiences I’ve shared happened when I was young, but I guarantee it’s never too late for you to seek God’s will for your life.
This month, we’re offering an awesome package deal that includes my book How to Find, Follow, and Fulfill God’s Will, three study guides, a CD or DVD album, and My Appointment with God, a booklet in which I share my testimony and more details about how I came to know God's will for my life. If you just want the booklet, we’re giving it away for free!
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