What one believes about God separates between whether one is a “believer” or an “atheist”. What one attribute of God would you say best defines God as God?

I.Continue our exploration of the greeting of Paul to the Colossian Church. II.Complete our probe of the details of two “aspects” of God’s will. III.Explore reasons why a person wanting to do God’s will need not fret over it. This Week Lesson Plan

IV. Reflect on what we can do to improve on our experience of doing God’s will. This Week Lesson Plan

Colossians 1:9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;

I. The Will of God Doing the will of God involves many things:

I. The Will of God The Holy Spirit knows how to get us to where He needs us to go for our And how to keep us from doing what He

I. The Will of God f. Where our is to do the “will of God” we will not frustrate that will.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection a. The key to understanding that we will not frustrate the will of God is to understand God’s

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection 1.God’s sovereignty refers to the fact that all things are under His rule and control, and that happens in this Universe without His direction or permission.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection b. There are essentially only we can view God’s involvement with His created world.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection 1. The God creates the world, winds it up like a watch with built-in secondary causes and simply observes what happens, never intervening and never intruding.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection a. In this view God is not at any time responsible for anything that happens or doesn’t happen. His hands are

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection b. This is basically the position as it relates to salvation: Man must co-operate with grace.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection 2. The second view is an over- reaction to deism. It asserts that there are no secondary causes; that God directly causes

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection a.God my hand to go up, my eyes to blink, car accidents to occur, etc.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection b. Under this view God is a puppeteer and human free will is an

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection 3. The third view is the classical Christian view and of the other positions.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection a. God gives the power of to things and people so that we actually do things by our own volition, through our decisions, our own actions.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection b. However, at every single point God remains sovereign. There are times He works through secondary causes to bring about His will, I.E.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection c. Sometimes He intrudes I.E. the miracles of Jesus and the Jordon river and Red Sea crossing.

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection d. Other times He makes use of our decisions and activities to bring about His sovereign will I.E. the John 11:47-53

II. The Providence / Sovereignty Connection e. We can rest assured that if we are truly desirous of living out God’s will He will bring it to pass. All we need do is Prov 3:6

IV. Application a. The key to our doing the will of God moment by moment is to on those things that we know from Scripture are his desires for us: like sanctification.

IV. Application 1. What gets in the way of our staying focused on things like our sanctification? 2. What can we do to minimize those distractions?

IV. Application 3. What will you do to minimize those distractions?