How do we know God’s Will for our lives?

I have been asked that so many times by the readers of my blog. Most stumble upon my blog as they are desperately searching for a thread of hope as they try to make sense of their infertility.

Most end up asking me before they close their email, “How did you know God’s Will?”.

This is a tough topic because God doesn’t send us text messages or emails that directly tell us: Do this!

But He does direct the paths of those who truly seek Him and trust Him with their whole hearts. (Proverbs 3:4-5). And He has given us His Word through the Bible! (2 Timothy 3:16)

To hear the Lord, you must first have a relationship with Him. I have a relationship with the Lord and have since I was eight years old. At the age of 8 I understood that my sins separated me from God. I also understood God paid the ultimate price for my sins – death – by sending his Son, Jesus, to die on a cross as payment for my sins. Jesus died because of His love for me and so that He could restore relationship between God and mankind.

You could say that I had no choice in giving my life to God since I’ve grown up in family with a very strong Christian heritage, but I absolutely did have a choice. We all have this choice: the choice to believe in God and make Him our Lord over our life (meaning we desire to live our life in service to God) or we can choose to deny Christ and live for ourselves.

Going through infertility really was the pivotal point of my relationship with God so far. I had to choose whether I was going to trust God to bring good from something horrible or if I was going to take matters into my own hand and try to solve my problems by myself.

Simply put: I chose Jesus.

I chose to trust Him. I chose to believe He was not the one who was “making me go through this”. Instead I chose to believe that my infertility was not a punishment to me for something that I had done (because my sins were paid for on the cross! yes, all of them!) but instead something that was happening to me because we don’t live in a perfect world. God’s Word tells us that we will have trouble in this world but we are to not get discouraged about that! We are to take heart; we are to hope, because God tells us in his Word that He has already overcome all those troubles.

And He has plans for us that are to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

Part 2, coming soon.

- Elaine