Welcome to the PMF Workshop for May 2022. I’m your host, T. M. Moore. Each month we provide teaching, encouragement, activities, and resources to help you in working your Personal Mission Field so that you can become more consistent and effective in realizing the presence, promise, and power of God’s Kingdom in your daily life.

This month’s Workshop is entitled, “Willing God’s Will.” Our text for this month’s workshop is Psalm 90.16, 17:

Let Your work appear to Your servants,
And Your glory to their children.
And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands.

Made to matter
In our previous workshop, I shared a quote from the late Dallas Willard, who explained that all believers are called to rule in the Name of Jesus to the full reach of their “effective will.” This is our part of the Kingdom, and God is equipping and sending us to restore it, and the people in it, to their proper place before Him. To this, I’d like to add the following quote, also from Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy:

“Within his overarching dominion God has created us and has given each of us, like him, a range of will—beginning from our minds and bodies and extending outward, ultimately to a point not wholly predetermined but open to the measure of our faith. His intent is for us to learn to mesh our kingdom with the kingdoms of others. Love of neighbor, rightly understood, will make this happen. But we can only love adequately by taking as our primary aim the integration of our rule with God’s. That is why love of neighbor is the second, not the first, commandment and why we are told to seek first the kingdom, or rule, of God.”

It’s that idea of a “range of will” that resonates so strongly with me, and which parallels in thought our notion of a Personal Mission Field. As far as your will extends, that is, wherever your will can be exerted for the purposes of Christ and His Kingdom, that’s your Personal Mission Field. God has work for you to do there, work that guides, gives shape and purpose to, and infuses all our other activities and work with eternal significance.

The point is that God has given us a will – a determination to act which arises from our soul – and His desire is that our will should be exercised in tandem with His. He has also appointed work for us which He wills that we should will, embrace, and do for His glory. Every day. With the people you meet in the “as-you-are-goings” of your life, at every moment of your life. God wills that we should exercise our wills to make Him and His glory known to the people around us in the places we go.

The challenge, of course, is getting our will engaged with God’s will so that we will what He wills and we do what He wills, willingly. That’s clear, right?

The will can be a fickle thing, as we all know. Even Paul struggled with his will, as he reported in Romans 7.15 and 16: “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.” I suspect we all know that feeling. We want our will to be always set on serving God and loving others. But it doesn’t always work out that way, because, like Paul, we’re, well, sinners.

Mastering our will for the work God has given us to do is a continuous challenge and struggle. We’re easily distracted, fall prey to the fear of man, consider our work to be too small and insignificant to matter, and so instead of willing God’s will, we turn away to something less. The gift of time slips through our fingers. An opportunity for glorifying God even in the most routine of activities evaporates into thin air. And we want to smack ourselves on the head in exasperation.

The mastery of the will begins in prayer, as Moses shows in Psalm 90. But it continues as we keep our focus on Jesus, exalted in glory, and on the work we intend to do in the exercise of our will for God and His glory in any situation. Prayer, focus, deciding to will God’s will, and acting in obedience. Will we do so, or not?

Only you and the Lord know for sure.

The key to the right exercise of the will
Sounds easy enough, I suppose. But we know otherwise. The key to exercising our will in tandem with God’s is to grow in our love for Him. Exercising our will to work our Personal Mission Field and love our neighbors depends on loving God. As Dallas Willard put it, “that’s why love of neighbor is the second, not the first, commandment and why we are told to seek first the kingdom, or rule, of God.”

Love God and seek His Kingdom. In everything you do. Every moment of the day. This will keep your will tuned to obedient service so that you discern and do the work God has for you, bring Him glory, and rest at the end of a day of jobs well done.

…

Here are some activities you can practice and some resources to help you love God more continuously and keep your will focused on His work.

1. First make sure your Personal Mission Field is updated, and you have included in your Personal Mission Field worksheet any new people God has brought into your sphere. Keep your map with you, so you can take it out and pray for the people you’ll be seeing throughout the day.
2. Find a prayer partner and show your prayer partner your Personal Mission Field. Ask your prayer partner to pray daily as you seek, discern, and do the work God has appointed for you.
3. Help your prayer partner map out his or her own Personal Mission Field and pray faithfully for your prayer partner. Here’s the link for the Personal Mission Field video and worksheet.
4. Pray Psalm 90.16, 17 every day before you go out into your Personal Mission Field. Then ask God to help you be alert throughout the day so that you discern the work He has prepared for you.
5. Order a copy of our book, Restore Us!, and begin praying daily for revival. The more we are revived, the more our will will be gladly submitted to the Lord. Order your free copy of Restore Us! by clicking here. And while you’re at it, order a free copy for your prayer partner, too.
   
   

That’s it for this month’s Personal Mission Field Workshop. Share your stories and ideas, or send your questions to the website, www.ailbe.org. Until next month, for the Fellowship of Ailbe, and for the Personal Mission Field Workshop, this has been T. M. Moore.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.