Why You're Avoiding God's Will — And What It Says About What You Believe

Have you ever prayed like this: "Lord, let me tell you everything I need — but I've got to go before I hear what you want"? Maybe not out loud. But in your heart, you cut the conversation short before God could get a word in.

That's not a discipline problem. That's not even a prayer problem. It's a love problem. Because when you genuinely believe how much God loves you — when it gets into your bones — you stop running from his will and start chasing it.

Not believing God's love leaves you wide open to false doctrine.

We've established it as a pattern in this series: the root of nearly every dangerous false teaching is an incomplete picture of God's love. When you don't truly believe he loves you, lies about Him start to sound plausible.

Take the idea that God took your loved one. Only two times in all of Scripture did God take anyone — and when He did, there was no body to bury. So when someone tells you God reached down and took your brother, your sister, your child, to "need another angel in heaven" or "another flower in his garden" — that's not theology. That's a story someone invented to make tragedy easier to explain.

And it has driven people away from God entirely. I think of the account of Ted Turner — that one of the reasons he walked away from faith was because when his sister died, people told him God did it. His response? "If this is the way God is, then I hate him."

Can you blame him? No one told him about a God who loves. They told him about a God who kills.

That is the cost of false doctrine. And false doctrine finds its footing wherever the love of God is not believed.

The Holy Spirit is a good gift — and your Father gives good gifts.

Here's another lie that circulates in certain Christian circles: if you ask to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and speak in other tongues, you might end up with a demonic spirit instead.

I heard this one early — even got thrown out of vacation Bible school for less. And the story is always the same: a missionary, somewhere, recently, whose identity nobody can actually confirm. It was circulating 30 years before I ever got saved. An urban legend dressed up as a warning.

But let's answer it with the Word. Jesus said it plainly:

If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!

Luke 11:11–13 (NKJV)

If you — imperfect, fallen, finite you — know better than to hand your child a scorpion when they ask for an egg, do you really think the Father would give someone a demon when they ask for the Holy Spirit?

That is not Him. That is someone who does not believe the love of God taking a story and running with it.

God's commands are not restrictions — they're protection.

When I first got saved, my picture of God was the "don't" God. Don't do this. Thou shalt not do that. A list of rules with no explanation and no warmth behind them.

It took time to understand that every one of those commands comes from love. The Ten Commandments aren't God playing hall monitor over your life. They're a Father pointing at the red-hot burner and saying, "Don't touch that — it will hurt you."

And there's something else in those commands that took even longer to see: they reveal God's character. When He says do not steal, you know He won't steal from you. When He says do not lie, you know you can trust every word He says. The law is not just instruction. It's a window into who He is.

A God of love doesn't make up rules to cage you. He builds guardrails to keep you from walking off the edge.

Most people don't want to know God's will because they think He's going to ruin their life.

Paul writes in Colossians 1:9 that he prays "that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." That's a prayer worth receiving. But for a lot of people, it produces a quiet dread.

Because the running assumption is: if I find out God's will for my life, it's going to be something I hate. A mud hut on a mission field somewhere. The job nobody else wants. The calling that sounds like a sentence.

Someone told me once — with a straight face — "Find the thing you absolutely do not want to do. That's probably God's will for your life." What kind of picture of God is that? A Father running a science experiment, watching to see if you'll do the miserable thing. Treating you like you're in His petri dish.

And if that is your picture of God, then of course you don't want to know His will. Why would you walk into your boss's office every day if every single time He handed you the job nobody else wanted? Eventually, you make yourself scarce. You start praying with an escape route built in.

What God wants for you is better than anything you'd want for yourself.

Here's the truth that changes everything: God wants better for you than you want for yourself.

His Word says He is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all you can ask or think. That's not a motivational phrase. That means whatever good thing you could dream up for your own life — the best version of it you could possibly imagine — God's version is better. Before the foundation of the world, he had something in mind for you. Not to punish you. Not to stretch you into misery. Something that would bring you the most joy, the most fulfillment, the most richness.

The Word says He gives us all things richly to enjoy. Not to tolerate. Not to suffer through. To enjoy.

Does that mean there's no hard work? No. Anyone who's serious about getting strong knows the training costs something. But the end result — the thing God has prepared for you — is worth everything the process required.

When you believe His love, you'll want to know His will.

Here's what shifts when the love of God stops being something you know about and becomes something you actually believe: you start chasing His will instead of avoiding it.

You'll spend hours seeking His face. Not because you have to. Because you know that whatever He shows you is going to be more than anything you could have mapped out on your own. You trust the source. You trust the love behind it.

But if you don't believe that love — if somewhere in the back of your mind God is still the boss with the junk job — you will keep running prayer conversations that end with "I've got to go, Lord. We'll catch up on what you want later."

This is why knowing and believing the love of God isn't just a nice devotional topic. It is the foundation of your entire walk of faith. Everything flows from it. Your prayer life, your willingness to seek His will, your ability to receive from Him — all of it rests on whether you genuinely believe He is for you.

Make a decision today. Not just to know about it. To press into it, hold on to it, and let it change the way you come to Him.

He is so in love with you that from the foundation of the world, He had something prepared. Go find out what it is.

Fight To Win.