Sermon Quotes on God's Will

Maya Angelou

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.

Brother Lawrence

If we are truly devoted to doing God’s will, pain and pleasure won’t make any difference to us.

Billy Graham

The will of God will not take us where the grace of God cannot sustain us.

Richard B. Hays

God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through the shameful and powerless death of the crucified Messiah. If that shocking event is the revelation of the deepest truth about the character of God, then our whole way of seeing the world is turned upside down… all values are transformed… God refuses to play games of power and prestige on human terms.

Timothy Keller

The basic purpose of prayer is not to bend God’s will to mine, but to mold my will into His.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

Eric Liddell

Obedience to God’s will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God’s will that brings certainty.

Thomas Merton

The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God’s will and his grace.

Mother Teresa

Holiness is doing God’s will with a smile.

Eugene Peterson

I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God’s business.

Charles Stanley

Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcomed. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.

Hudson Taylor

God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.

Corrie Ten Boom

There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety – let us pray that we may always know it!

Frank Viola

In the words of E. Stanley Jones, “The God I find in Christ is a God who overcomes evil with good, hate by love, and the world by a cross.

Ann Voskamp

Research actually indicates that if you write down what you’re grateful for, it increases your happiness by 25 percent. And who doesn’t want that? And God’s word says (1 Thessalonians 5), “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Who doesn’t want to know exactly what God’s will is for them?

Elizabeth Elliott

The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God . . . or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.

C.S. Lewis

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.

The Great Divorce

George MacDonald

“The one secret of life and development, is not to devise and plan . . . but to do every moment’s duty aright . . . and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first.”

Sir Gibbie: A Novel, J B. Lippincott

Bill Hull

God has not promised to bless our good motives, dreams, and innovation. He has promised to bless his plan; that plan is that disciples make other disciples—everything else is a sideshow.

Albert Schweitzer

We are gripped by God’s will of love, and must help carry out that will in this world, in small things as in great things, in saving as in pardoning. To be glad instruments of God’s love in this imperfect world is the service to which we are called.

John M. Perkins

Yielding to God’s will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace.”

Let Justice Roll Down

Jen Wilkin

If we want our lives to align with God’s will, we will need to ask a better question than “What should I do?” . . . God is always more concerned with the decision-maker than he is with the decision itself.

In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character, Crossway.

N.T. Wright

God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah.

Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision, IVP Press.

William Cowper

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never ending skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sovereign will.

Taken from the Hymn God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform, Methodist Publishing House.

Russ Ramsey

Cleopas presumed God’s faithfulness was best seen in his ability to shield his people from difficulty. This was a profound error common to most believers of his day and ever since. Glory preceded by suffering was God’s pattern throughout all of Scripture. One way the world would recognize the true Messiah would be by the way he would fit this pattern, not defy it.

Behold the King of Glory: A Narrative of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Crossway.

Augustine of Hippo

Do you hesitate, man, to go this way, when this is the way that God came to you?

“Exposition II, Sermon I on Psalm 30,” in Expositions on the Book of Psalms, vol. 1, Parker, 1847, 249.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Taken from Michael Harter, Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Everything that is—every tree, bird, star, stone and wave—existed first as a dream in the mind of the divine artist. Indeed, the world is the mirror of the divine imagination and to decipher the depths of the world is to gain deep insights into the heart of God.

Epilogue, 109.

Dante

And in His will is our peace.

Paradiso, Canto III, line 85.

Thomas Watson

If the worst things work for good to a believer, what shall the best things?” “Nothing hurts the godly . . . all things . . . shall co-operate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings.

A Divine Cordial; the Saint’s Spiritual Delight; the Holy Eucharist; and Other Treatises (The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 68.

Max Lucado

Does God guarantee the absence of struggle and the abundance of strength? Not in this life. But he does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.

God Will Carry You Through, Thomas Nelson, 2013, p.2.

Meister Eckhart

The reason we are not able to see God is the faintness of our desire.

George Mueller

Nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord’s will, whatever it may be. When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is.

Stanley Grenz

According to the New Testament, God wills that the church be a people who show what God is like.

Julian of Norwich

God wishes to be seen, and he wishes to be sought, He wishes to be expected, and he wishes to be trusted.

Revelations of Divine Love (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2011), 14, 28.

Nicki Koziarz

Hard seasons can cause us to look at God in an unhealthy way. Instead of asking God what He needs us to see in these seasons, we may constantly find ourselves asking Him if He really knows what He is doing. It’s not our questions for God that lead to soul-unhealthiness, but rather our questioning of God.

Flooded: The 5 Best Decisions to Make When Life Is Hard and Doubt Is Rising, Bethany House Publishers, 2021.

Ruth Haley Barton

The habit of discernment is a quality of attentiveness to God that is so intimate that over time we develop an intuitive sense of God’s heart and purpose in any given moment.

Taken from Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation by Ruth Haley Barton Copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Haley Barton. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Mike Wilkerson

God [wants to do something in you, yes; but beyond that, he wants to do something through you. He wants to make his name known.

Redemption: Freed by Jesus from the Idols We Worship and the Wounds We Carry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 172.

N.T. Wright

Trying to jump from an earthquake, a tsunami, a pandemic or anything else to a conclusion about ‘what God is saying here’ without going through the Gospel story is to make the basic theological mistake of trying to deduce something about God while going behind Jesus’ back.

God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath, Zondervan, 2020.

Bette Dickinson

When we follow Jesus, we may find ourselves like Mary–bewildered, flustered, and even a little frustrated at times by who he is. We may anxiously search for him, but we will always find him doing the same thing: fulfilling his Father’s purpose.

Elizabeth Elliott

The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.”

“The Journals of Jim Elliot”