PERFECT WILL and PERMISSIVE WILL

A few days ago I began reading a book by Lloyd Ogilvie called Asking God Your Hardest Questions. It is a book that has been on my shelf for at least 10 years, never read. But I've had some hard questions through out 2009 and so when I was looking for some inspirational reading it seemed to pop off the shelf into my hands.

The chapter I read tonight is titled; How Can I Know God's Perfect Will? It was an amazingly thought provoking read. Here are a few excerpts from it that I need to keep in mind and mull over.

• "The perfect will of God is that we fulfill the purpose for which we were created: to know /god, receive his love, and enjoy fellowship with him forever....God's perfect will for our lives is that we love him, love ourselves, love others as he has loved us...." p.53
• "God's perfect will is what he intended: his permissive will is what he allows." p.54
• "God is always ready to go back to ground zero with us and begin again." p.55
• "...at the lowest ebb of history he {God} came to earth in Jesus Christ, the Mediator....The mediator's persistant ant prayer was, 'Not my will, but Thine be done.'" p.55
• "Is it possible to be a Christian and be out of the will of God? Yes. We can accept Christ's salvation and still run our own lives. Once again the Lord;s permissive will must be involved. He must work out to bring good out of our wrong choices. We are thankful that he does, but it's not the best he intended." p58
• "We can trust what God intends, believe that he will use whatever happens, and know that his ultimate will cannot be dissuaded," p. 62

There are many other wonderful thoughts in this chapter as there were in the preceding 3 chapters. I have 16 chapters more to go and can't help but muse over what wonderful things I will uncover in them.

I don't remember when or where I picked up this book, like I said it was at least 10 years ago, but there is a reason I did and that reason was so I had it on the bookshelf to read now!