God is a God of Purpose: He Created all things for His Will to Fulfill His Purpose

Our God is a God of purpose, having a will of His own pleasure; He created all things for His will that He might accomplish and fulfill His purpose, which is to head up all things in Christ.

This week we come to a new morning revival on the 2019 Thanksgiving Conference, with the general subject of, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ, and this week’s topic is, The Will of God concerning the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ.

Our Christ is all-inclusive and extensive; however, what about our enjoyment and experience of Him, and what about our personal view and knowledge of Christ?

The majority of our brothers and sisters in the Lord, wherever they may be and in whatever religious entity they may meet in, may have a small and limited Christ.

Many think and know that Christ is God who became man to live a perfect life on earth, went to die on the cross for our redemption so that our sins may be forgiven and we may have eternal life. Eternal life usually is perceived as being eternity in heavens with God. Then, Christ ascended, and now He is in the heavens; one day He will come back.

This view and appreciation of Christ is not wrong but it is elementary and narrow. We need to see from the Bible how God has an all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and He wants His Christ to be our everything for our experience.

Especially as we read the epistles of Paul we can see how wonderful, how all-inclusive, and how extensive our Christ is.

And God’s will is that this Christ would be dispensed into us, wrought into us, and formed in us; God wants His Christ to become our everything so that He may be reproduced in us, He may head up all things in our being, and He may have the first place in all things.

Paul was chosen to see the Lord’s face and hear His voice; when the Lord met him, he asked the Lord two questions, Who are You, Lord? and, What shall I do, Lord? The Lord revealed Himself to Paul as the Christ, the corporate Christ, Christ the Head with His Body.

Then He directed Paul to go to a little member called Ananias, and this one told Paul, The God of our fathers has previously appointed you to know His will. Wow!

From this time onward in the New Testament, we have a full revelation of God’s will, the same will that the Lord told His disciples to pray for in Matt. 6. God chose Paul to know His will and to see the righteous One and to hear the voice from His mouth.

God set him to be a witness of Christ to all men, a witness of the things he has seen and heard.

Later in Paul’s life the Lord intervened sovereignly in his environment and limited him, imprisoned him, stopping him from doing any outward work; there, in prison, he had the heavens opened, he saw the righteous One, he heard the voice of His mouth, and God’s will was made known to him.

Then, Paul could write something quite comprehensive concerning God’s will, and now we have the revelation of the will of God.

God is a God of Purpose: He Created all things for His Will to Fulfill His Purpose

Our God is a God of purpose, and He created all things for His will so that He might accomplish His will and fulfill it (see Rev. 4:11; Eph. 3:9-11; Col. 1:9).

God has made known to us the mystery of His will (Eph. 1:9), so we shouldn’t be unwise but understand what the will of the Lord is (5:18). In Rom. 12:2 the will of God is the church as the Body of Christ to be the fullness of the One who fills all in all.

In Colossians the will of God relates mainly to Christ. If we seek God’s will for us, we take ourselves as the center of our personal universe; the self is the center, and our prayers are our asking the Lord to reveal His will for us.

There are so many books on knowing the will of God for our life, but who speaks of knowing the will of God for God?

All things were created – the entire universe was created because of God’s will; God’s will is the source. We do need to know what God wants us to do in this or that matter, but this is secondary at most; God’s will is focused not on us but on the all-inclusive, extensive Christ.

As Paul was writing to the saints in Colossae, he was writing to believers he has never seen; in Col. 1:9 he said that, from the day that he heard of their faith, he did not cease praying for them that they would be filled with the full knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

None of us can say that we are full of the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding; at best we can say we have a partial knowledge of God’s will with a measure of spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Then in Col. 4:2 Paul referred to Epaphras, who was from Colossae and was the one who brought his fellow country people to the Lord; concerning him he said that he struggles for the Colossian saints that they may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

If we begin to see this revelation and realize that this is God’s eternal and perfect, foreordained will of God, then we will know God’s will for our life in a significant way.

In Rom. 12 Paul speaks of the will of God which is perfect and good; His eternal will here refers to the church, the Body of Christ. This is the will of God: the all-inclusive, extensive Christ and the church as His Body, His fullness.

God’s will is God’s wish; it is what He wants to do. God wants to impart more of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ into us, so that we may enjoy and experience Him more.

God’s good pleasure is of God’s will; His good pleasure is embodied in His will (Eph. 1:5).

When we do God’s will, we touch His enjoyment, what delights Him. God’s will is His determination for the carrying out of His purpose.

Our God is a determined God; we don’t know how He does it, and we are not robots for Him to control, but God will accomplish His will.

God created us with a will, but when He is determined for us to do something, He has a way of doing it; our God is relentless, He is determined, and He is thorough – what He begins, He also completes.

Lord Jesus, fill us with the full knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding! Cause us to know the will of God for God, that is, what is on God’s heart for Him to do and why did He create all things according to His will. May we know, enjoy, and experience more and more of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and may we allow this Christ to fill and saturate us for the producing and building up of the church, the Body of Christ! Amen, Lord, may we settle this in our being once and for all, that we exist for the will of God, we breathe for the will of God, and we do everything in the light of the will of God!

God’s Will is to Head up all things in Christ for Him to be the Center and Everything

God has made known to us the mystery of His will through His revelation in Christ, that is, through Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension (see Eph. 1:9; 3:9).

God works all things according to the counsel of His will; God’s will is His intention, and His counsel is His consideration of the way to accomplish His will (Eph. 1:11).

First there’s God’s will, and with God’s will is His pleasure, the purpose which He made in Christ. Then the three of the Godhead had a council concerning how to carry this out in thorough detail, and the decision made is called His counsel.

Now there’s the counsel of His will, the way He will carry His will out.

In His plan God wants Christ to Head up all things (Eph. 1:10). He created the whole universe for Christ; whatever God planned and did was for Christ to be the Head, the center, and everything. In God’s first creation Christ is the first, the One who has preeminence among all creatures; all the things in the old creation were created in Christ, through Christ, and unto Christ (Col. 1:15-16).

All things in the universe cohere, subsist together, and are compacted as one in Christ (v. 17), and He holds all things together.

We can see the beauty of the universe and the oneness of all things in this universe, and if we know the will of God we realize that Christ is the power by which all things cohere. Christ is the center of God’s creation and He has the first place in all creation.

In the new creation Christ is the Firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18); He is the first in resurrection, and He has the first place in the church as God’s new creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15).

The new creation is something of the old creation that passes through death and enters into resurrection; Christ has the first place in the new creation. Christ is also the Head of the church, the Body of Christ; He is also the constituent of the Body, being all the members of the Body and in all the members (Col. 3:11).

Christ Himself is the Body (1 Cor. 12:12); everything in the Body, the church, in a positive way and in the proper condition, must be Christ Himself.

Christ is everything in the new creation, and God desires to head up all things in Christ for Him to be the Head, the center, and everything.

All the positive virtues that we may have and everything positive that we possess has to be referred to Christ and have to even be Christ. Christ has to become our patience, our humility, our wisdom, our knowledge, and our insight.

When Christ becomes everything to us, we are headed up in Christ and the will of God is accomplished. God desires to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heaven and the things on the earth, in Him!

Thank You God for making known to us the mystery of Your will through Your revelation in Christ! Hallelujah, God works all things according to the counsel of His will to head up all things in Christ! Lord, head us up in Christ; head up all things in our universe and head up our whole being in Christ! Reveal what is in Your heart concerning us and work this out in us for the good pleasure of Your will. May our life be for Your will; may our living and doing be all in Your will and according to Your will for Your will to be done and carried out!

Read this article in the Romanian language / citiți acest articol și în limba română la următorul link, Dumnezeu este un Dumnezeu al scopului: El a creat toate lucrurile pentru voia Sa pentru a-Și îndeplini scopul.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, CWWL, 1964, vol. 1, “The Centrality and Universality of Christ,” pp. 174-175, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ (2019 Thanksgiving Conference), week 1 on the topic of, The Will of God concerning the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – God the Lord has spoken, and His heart disclosed, / That His Son should have pre-eminence in all, / That in His dear Son He might be glorified / Midst all His creation, either great or small. (Hymns #800)
  – Once it was the blessing, / Now it is the Lord; / Once it was the feeling, / Now it is His Word; / Once His gift I wanted, / Now, the Giver own; / Once I sought for healing, / Now Himself alone. / All in all forever, / Only Christ I’ll sing; / Everything is in Christ, / And Christ is everything. (Hymns #513)
  – God planned His great purpose in eternity, / This great will was hidden, a great mystery; / With wisdom and prudence He has made it known, / Through revelation, in Christ, the Son. / Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, / To head up all things in Christ, / The things in the heavens in Him; / Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, / To head up all things in Christ / And the things on the earth, in Him. (Song on, Unto the Economy)