God's Will Concerning Man

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

I can put it in more down to earth terms. When Adam was in the Garden of Eden, God's will was this: "Adam, there is an orange tree over there. You need some orange juice this morning, go and get some orange juice." That was the Father's plan. Through His friendship with Adam, Adam would know what God was thinking. God would meet all Adam's needs through His directing Adam how to develop the world.

In that way, the seagulls from the Santa Barbara coast would never have died from the oil and tar that we produce through our oil spills. It was the Father's will that He would direct us where to get the oil and how to develop the world's resources. It was the Father's will that we would work in love with Him and receive directions from Him. He would provide us our security as we lived in friendship with Him. In that way, we'd do our jobs because God was guiding us to do them, not because they give us security. We would get our security through Him and from Him and He would add all other things unto us.

It was the same with His love for us. It was His will that each one of you would know Him intimately and you would know that He knew your name. You'd be like friends who just walked with God -- like Enoch. In fact, it was the Lord's will that we would be like Enoch ("He was not for God took him") -- that we would never die, that we would be close in relationship with the Father and would just lift off this earth whenever He decided it was time for us to join Him in the other place.

So it was the Father's will that we would know that he loved us. If the one significant other in the whole universe loved us, what does it matter about anybody else? That would be the end of problems with self-esteem, problems with self-worth, problems with loneliness, and problems with feeling nobody appreciated us. It was God's will that we would live off His love and in that, we would find our security and our sense of significance coming from Him.

It was also His will that we would walk through this world with the owner of the world beside us -- that we would water ski in Hawaii with the owner of the waves right beside us -- that we would ski on the snow slopes in Colorado with the Father of those slopes right beside us. It was His will that we would get our happiness from walking in communion with Him as friend with friend. Therefore there would never be this desperate desire, "We have to get happiness, we have to get happiness", because we have happiness with Him.

So that was His will, loved ones. In friendship with Him, we would get all the sense of security that we needed because that's what love gives you. We would get all the sense of significance or importance that we needed because that's what somebody who loves you does for you. And we would have all the sense of happiness we needed because if you've had a dear friendship or a dear loved one whom you cared about, you didn't need anything else. You had all the happiness you needed with them. That was the Father's will.