What is God doing in your life lately?

Years ago I was running through the forest with one of my running buddies.  He was a young man, full of enthusiasm about his faith.  As we were running and there was a lull in the conversation he asked me “So, what is God doing in your life lately?”

I was a bit taken aback.

Jesus is my Lord, and I live for Him.  Further, as a minister I spend most of my life talking about faith and how it is lived out.  But I couldn’t remember anyone asking me a question like that in casual conversation before.

Very quickly, I began to wonder why not.  Are we shy about our faith?  Are we insecure (even with close friends and family)?  Or is it that we simply don’t know what God is doing in our lives.

What is God doing your life lately?  The question should never be rhetorical—there is an answer, unless we are willing to believe that God is NOT working your life, and that is entirely contrary to scripture.

Sometimes we try to substitute what God HAS done in our life—past tense.  It is easier to see in hindsight, and most of us are aware as we look back on our lives of things God has done.  But what IS God doing in my life?

What if I don’t know?  How do I find out?  There are some pretty clear instructions for understanding how God is working in our life in the scripture.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews takes an interesting slant on the question.  He writes to people who are experiencing stress (read that STRESS) in their lives.  Some of it is because of their faith, some of it is because the times were hard.  Either way, he says that they are to “endure hardship as discipline.  God is treating you as sons.” (12:7).  He goes on to explain that these very hardships are the sign of God working in their lives—as a Father, and because he loves them.  The word translated “discipline” here comes from the word for “foot”.  It refers to the teaching style of walking a student through life, ensuring they bump into the right things and learn from them, so that in the end, they grow to maturity.  The Hebrew writer says the final result is “righteousness and peace” (v. 11).  So, when we are encountering those difficult times in life, we can rest assured that, if we belong to the Lord, God is taking the role of Perfect Father with us, and either guiding us to, or allowing us to experience those things—specifically to mature us and bring about righteousness and peace.

Paul says God is at work in us as he is in plant life—producing fruit.  In Galatians 5 he lists 9 characteristics (which paint an amazingly accurate picture of Jesus himself) which the Holy Spirit is actually growing in us.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are those traits (v.22-23).  So, if we look at our own lives and ask, “what are experiencing that lead us to develop these things”, and we know that God is, as our Father, developing these things in us, we know that He is actually at work in those very specific ways.

What is different about these two passages from what we normally experience is that these refer to what is happening in our lives from God’s perspective, not ours. We tend to see God at work when we bring something to Him and he responds.  We see  him at work when he provides something we want.  We see Him at work when He seems to be addressing our agenda.  But God is at work on HIS agenda for each of us all the time.

So, knowing this, “What is God doing in your life lately?”

in Christ,

Randy