Seeking God's Will: Part 1

Hello, everyone! Good morning and welcome back to SURVIVING Student Ministry. Okay. Enough with the formalities!

This past week I have been thinking about and praying about our annual summer mission trip. Due to the economy and other financial situations it is even more important than normal that I (and my wife) seek God's will about the whens, hows, wheres, and whys of Villebrook's Mission trip. This started me thinking and I realized that Seeking the Will of God is not easy so I might as well write about it. I plan to break this up into three or four or more sections so it won't be crazy long. So here we go...

Seeking God's Will: Part 1

Let's start with the basics...

What does it mean to Seek God's Will?
According to Dictionary.com, Seek is a verb which means:

1. to go in search or quest of
2. to try to find or discover by searching or questioning
3. to try to obtain
4. to make inquiry
5. be sought after, to be desired or in demand

So if you chip down to the very basics/simpliest meaning, to seek God's will it to go in search of what God wants for you and your life. God wants you to inquire (ask) Him what His plan is for you. He wants you to seek Him and to desire to know Him and His plans for you.

What does the Bible has to Say about Seeking God's Will?
"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.'" Jeremiah 29:11-13

According to Jeremiah 29:11, God has a plan for us. This plan is His Will, and we will only find God's Will for us by Seeking God himself. To find God, we must "seek [Him] with all [our] hearts."

These are the basics. Now we have a foundation and basic understand of what it means to Seek God's Will. Next time, we will begin talking about How we can seek God's Will for us.

Check Out More Verses about Seeking God:

Deut. 4:29	Job 8:5-6
Deut. 12:5	Ps. 24:3-6
1 Chron. 22:19	Heb. 11:6

Hide it in Your Heart from Life as a Minister's Wife

Mission trip is just around the corner. In a few short weeks we will be having the parent/student meeting. We will talk about all the things that we are doing on mission trip. We will talk about where we are staying and how much it will cost. Plus we will be talking about the mission trip requirements.

This is the second year that we have done requirements for mission trip. They aren't meant to be so hard to keep people out. In fact it you are really committed and have a passion for going on mission trip the requirements will be easy. They are mainly based on church attendance. The other componenet is scripture memory. In light of this upcoming scripture memory challenge, I am posting a blog my wife, Christiana, wrote for Life as a Minister's Wife.

I hope you enjoy Hide it in Your Heart.


Recently, it was brought to my attention that there is a difference between memorizing scripture and hiding it in your heart. Yes, the two go hand in hand but the more I thought about it I knew that my friend was right. There is a difference! So that's what I am going to talk about today.

According to dictionary.com, memorize is #1 to commit to memory (I don't particularly care for definitions that use the defined word in them--thanks Dr. Fessler!) and #2 to learn by heart.

How many of us have memorized Bible verses to meet mission trip requirements or to earn stickers at Vacation Bible School? Do you remember them later? Maybe. Maybe not. We know them front and back and can recite them upon command--at least for a little while. But is that hiding them in our heart?

Psalm 119:11 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." The Hebrew word for hidden used here is tsaphan (tsaw-fan'). It means to hoard, protect, and treasure. It goes way beyond committing something to rote memory.

I believe that you can memorize a verse without hiding it in your heart, but you can't tsaphan (treasure, protect) a verse until you have first committed it to memory. If you are hiding scripture in your heart, you are putting it there intentionally with the purpose of guarding it from being stolen and to protect it as a vital part of yourself.

Are you hiding scripture in your heart or are you just memorizing it?

Share a verse that you have hidden in your heart. Wednesday, I will talk about a few of my life verses that I have hidden in my heart.

Hide it in Your Heart was written by Christiana Mustion on March 14,2011 and was originally posted on her blog Life as a Minister's Wife