What is God's will for our lives? It may seem, from a human perspective, that God's will for us is to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. However, it is more accurate, from God's perspective, to say that His will for us is to glorify Him by enjoying Him. So, it is a matter of perspective. And, since we have obtained such a great salvation, the will of God is that we see His purpose for our lives starting from before we were born. We were called from our mothers, and even when we were in sin and trespasses, He redeemed us. His purposing our salvation was when we were in sin to prepare us for salvation.It is God who calls us to salvation before we even understand what it means, and some of us learn about sin much earlier in life than others. Some of us are protected from sin and taught slowly and religiously, while others are brought to salvation more quickly. But we can all rejoice that our salvation originated in the eternal counsel of God and that the purpose of our salvation was decided long before we were even born.We should be grateful to God for His amazing grace in giving us salvation, which we could never earn or deserve. We should strive to live lives that reflect our gratitude.We are given life by God's choice, and we were forgiven at an early age so that He does not remember the sins of our youth. We do not need to return to the blackness of the guilt of sin that goes backwards, but we can have confidence in His love for us over our past experience. When we struggle with sin in our salvation, we can look back and remember when we were in bondage to sin. This will help us learn to rejoice in God's eternal love for us, and His faithfulness when we were unfaithful. His kindness, when we were at enmity with Him, and His patience when we were living in sin, are all things that we can be confident in. God's love for us is eternal, and He is always faithful, even when we are not. His kindness and patience are things that we can always rely on.The love of God for us is everlasting and transcends all time and experience. We can be confident that He was a Father to us even before we were saved, and that He kept us from dying before we could be given salvation. Our lives are under His eternal purpose and it is to our advantage to listen to His voice in the word of God and see how much He has determined to advance His purposes through His divine call of revelation. Because it is of utmost importance for God to be the rock of our salvation, we should take care to never stray from His path.When we stand on the rock of our faith, we are lifted up above our circumstances and the people who have no regard for God's purposes. When we experience this effect, our Father's voice from our finite view, we experience His love that surpasses our finite relational past by His eternal love sustaining us. We are filled with the eternal Spirit of God who gives us a vision of the eternal past, and we are protected from the danger of being trapped in the damage of this terrible problem with past pain. This is experiencing Christ as the rock.When we take refuge in Christ, we are not just seeking shelter from the storm, but rather His work in our lives that brings about transparency of our past and the weakness we experience as a result of past pain. He shields us from the present pain that stems from that past pain. When we know of our Father's love in an experiential way, in our lives and His eternal purpose for us to surpass this earthly struggle. In Christ, we find hope for the future and a meaning for our lives that goes beyond our current circumstances.When we feel as though God is hiding Himself from us, we may start to feel less confident in our ability to overcome struggles. This is because we become highly dependent on the Holy Spirit for comfort and protection when God is our shield. However, God allows us to experience tough times in order to help us grow our faith. If we never went through periods of difficulty, we would never learn to rely on God more. In the souls declining into the depths of despair, these self-righteous voices begin to sound louder, so the self begins to be agitated by remembering the former ways of being under the power of the world, the course of the world, the power of the flesh, and the temptations of the Devil.It is important for Christians to keep looking for deliverance, so their focus on Christ will become more important than temporary experiences of love and pleasure. We are often led down the road of tribulation and temptation, and it is easy for us to be led astray because the world loves self-righteousness. However, we should resist the temptation to be self-righteous. We sometimes get tired because we are not able to make God appear in the same way every time, and it may seem like He is hiding Himself from us. However, we should continue to seek the same experiences of God's eternal call, the sense of His love filling our every longing, and the power of His right hand putting us on the right path. Ultimately, we want to be raised up above our enemies and the self-righteous crowd.We are beginning to doubt ourselves and feeling like we can't trust ourselves anymore. This feeling of being abandoned is so hard to bear. We are pulled into this tension between the world that mocks us and the self-righteousness of those who say "I told you so." This shakes our faith. We are living in a time of darkness, where it seems like Martin Luther never happened and all that remains is the idolatry of saint worship and indulgences. The lure of the world is beginning to take over our devotion, and we are beginning to be misunderstood. Yes, this is a time of trial. It is very hard to believe in an eternal present Father who is fully able to come to our rescue without our help. It is so easy to fall into pragmatism.