Will Of God

The will of God, divine will, or God’s plan is the concept of a God having a plan for humanity. Ascribing a volition or a plan to a God generally implies a personal God (God is regarded as a person with a mind, emotions, and will).

Understanding God’s Will

Interpretations

Christianity

Leslie Weatherhead says that the will of God falls into three distinct categories; intentional, circumstantial, and ultimate. God intends for people to follow his guidelines and do the right thing; God set the laws of physics and chemistry into play, and those circumstances will sometimes cause difficulties. That does not mean we should not struggle against circumstances to create God’s ultimate will, a peaceful world dominated by love and compassion.

By Leslie D. Weatherhead – Will Of God Revised

Deism

As for Deism, it has been explained:

In general, the deists believed reason to be an innate faculty of all people. Reason, the very image of God in which all humans are created, makes possible knowledge of the will of God. By the exercise of reason, people possess the possibility of adopting a natural religion, that is, a religion grounded in the nature of the universe. At creation, God established this rational order, but although the prime and necessary cause of this order, God had become increasingly remote. The world, nevertheless, continued to function according to the laws that God had established at creation, laws that operate without the need of divine intervention.

Islam

Main article: Divine Decree and Destiny in Relation with Divine Will and What Is Divine Decree?
See also: Inshallah, Mashallah, and Predestination in Islam

In Islam, submission and surrender are terms referring to the acceptance of God’s will.

God registers everything in His Knowledge in a record and gives it its own particular characteristics, appointing for it its life span and provision. He also (pre-) records when and where one will be born and die and what one will do during one’s whole lifetime. All this takes place by Divine Will.

Divine Decree means the execution of the decisions or judgments of Destiny. It includes man’s actions and God’s creation of them at the same time. That is, man wills to do something, which was (pre-) recorded in Destiny and God allows him to do that and brings it into existence.

Sikhism

Hukam is a Punjabi word derived from the Arabic hukm, meaning “command” or “order.” The whole of the Universe is subject to the hukam of God and nothing happens that is not the will of God.

It is by the command of God that we are born and we die. In the Sikh scriptures, the founder of the religion, Guru Nanak says:

O Nanak, by the Hukam of God’s Command, we come and go in reincarnation. ((20))

— Japji Sahib Stanza 20

Judaism

Traditionally, Judaism holds that YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the national god of the Israelites, delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at biblical Mount Sinai as described in the Torah.

See also

• Destiny
• Deus vult, a Latin expression meaning “God wills it”, canonically expressed at the outset of the First Crusade.
• Divine law, any law that, according to religious belief, comes directly from the will of God, in contrast to man-made law.
• “God willing” is an English expression often used to indicate that the speaker hopes that his or her actions are those that are willed by God, or that it is in accordance with God’s will that some desired event will come to pass, or that some negative event will not come to pass.
• Karma
• Plan of salvation, in general Christian concept.
  • Plan of salvation (Latter Day Saints) is the view of God’s plan as described by the Latter Day Saint movement.
• Predestination
• Providentialism is a belief that God’s will is evident in all occurrences. It can further be described as a belief that the power of God (or Providence) is so complete that humans cannot equal fully understand it.
• Will (philosophy)

Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia