John 3:20-21(NLT)
“20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”
Through His Word, God has made it available for us to discern both good and evil, right and wrong, and love and hate. We can know what is from His Kingdom and what is from the kingdom of darkness. It is incredibly important for us to comprehend and discern these differences; our lives depend on it. Most of us understand the wealth and vastness of what God has given us through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but we sometimes forget that everything in life is spiritual. We forget that we must use the discernment that God has provided to remain spiritually strong. If we don’t do this, we might invite people into our lives that have no hunger for God’s love and light. If we partner with an individual like this, it could devastate our existences.
Doing what God wants should be our primary objective in life. Doing what He commands in His Word causes us to be blessed, and it demonstrates that the intent of our heart is to please Him. Ephesians 4:13 says that God’s plan is for all His children to measure up to the full stature of Christ. He wants us all to have the mind and heart of Christ so that we speak the truth in love and work together in unity. God wants us to build each other up continually. He tells us in Ephesians 4:32(NLT), “Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”
It’s no secret that many single women desire to cross paths with their future spouses. They want to be in a committed relationship that ultimately yields a wonderful marriage. One of the things that many singles don’t consider is the time it takes to prepare for this union. Many of them don’t want to hear anything about spiritual preparation, but it isn’t up to us. It’s totally up to God. He has established the standard of our conduct through Jesus Christ, and our Heavenly Father is more committed to His standard than you and I can possibly fathom.
He has equipped us through Jesus Christ to meet His requirements, so we have no excuse. God doesn’t bend His standards or give us a pass when we ignore what pleases Him. His grace is sufficient, but disobedience will always and forever set us back. We should have no doubt about this.
We demonstrate our love for God by having faith in His Word. We show our gratitude for all He has done for us through Jesus Christ by living according to his example. God doesn’t punish us when we don’t meet the mark; He corrects, teaches, and prepares us for what He has in store.
Hebrews 11:6 tells us that we can’t please God without faith, and we must believe wholeheartedly that He is a Rewarder of diligent effort. Said another way, diligent effort is what He rewards. One of the most important aspects of preparing for marriage is growing our faith. Right now, if we haven’t yet met the man we’re going to marry, we have no other choice but to deal with the truth that our faith is still in the maturation process. It’s not yet as fully developed as God requires. This is sometimes a very hard pill for many women of faith to swallow. They feel exhausted from so many false starts. Their hearts ache because of the disappointment they’ve faced, and silently their souls are crying out, “No MORE! Please, no more!”
Psalm 84:11 tells us that God is our shield and sun. He protects and provides for us, and He gives us grace and glory. This verse declares that God doesn’t withhold any good thing from those that honor Him. We know that He is good, and He tells us in Psalm 84:11 that He doesn’t withhold His blessings, but we’re confused because we’ve been praying so long to be a wife. We can’t fathom getting back in the saddle again and dealing with someone trying to feed us crumbs when we know we’re deserving of a feast. It just seems too much.
The time we’ve put into praying and waiting should provide us a healthy dose of reality. We’re in GOD’s process. It doesn’t belong to us. And like Jesus Christ, faith separates what is fruitful from what isn’t. So, if there are some things that we’re holding on to that are not fruitful to the Kingdom, but we’re refusing to let them go, faith will require us to release them. And those lessons that we need in order to see clearer will continue to cycle back around until we are fully divorced from the things that keep marriage at bay.
God is not playing a game. He is amazingly serious about our spiritual growth. In John 15:2, our Master tells us that God cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and Heavenly Father prunes the branches that do produce fruit so they can produce even more. In John 15:4-6, Jesus Christ commands us to remain in him, because we cannot produce fruit apart from him. He tells us that anyone that doesn’t remain in him is thrown away like a useless branch.
God is pruning us, and there is no part of that process that we can dictate or alter. It’s all Him. He’s the One doing the pruning, and we can be sure that He is watching how we respond to what He’s doing. He is looking at the quality of our commitment to stay passionately in love with Him even though we feel weary and insecure. He’s seen the way we’ve stayed in relationships with men that have dishonored and mistreated us, and we put up with their stuff for years. As long as a man is by our sides, we don’t worry so much about being tired and weary. Well, God honors us far above the capability of any human being, yet, when it comes to trusting Him, we’re complaining and moaning about the faith walk, when it is the greatest gift any of us can imagine.
Oh, God is watching. He’s watching how we prolong His process by not allowing His Spirit to quicken us with bounce-back and flexibility. He’s investigating our hearts, and He sees how we cloak ourselves with cynicism and go further into bitterness and doubt. These are an offense to Him. And think about it, if we will do this to God Almighty who loves us way more than we could ever love ourselves, then we’ll certainly do it to a husband.
When you love the Lord and carry His love in your heart, it will attract the light to you, and it will certainly dispel the darkness around you. The truth of the passage in John 3 declares this emphatically. It says that all who do evil hate the light. You must ask – how will I recognize those that hate the light? They’ll show you by how they behave, their conversations and their lack of a desire to know God.
John 3:20 tells us that ALL who do evil hate the light of Christ and won’t go near the light because they don’t want their sins exposed. You do not want to be in that number. 1Thessalonians 5:5(NLT) declares, “For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night.” Children of light always represent the light and should have no darkness in them. Trust me, you don’t want your own actions to be mingled in with darkness. You don’t want to be a deterrent to the light of Christ that you carry, and you shouldn’t want to risk becoming a magnet for darkness yourself. We should desire to be ALL love ALL the time, and we should be chopping at the bits and begging God to have His way in our lives, so that we become the very embodiment of His love through Jesus Christ.
Doing what God wants is doing relationship with Him HIS WAY! It’s walking it out everyday hand in hand with our Master Jesus, come what may. It’s allowing God to sharpen our faith in the way that only He can, and it’s being confident that time is one of His expert tools. He expects us to respond to His pruning process by loving Him more and doubting Him less. Any problems we have with this will show us why pruning is so very necessary. We must keep the faith, and we must remain humble and loving towards each other and most importantly towards God as He prunes us and purifies our faith. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Doing What God Wants”, written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2022. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.