Month: October 2023
Do you wish to live one life in common with God? Do you wish to be supremely happy, to be constantly over brimming with joy and peace, to possess God as the Saints in Heaven do; to perform divine acts continuously rather than human ones?
Gift of the Divine Will: Living one life with God Well, if you do, Ive got good news for you! God loves us so much that it always was His intention that we live with the gift of the Divine Will, that is, that we live one life in common with Him right from the beginning.
When He created Adam and Eve, He placed them in the Garden of Paradise, where they lived supremely happy. They reigned over Creation as little kings. They possessed sanctifying grace and the preternatural gifts of infused knowledge; freedom from every kind of physical evil, such as sorrow, sickness, injury, or death; freedom from concupiscence and sin.
Gift of the Divine Will: True Presence of God in Souls As great as these gifts were, they were given an even greater one, the gift of the Divine Will, which is the crown jewel of all the gifts. This gift of the Divine Will consists of the sharing with God His own Life, through an exchange and fusing of wills: we give our will to Him, and He gives us His Divine Will as the principal actor in all our acts. By letting God operate in all our acts, He lives and reigns in the soul as truly as He does in the Holy Eucharist.
Now, you may ask, what is the Divine Will? Well, it is pure Life, the vital principle which governs the light, love, and all the attributes of God Himself. It is the fountain of all grace and blessings.
One divine act of infinite merit Getting back to Adam and Eve, they lived one life in common with God. All their acts were performed in His holy Will, which made these acts perfect; and these acts gave perfect love, glory, adoration, praise and thanksgiving to their Maker.
Adam fails Gods test God, however, really wants to know if we truly love Him, so he asks of us a test: to give up acting with our human will. To Adam and Eve, it was not to eat of the fruit of one tree in the Garden of Paradise, and they failed miserably in this test. As a punishment, they not only lost the gift of His Divine Will, but all the other preternatural gifts.
Gods plan to restore gift of the Divine Will God, however, had a plan to restore this gift of the Divine Will to man. First, He decreed that His Son, the new Adam, would take flesh, live, suffer and die to redeem man from this original sin. This was accomplished through the cooperation of the new Eve, the Virgin Mary. But man had to merit this grace, and so it took the prayers, good works, and longings for the coming of the Messiah, by the patriarchs, prophets, and all the holy men and women, four thousand years to bring this about.
Luisa as first in the Divine Will Almost six thousand years after the creation of man, God decreed that the time for another new era of grace was dawning; that it was time to restore to man the gift of gifts, that of His Divine Will. Just as He chose to accomplish the Redemption through His Mother, the Virgin Mary, this time He chose another virgin, Luisa Piccarreta, to whom God gave this supreme gift of the Divine Will while she was only 24 years old, in 1889. Through Luisa, God wants to give this gift of the Divine Will to all who wish to receive it.
Riley, I would love to do what you do, but I dont have the gift of evangelism.” The words came from a well-meaning Christian who was referring to my street ministry. At the time I was training people in evangelism at my church every Friday night. We were taking teams into the city and seeing fifty to one hundred people pray to receive Jesus every weekend. I told that man that he could do what I dobecause he was a believer.
The Bible says, “And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord kept working with them and confirming the message by the attesting signs and miracles that closely accompanied [it]” (Mark 16:20, AMP). Amen. Signs and miracles will follow us as believers!
God has given certain gifts of service to us as believers. Take a look at them: “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip Gods people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ” (see Ephesians 4:1112, NLT).
The Bible tells us that these five-fold ministry gifts are for the “perfecting of the saints” to do the work of the ministry. Based on what we just read, the job of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers is to teach, train and equip you as a congregation member to do the work of building up the body.
But there is no such gift called “the gift of evangelism” recorded in the Bible. Its not your pastors job to fill the empty seats in your church. Its not your pastors job to reach your city.
Its yours.
Now, when Im sent to a church to do evangelism training, Im sent as an evangelist. But when Im not standing in a pulpit under the office of an evangelist, and Im simply going about my day, Im constantly listening to the Lord as to who He wants me to minister to. The Lord speaks to us constantly; all we need to do is tune in a little closer so we can hear what our assignment is for the day.
My family and I recently went to lunch at a local Italian restaurant. The place had just opened, and we wanted to try it out. The waiter seated us and handed us the menus.
I was in one of those moods in which I didnt want to even look at the menu; I just wanted to ask the waiter for a recommendation. When the waiter came to our table, my wife and daughters ordered from the menu. Then young man turned to me. “Sir,” he asked, “what would you like?”
I asked him what he would recommend. Happy to oblige me, he pointed to a particular item on the menu and said to me, “Sir, if I was on death row and this was the last meal I would ever eat, this is what I would order.” I was shocked by his comment about being on death row. But I knew at that point what the Lord was about to do. I ordered what the waiter had suggested, and it turned out to be an amazing dish.
When the waiter came back to the table for the check, I had another question for him: “If you were on death row and these were your last few moments to live, where do you think youd spend eternity?” The young man looked down and told me, “Im really not sure.” I shared with him the Scriptures from Romans from the script our ministry uses. And then I led him in a prayer to receive Jesus. During the prayer our waiter began to cry, and as he lifted his head, he said, “Thank you so much. I was just thinking about my life. I know I need God.” My family and I got ready to leave, and the waiter stopped by our table one more time. “I believe God sent you here,” he said.
God wants to use you today! Be bold and courageous! You dont need to have a five fold ministerial calling with a “gift” in order to see miracles and signs following. All you need do is listen to the little promptings you get every day from the Lordand then be obedient!