The Heart Of What Disciples Do
God sets life and death before us with each choice. When we choose His will we move toward Him who is life, light, and love; when we pick our own way, we move away from God and, thus, toward death – for death is separation (Isaiah 59:2). The Lord’s path is a very hard way while our way is the broad and easy path that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:14, NCV). Hence, we should always try to determine God’s will and do it. That is the heart of what it means to be a disciple: learn what His will is then follow Him by doing it. This necessarily starts with complete surrender to Him (Rom 12:1). Once surrendered, if we don’t know His will, we wait and seek to discover it rather than just choosing whatever course seems good to us (Rom 12:2). We do this because His will is always best. Besides, we want to please Him because we love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
So how do we know His will? We have already mentioned some prerequisites: fully committing ourselves to Him, trusting Him, and waiting on Him. In addition, we are faithful to do that part of His will we do know since God gives more to those who are faithful with what they already have. Proper use of the present moment is a key to knowing His will. This is seen, for instance, in that the command to be filled with (i.e. controlled by) the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 5:18 is preceded by the command to use every minute wisely by discovering what the Lord wants us to do (Ephesians 5:16-17, CEV).
God told Abram to ‘come’ to the promised land (Genesis 12:1, Rotherham). If we want to see Him move in our lives, we must follow Him. He is our Shepherd and will lead us to where we need to be. Our part is to wait for His guidance then follow Him. That is how we grow. That is how we decrease so He can increase in our life (Jn 3:30).
Loving trust is more important than mere head knowledge.