Are you in "God's will?"

Coming up through the pentecostal church in the UK it was the constant pursuit to be 'in God's will.'  Sometimes this was used as a threat... that this supposed moving target required a level of holiness I'd better be making sure I had that level.  Some displayed their evidence for being in God's will like status symbols in the religious strata of ministry life.  Exhausted and unable to reach such heights of holiness... I decided I was disqualified from being in the will of God.  Then I read the Bible.

As someone who, by the grace of God, had been saved, I was justified before God. This meant that I was his child, adopted into His family... a son.  This also meant that I had nothing to prove.  This was God's will.  So being justified in Christ is God's will.  Can I depart from the ideal path he wants for me while justified in Christ?  Of course!  Israel spent so much time as God's chosen yet not following the plan.  What we find, especially in the 'minor' prophets, is God's wrathful anger towards Israel (incorporating Judah for the sake of simplicity).  When they rebelled they willed God's wrath... so in that sense they were in God's will.  When they did good and came back to God they were blessed so they were in God's will.  So however we respond to God we will incur his will... with one exception.

When Jesus was addressing the church at Laodicea they were sternly rebuked for being neither hot nor cold.  They were lukewarm.  Jesus says he wants to spit the lukewarm church out of his mouth.  Hot churches seem to be the ones who are coming back to God and getting with the task of submitting, yielding and abandoning their lives the Jesus.  A cold church seems to be those who have been justified but have little interest in the Lord's sanctification process.  Laodicea appears to have had a type of Christianity where it was neither of these.  It was acting 'hot' yet these devotional actions covered hearts that had little intention to engage the real work of dying to self to see the Lord glorified.

Israel was often accused as being worse that the pagan nations.  Being hot or cold gives the Lord something to work with but having a form or following yet it all being an act to cover nonchalance is sickening to the Lord.  GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WORK WITH!  I feel like Jesus is saying:

 'Either get with the plot or completely disregard me so I can 'wrath' you into submission. But don't play at being spiritual and walking well... That's making me sick.'

Are you in God's will?  The question is more like 'Is God in your will?'  Meaning when you pursue the aims and objectives of your life (that is in Christ) is God the central factor of all you propose?

Time is short.

Gary Ward