”Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other. Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone. See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people. Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil. Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful.“

‭‭1 Thessalonians‬ ‭5‬:‭12‬-‭24‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I watched a video a couple weeks ago on Instagram by @mikedonehey talking about this verse and the concept that God’s Will for our life is different from His plan for our life. In the video he mentions 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 where it says to ‘always be joyful, never stop praying, and always be thankful for this is God’s Will for us’. But if we look at the surrounding verses it gets a whole lot deeper. If you notice that instead of being focused just on our emotions, it’s also focused on our actions. How do you treat others? It’s more than just being joyful and praying 24/7, it’s encouraging others, taking care of those in need, honoring those in positions of spiritual leadership, not stifling the Holy Spirit… 

Let me read that again, ‘not stifling the Holy Spirit’, in other versions it says don’t put out the Spirit’s fire. What does that mean?! Well, what is the work of the Spirit? To be our guide, right? To be the voice and direction of God in our lives. So that means when we quench or stifle the Spirit we are silencing God’s voice. We can also assume that this can be in reference to our conscience. When we silence the Spirit we are numbing ourselves to our conscience. Let’s also assume that this “Will of God” that we pray so hard for comes by way of something we don’t like. If we ignore it, we are quenching the Spirit.

If you are in a time of searching for God’s direction and your prayer has been towards finding God’s will in your life. Then I encourage you to really study these scriptures. Really understand what it looks like to live a life in waiting. A life that is teaming with respect and dignity and love for those around you. A life of selfless giving. If we surrender our lives to this Will of God then He will give us His peace and make us holy. 

Even if your spirit is restless and you are growing impatient in this season of searching, God will be there to guide you and His peace will comfort you. God will be faithful towards us in the desires of our hearts and guide us according to what He wants for us. Our only job is to stay faithful to the mission God has given to us and stay vigilant in prayer. This is God’s Will for us in our waiting no matter what that may be for.