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Bible Studies for Life lesson for Aug. 9: Have You Found Your Place?
Catherine Painter, author, speaker, Trinity Baptist Church, Raleigh
July 28, 2009
3 MIN READ TIME

Bible Studies for Life lesson for Aug. 9: Have You Found Your Place?

Bible Studies for Life lesson for Aug. 9: Have You Found Your Place?
Catherine Painter, author, speaker, Trinity Baptist Church, Raleigh
July 28, 2009

Focal passages: Exodus 35:30-36:1; Jeremiah 1:4-8; Colossians 3:16-17

Mary stopped me between Sunday School and worship.

“Will you teach our class?” she asked. “Our teacher has moved.”

“Yes, get me a teacher’s quarterly,” I answered.

“Don’t you want to pray about it?”

“No. You have a need and God has prepared me to meet it. Why should I pray about it? Let’s get started.”

Discovering God’s will is not always that easy.

You may be struggling today with some area of your life that God didn’t address in the Bible.

We all struggle at times, but there are ways we can know we’re in God’s will. For example, the Bible says that it isn’t God’s will that any should perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

Are you a child of God? If you are, you’re in God’s will.

Do you read the Bible? We can’t know God’s will without reading His book.

Romans 12 contains the perfect explanation of being in His will.

Once a Christian asked me if God would OK her marrying a non-believer.

When I showed her 2 Corinthians 6:14, she agreed to consider it. Until we obey God’s word, we’re not in His will.

Are we verbally sharing our faith?

I asked my Sunday School class that question, and someone answered, “I just let my life be my witness.”

My problem with that is two-fold: lives can’t speak; only lips speak, and without sharing our faith, we ignore Christ’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20).

Perhaps the world has convinced us that we must accomplish something spectacular.
Not true with God.

We can’t be sure that Bezalel and Oholiab (Ex. 35:30-36:1) felt they were in God’s perfect will while constructing the temple, but God used their skills for His glory. While we do what God gifted us to do, we’re in His will. What we leave behind when we die may not be engraved in monuments, but if we’ve woven faith into the lives of others, we’ll hear, “Well done” (Matt. 25).

Perhaps we will not have lived God’s perfect plan (see Jer.1:4-5), but God’s grace covers imperfect choices, and when Christians miss God’s ultimate plan, He’ll use what we do offer Him.

A friend’s recent advice places us smack in the middle of God’s will: “Let’s live in such a way that when our feet hit the floor in the morning, the devil says, ‘Oh, no, they’re awake.’”