What does God want me to be? What is God’s purpose for me? These questions are cries of our hearts from the moment we are born again until the moment we die. We yearn to know the meaning of our lives – God's will for our lives. This will be our discussion for the next few lessons.
When we study the Bible we find the phrase "the will of God" or "His will" several times and in several specific connotations. Let's look at them in order of occurrence in our lives rather than in consecutive scriptural order. The first is found in 2 Peter 3:9 where we are told "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." God's will for our lives, first of all, is that we should be saved. He wants us to be with Him for eternity.
Once we have been saved, the next "will of God" is our sanctification. This big word is used in the Bible in such places as 1 Thessalonians 4:3 - "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality." Sanctification means to be set apart. God wants us to be separate and different from the people of this world who are not His. One of the first demonstrations of sin in our life is living for our own pleasure and desire rather than for the good of others. We can see this in very young children who want their own way.
As we grow, the needs of our bodies become our gods so we follow every desire our bodies imagine. God’s purpose for us is that we control our bodies rather than being controlled by them. Sexual immorality is one of our easiest sins to fall into because it is a primary drive in our life – to join with someone to make a family. God created this need in us, but true satisfaction of this need can only come when our drive is controlled to be used only in God’s designed way – one man and one woman dedicated to each other in marriage to a life-long partnership so children can be raised in a safe and loving home. Anything – everything else is sin.
God’s command is for our complete commitment to Him – He wants us to have no other gods in our lives. Addictions are so easily made into gods in our affections and our slavery to them – but God wants us to be free of every slavery to sin. The only way it is possible is to set aside everything else which can keep us from Him. And because God intended the marriage bond to be the strongest relationship we have on earth, the physical relationship is intended to make this bond permanent.
God’s purpose for us is to be pure in our body and mind until our marriage, and then the marriage bed is sanctified by God and used by Him to make the husband and wife into a beautiful picture of how much He loves us as believers, a love giving everything to the other for their good.
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