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GOD’S WILL AND GOD’S PERMISSION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 24, 2025 – There’s a difference between what God wills and what God permits.
This is important, so listen up here.
Jesus always did that which pleases the Father. We know that Jesus always did that which pleases the Father because he told us he did: “I always do that which pleases the Father.” When he said he always did that which pleases the Father, Jesus meant he always did God’s will. Again, this is important, so listen up here. It’s important because God’s will is not the same as what God permits, and we need to know the difference.
GOD’S WILL
God’s will is that everyone should do what pleases him. God states multiple times in scripture that if we only do that which pleases him, life will be good for us, because then he can give us all the blessings he wants to give us during our time here. Doing God’s will and doing what pleases the Father is the same thing.
And what is God’s will as it plays out in our everyday lives? Keep the Commandments. Choose the good. Follow Jesus’ example in everything you do, say, and think. Keep your eyes on the prize of your eternal reward, not the earthly ones. Suffer what you need to suffer, whether as an earned reward or a test. Suffer patiently and in silence. Give what God commands you to give, speak what God commands you to speak, be silent when God commands you to be silent. Do whatever God advises you to do one-on-one. Help those he explicitly directs you to help. And remember that not everything God tells you needs to be told to others. Most of what God told Jesus he kept to himself.
GOD’S PERMISSION
God’s permission is not God’s will: God’s permission is our free will intersecting with God’s justice. Doing what God permits is not the same as doing God’s will. Jesus didn’t say he always did that which the Father permits; he said he always did that which pleases the Father; he always did God’s will.
Satan does what God permits. Once upon a time (actually, once upon an eternity), Satan did God’s will, but that all ended with the rebellion in Heaven. Now Satan can only do what God permits: that’s his one and only job description. Satan and all those who follow him can only do what God permits. They cannot do more than what God permits, and you can bet the bank they won’t do less. They hate us and want only for us to suffer during our time here and then lose the reward of Heaven. No matter what they tell their human recruits when they’re enticing them into their ranks, Satan and his horde want only for us to suffer to the most extreme degree, ending with our eternal damnation. God wants the best for us and Satan wants the worst, which is why God strictly limits what Satan is permitted to do, as we see in Job.
God permits suffering as a reward for bad choices, but he also permits suffering as a test. He doesn’t will that we suffer; he permits us to suffer, but always with the proviso that our suffering, if we handle it righteously, will be to our benefit.
When God permits you to suffer, don’t try to avoid it. Don’t revel in it, either (it’s not God’s will that you revel in suffering; reveling in suffering is not a godly response: nor is boasting about it). Endure your suffering. Get through it. Come out the other side. Be silent in the face of God’s tests and negative rewards. If you have them coming, you have no right to complain; if you’re undergoing a test, you have no reason to complain, because “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called.”
God created evil and permits it to thrive only when and where it’s been earned. He doesn’t will evil; he permits it. He uses the forces of evil as a reward for bad choices and as temptations and tests, all of whose end goal is to bring us up higher. Even babies can be on the receiving end of evil, bearing in mind that souls come into the world already sin-stained. The only one who arrived here sin-free was Jesus.
TL;DR
God’s will is that we do what pleases him, like Jesus did, so that everything will be good for us. Jesus is our best and greatest example of how to do God’s will. But because not everyone chooses to do his will, God permits an earned and precise measure of evil to exist in the form of temptations, tests, and suffering, with the aim of bringing us up higher. God wills that we not only to come to knowledge of him – the ultimate good – but form a close and loving bond with him, like he has with Jesus. This can only happen if we do God’s will.
WHAT GOD PERMITS: ON THE RECENT JESUS REVIVALS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – Lots of Christians have been questioning whether the current popular “Jesus movement” is from God or not.
They’re right to question it. All mass movements that seem to have come out of the blue and yet still appear to be orchestrated should be questioned.
My response to “is it from God?” would be that whoever or whatever is behind the latest Jesus fad, God is permitting it. If God weren’t permitting it, it wouldn’t be happening. Nothing happens without God’s permission.
Nothing.
But just because God permits something doesn’t mean he supports it. It means he’s letting it happen as a means to an end. And anything God permits, he ultimately intends for the benefit of his Kingdom, even if in the short-term it looks like the opposite is happening.
When I was first born-again from atheism nearly 24 years ago, the first church service I went to was a “Marian apparition” pilgrimage, where Mary was supposed to have appeared in the shape of a water stain on the wall. Of course, in hindsight, it was all nonsense, but I ended up going to the service because someone recommended it to me. I was in Australia at the time, and the pastor at the church was a Canadian, so the person referring me thought it would be nice if I, as a Canadian, had another Canadian to talk to about my rebirth experience. All I remember about the service was that I cried all the way through it, and then afterward had a brief but very insightful conversation with the Canadian pastor. His kind and cautionary words remain with me to this day. When I returned to Canada a few months after my rebirth, I started going to Roman Catholic masses, because I thought that’s where I belonged, having been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant. I attended Roman Catholic masses all across Canada for the next three and a half years. I went nearly every day until God knew I was strong enough to be on my own, and sprung me.
My point in mentioning my experiences with the Marian apparition church and the Roman Catholic church, is that while neither of them (I believe) are genuine houses of God led by genuinely reborn ministers, they still serve a purpose. They gave me a place where I felt I belonged and offered me structured pastoral instruction at a time when I needed it, as I was a very spiritually young believer. Remember that Jesus approves the teachings of those who “sit on the seat of Moses”, though he cautions his followers to do as they say, not as they do. He also tells us that anyone who speaks in his name or performs miracles in his name, cannot easily “speak evil” of him, so we should let those people be, even if we doubt their spiritual pedigree.
I believe the same words of caution that Jesus gave to his disciples should be applied to this most recent outbreak of Jesus-mania.
In other words, we should be less concerned about whether or not God’s Holy Spirit is enlivening the latest batch of Jesus freaks and more concerned about helping those few (likely very few, but still some) genuine converts who are hungry and thirsty for the Word. That should be our concern – being there for the genuine converts. The movement itself, I believe, serves as an incubator for those few who have newly joined us in the Kingdom. The Marian apparition church and Roman Catholic church were my incubators, and I’m grateful to God that he provided them to me.
Still, I would recommend steering clear of these populist movements. Condemn them, no (again, God is using them for the Kingdom’s benefit), but join them, definitely not. Any genuine converts that may come out of the movement will eventually make their way to us, and we should be waiting for them and welcoming them. The rest, as Jesus would say, already have their reward. When they get bored of being Jesus freaks, they’ll just move on to the next mass fad, the same way that most of Jesus’ nominal followers left him when they got bored or when the demands got too great for them. He let them go, and we should let them go, too.
But those who genuinely want what God wants for them will never get bored of following Jesus and will only crave more and more demands put on them. The harder it gets, the more (they know) to lean on God; the more they lean on God, the closer they grow to him and to Jesus, and the closer they get to Home.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 