By The Will of God

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

BY THE WILL OF GOD

Rom 1:8-10

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9 God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

NIV

This will be a devotion of a different type, in the sense that I am going to write in the first person, as I was so moved upon waking this morning praying over this last statement of Paul’s. Paul said that he prayed that by the will of God, or God’s will a way may be opened for him to come to the church in Rome. This is a time far ahead of Paul’s arrest and trial before Felix, Festus, and Agrippa ending in his appeal to Caesar and being taken to Rome as a prisoner. Paul was waiting for God to make a way before he would travel there on a missionary trip. As I thought about God’s will, or by the will of God, I was reminded of how many somewhat momentous events happened in my life by the will of God. First and foremost was how He interjected himself in my life. I was not all that interested in the God of the Christians, as I considered the idea of a God. I lived almost entirely for myself. Although I had dabbled in Yogi, Buddhism, and Zen, I had found all the loopholes, the faults, and so I was just a wanderer in this world, with no focus, no aim, but to satisfy myself. Then God came with a force I have never reckoned with ever before. The story is long, but I knew in my heart, through a physical or I should say, a chemical miracle, defining the science of photography I am degreed in. It was by his will that I was saved, of that, I have no doubt. Then, it was by the will of God, as well as his voice, that I am absolutely confident of hearing, that I was to have a new home in the suburbs of Chicago. As we lived in a rented two-flat in the city, and the area was no longer safe for our daughter to walk to a store, that once was safe. After asking God what I should do is when he told me he would give me this new home in the Suburbs. By faith, we traveled to the burbs, which we were totally unfamiliar with in an area of two-lane blacktop roads. As we drove down the road, we spotted a white dove, not a mourning dove, a white dove sitting on a wall of a small bridge over a creek. As we came up from this little valley there was a housing development being built. To make a long story short we picked the nicest, biggest one out and gave the salesman a check that could not clear the bank for one hundred dollars to secure a beginning of this new home. We needed three thousand by Friday, of which we did not have. By the will of God, through a very long story, and through a completely unexpected means, on Thursday night, I received a call telling me that I was to receive three thousand dollars. Praise the Lord, it was by his will we had that house built and moved in and lived there for twenty-seven years. What made all this an absolute act by the will of God, was the day I had to close on the house and move in, that day I received a promotion at work in which the increase in wages was exactly the same as our monthly mortgage. The next monumental event was when I was fifty-seven years old and owned my own business. In the year two thousand, in the month of November, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I had a massive heart attack and through another long story, although the doctor said that I should have died, by the will of God, I did not, for he had other plans for me. Once again, visiting Ohio to see our daughter, the ladies decided to spend the day looking at model homes. I had no intention or interest in looking at any home, as I was completely content in the home I was in, by the will of God. Yet, as I walked into one of the last model homes we were to visit, by the will of God, and by his voice, which I heard say, “Move here”, I picked out one of the homes, walked a lot and knew in my deepest inner being, that it was by the will of God that I should move here, and here I will stay by the will of God unless I hear him tell me otherwise. Again and again, I could testify that my life is by the will of God and that if I were to record all that he has done for me and in me and through me, I would have to write a book. Yet, this gives just a sample of living by the will of God. I pray that I will always be where and that doing what I do, is by the will of God.