the will of God

In Krista Tippett's Speaking of Faith, there is a most interesting interview with Martin Doblmeier, who was the director of the documentary film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer that was premiered last year, 100 years after Bonhoeffer's birth. This program is limited in its scope and take of Bonhoeffer, but fascinating just the same.

One of the most fascinating aspects of it for me was the portrayal of Bonhoeffer's ongoing struggle to find the will of God so as to live in that will. One would believe they had the paradigm of what God wants them to do, but by the every mysterious God would be moved to realize that they maybe just don't quite have it.

This is not bereft of the will of God made known in the Word/Scripture or found therein in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But it's a dependence on this God as one embraces and lives fully in the world of their existence, then being assured that God will make known through life and its struggle his will we're to obey and in which we're to live.

To be discovering and living in obedience to the will of God was a passion for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Many things along the way can cloud that revelation to our hearts and minds. But Bonhoeffer persisted in his gaze towards that, being much in the Word/Scripture and in prayer, and living in community, in interdependence on like-minded brothers.

I have struggled life-long, though less and less acutely, with fear of different kinds. Now, just once in awhile, it bites me and I'm infected for a short time. But living in the will of God amounts to living in the perfect love of God in Christ, which casts out all fear. This is "in Christ Jesus". And it's in radical trust and radical obedience to God and his will for us in Christ. Of course we have the ongoing need for confession of sin including our thoughts, attitudes and things left undone in our self-absorption, as well as the wrongs we do in word and deed. But it is there for us, the will of God. In it we can live and begin to know more and more the love of God in our lives as we seek to live in Christ in a way that pleases God. This is certainly an ongoing work for us and definitely for me in thought and in living it out.