By The Will of God

 DEVOTION

THE 2^ND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

BY THE WILL OF GOD

2 Cor 1:1-7

1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia:

2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

NIV

Once again, we will forego the introduction regarding his making sure they know he is an apostle by the will of God, for anything we are, is, or should be not by our will, but by the will of God. Maybe we should deal with this for a little. We know that God has given us the ability to make our own choices in life. Some would call it “free will”. This is usually connected to the choice to accept reject Jesus as our Savior. But what if this being who we are and what we are, is by the will of God? Have we decided at some point in our life to become an engineer, doctor, fireman, salesman, pastor, or whatever, and then at some time in our life as we are living out our choice, we accept Jesus and include being a Christian as part of our choice of life? Paul’s chosen path in life was abruptly halted and he was given a whole new course to follow when he met Jesus. Therefore, he says that he is an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. It was Paul’s will to be a persecutor of the church, but God’s will prevailed. Is that our story? Are we living, doing what we are doing because of our will, or has our will been superseded by the will of God? We can say, on a personal note, that we would have never ever suspected we would be living where we do. Again, personally, we have never had a once time career, although we were on a path toward one when God finally broke through and we heard the message and responded. Of course, we had to have him prove himself, which he did. From that time forward we have done many other areas of work, to provide for our family, but our life has been directed by our Lord. We have no one career, we have no retirement, we only have life by the will of God. He has changed the course of our life several times, but each time it has been for his purpose, and not ours. We know what it is to be who we are and what do by the will of God. Some have recently said in jest, that we love change, which means to say, we do not love change. That is true unless God is doing the changing in our life. We will stay the present course until God turns us another way. We are by the will of God.