Sometimes I just need a reminder of what God wants for me in this life. Maybe you do, too. Or, if you’re just getting to know Him, you know that he wants you to have forgiveness for your sins and eternal life – but you might not be sure what God wants for you aside of that. If you’re feeling a little directionless in your walk with God, keep reading for a short list of some things God wants for you.
- To know him
- To be one with him and one with other believers
- Abundant life
- Every good thing
- To be well
God wants you to know him.
Jesus told his disciples that they know him, so they also know the Father (John 14:6-7). In John 16:26 he says to the Father, “I have made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” It seems really important to Jesus that his followers know God.
It seems pretty important to God that his people know him throughout the events in the Old Testament as well. He walked with Adam and Eve, introduced himself to Moses, and made sure that all of Israel knew who he is and what he is like. If you replace The LORD in Exodus 34:6 with his personal name, which is what the Hebrew manuscripts actually have written, it reads:
YHWH, YHWH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.
Exodus 34:6
Just consider the Bible as a whole for a moment – God could have given us the gospels and left it at that. “Hey, I sent my son to rescue y’all from sin and darkness. So yeah.” But no, he wants us to know the whole story of God and mankind. He wants us to know who he is, what he is like, and what he has done. Just like that passage in Exodus. We like it when others know those things about us, too!
God wants you to be one with him and other believers.
This idea also comes from John 17. “Holy Father, keep them [those God gave to Jesus] in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” V. 11
What does oneness mean? Unity. As we learn submission to God and to each other, we build unity with each other. Among believers, submission is mutual. Only God is benevolent enough to command total submission – and he is gracious to us in that Jesus did the ultimate act of submission on the cross to overcome all the times we break unity with God by failing to submit to him.
The oneness/unity/mutual submission God wants us to have with each other is healthy and builds us up. If it’s not healthy and it’s tearing people down, then something is wrong. We all are parts of the body of Jesus, and some members may command more authority than others, but only Jesus is the head. And the head wants all the little parts of the body to be well. If the heart or the stomach or the leg is too busy lording it over other parts to do its job well, that hurts everyone – including God.
God wants you to have abundant life
This one is so encouraging to me: God wants us to have abundant life (check out John 10:10). That makes me think of a full life, overflowing, joyful. I don’t think there’s any room in Jesus’ teachings to distort “abundant life” to mean strictly pious, joyless religion. Instead, I think abundant life involves freedom from sin, meaning no condemnation as well as direct encouragement and strength to choose not to walk in sin anymore (a process that can be instant in some parts of life and gradual in others).
Abundant life involves fellowship, meaning, and camaraderie with other believers. Fruitful work. Healing and overcoming large obstacles. And notice, all those things are possible without obtaining wealth or status.
God wants to give you every good thing
God allows each of us to experience hardship, yet he also gives us exactly what we need to live and have abundant life.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Psalm 84:11
Learning this fundamentally changed my life. Having grown up in hardship and loss, I spent much of my young life looking at what others had that I didn’t. A father. A modest home. Huge sweet 16 parties. A significant other. But now, I know that if there’s something I don’t have it is because God has already given me everything I need for this moment. When I feel a lack I talk to him about it. How precious it is when God comes close to tell me that he will fill that need himself. Or when he comes through with a material need I was prepared to live without. He IS a good father! And I can live in contentment.
God wants you To Be Well
The Christian Missionary Alliance and other denominations believe that many evangelicals are forgetting a major component of the gospel: that Christ paid for the effects of sin on the cross, meaning that he overcame sickness as well as spiritual and physical death. While God doesn’t heal every injury or disease, he wants to and does heal many on this side of life.
Jesus’ ministry demonstrated God’s compassion for people afflicted by the consequences of sin. The way I see it, ultimately God will either heal us in this life or in a new body. Either way, he wants us to be well and whole.
Summary
Someone more scholarly probably has a categorized list with deeper scriptural and theological explanations. But this is what I had to offer, just a little reminder of a few things God wants for anyone who believes.
- To know him
- To be one with him and one with other believers
- Abundant life
- Every good thing
- To be well
Thanks for reading.
Almost a Walrus
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
