I’m sorry to be so absent lately in blogging but I’ve been traveling a lot and will again within a few days. So I thought I’d try to fit in some thoughts before I leave again.

I’m thinking of one of my spiritual pet peeves: that troubles indicate how close you are to walking in God’s will. Maybe you’ve heard it expressed this way:
“I must be following God’s will because I’m getting a lot of opposition from Satan.”
Or the reverse: “I better question whether I’m in God’s will because Satan seems to be leaving me alone. Nothing is going wrong.”

I don’t find anything in Scripture to support this. If you know of something, let me know.

It’s a pet peeve for me because I think it falsely leads people to evaluate their direction by something that is fickle. All of us experience good and bad times. For the longest time Job walked seemingly in peace and quiet, following the Lord. Eventually, Satan got his nasty little fingers into Job’s life with God’s permission, but evidently for some time Job was in God’s will without anything bad happening to him. He didn’t change his course or make different decisions because things were going well. And when bad things happened, he stayed the same course of trusting God without thinking “Now, I’m really in God’s will.”

If we evaluate our walk based on our circumstances, then we’re focusing on our circumstances rather than God. We’re seeking the right way based on whether good or bad is occurring. I think that’s shaky ground. We should only seek God Himself for direction.

What do you think?