Are you afraid of God's will for your life? Before you answer a hasty, "Absolutely not!" let me challenge your thinking. Tradition and religion have often taught us that serving God will cost us. We grow up thinking that if we yield ourselves to God and His will for our lives, He's sure to send us to a tropical jungle as a missionary, or tell us to become preachers.

We're convinced that whatever it is, it will be so full of difficulty, we ignore the prompting on the inside of us to find out. We try to ignore it, and go on with our own plans for our lives, never really finding out what it is He wants us to do.

If you are one of those people, then you've never really gotten to know God. When you get to know the Lord, you learn that all He wants for your life is good. His will is something you can do. His will is not impossible, and it certainly isn't full of lack!

He says so in His Word. "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jer. 29:11 NIV). That's God's word to you. That's His heart toward you. God will never cost you. He will always add to you. He wants prosperity and blessing to be on His people. He even says in His Word that that's where He gets His pleasure (Ps. 35:27).

God has always had the best for us in His heart. Everything He's ever told us has been for our good and benefit. That's why we have to trust Him. We have to know that His will always does us good and never does us harm.

Most likely, whatever God's will is for your life, it's probably something you already know how to do. God always starts where you are. It's not likely that He will tell you to go to some distant land and be a missionary, at least not at first. He'll probably tell you to go across town one night a week and minister hope to the hopeless. Or, to start ministering to people in the hospital. Whatever it is, you probably won't need a passport right away.

The key to answering that call is found throughout the book of Jeremiah. In fact, I've learned the one key that will cause everything in your life, every problem, to be overcome, every situation to end up in victory. It's the key to answering that call that's been tugging at your heart, the key to walking in God's will for your life every day. It's a life-changing revelation contained in just a few words, "HEARKEN UNTO GOD" (Deut. 28:1).

Hearkening is "hearing and doing." When you "hearken unto God," you listen to Him, and you obey Him. The Hebrew word for hearken is "shama." It means "to hear with attention or interest, to obey diligently, to give heed to, to yield to, to listen to." In other words, it means to do what you know to do. If you are born again, you can hear the voice of God. You can listen to Him and obey Him. You can hearken unto God.

"Oh, but Gloria," you may say, "I can't really hear God." Yes, you can! That prompting in your heart to go and minister across town, or tell your next-door neighbor about the good news, is God talking to you. He's speaking to you through the Holy Spirit Who's prompting your spirit, your inner man. Every believer can hear the voice of God. You just need to spend time in His Word and learn to recognize His voice.

He wants to show Himself strong on your behalf, to bless you and to increase you in every area of your life. All you have to do to receive His blessings is to hearken to His voice, both what's in His written Word and what He tells you to do personally. Just do what He says. "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7).

Proverbs 4: 23 says, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Hearkening unto God, and to His Word, requires faithfulness. You can't get your heart full of the Word without it. Faithfulness is already inside of you, if you are born again, and faithfulness brings forth diligence.

All it takes to stir it up is a decision on your part to be a Word person, to spend time in the Word, to put God's Word first place and to obey what He says. It would be different if we didn't have the written Word of God. But Church, we have it. We have what God told Moses, what He said to Joshua, what He told Adam. We have what He spoke to the prophets. We have what He told Jesus.

We even have what Jesus said Himself! And we have the Author, the Holy Spirit, to reveal the spirit and truth of His Word. There is no reason for you and me not to know what God wants, or what God says. We can become faithful and diligent in the Word of God.

The book of Jeremiah is a great example of God's determination to get His Word to us. All through the book, God sends His prophet, Jeremiah, to talk to His people, to ask them to hearken unto Him. God repeatedly says, "Just do what I ask you to do."

Throughout the reign of every king, and there were several, Jeremiah kept telling the people to hearken unto God. In Jeremiah 2:13, God says, "For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." The people had forsaken God's plan for their lives, and made their own plan. They worshipped other gods and brought sacrifices before them.

Nonetheless, God was merciful. He continued to send Jeremiah to tell them, "Obey Me and you will prosper. Do what I say. Hearken, hearken, hearken." Well, they wouldn't obey. At one point they gathered together with their wives and firmly said, "We will not hearken." They dug their heels into the ground and would not budge. God can't do anything for someone who won't hearken.

Things haven't changed one bit since Jeremiah's day. The very thing that turned my and Ken's lives around more than 32 years ago was that we began to listen to God, and do what He said. I have known people in every situation you can think of - from terrible business failures to being seriously ill in their bodies. And yet, when they began to hearken to God and to His Word, their situations began to turn around.

The same is true for you. I don't care what your problem might be today. I don't care where you are, what kind of trouble you might be in, or the condition of your bank account or marriage. Your answer is the Word of God. And the one word in the Bible that will change your entire life is the word "hearken."

If you're facing trouble of some kind, and you don't obey God, you will continue to have trouble. You will continue to have trouble if you give the devil place in your life. If you are living immorally, you will not have peace. You can't walk in evil and have peace.

There's a story in Jeremiah about the sons of Jonadab who knew what it meant to obey. God told Jeremiah to go to these sons and tell them to drink wine. That's a really odd thing for God to send a prophet to do. But Jeremiah went. He was so wonderful. He was obedient no matter what God told him to do.

Jeremiah 35:5 records it this way: "And I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites pots full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink ye wine." But the sons wouldn't drink it. "They said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever: Neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents" (vv. 6-7).

God took notice of this one family for one reason: They did what their father told them to do. God pointed that out to Jeremiah. He said, "Why is it that Jonadab's family will do what he says? Why will his sons do what he says, but my sons won't honor me and they won't do what I say?" (vv. 13-16).

My goodness! I want to do what God says. I have decided not to put anything off, not to draw back. When we do what God tells us to do, we give Him honor. All God has asked us to do is to let Him be God... and to reverence Him. That means when He tells us to do something, we do it.

God can't do anything for people who won't hearken. He can't take you any further in your life than you are right now, if you won't hearken. But if you will hearken, if you will do what He says, He will take you to that place He has predestined for you. Jeremiah 33:3 says, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things."

You don't have to be afraid of God's will for your life. You don't have to run from God. Run to Him! He has something wonderful planned for your life. It's a plan that no other life has. Just like your fingerprint, it's been specifically designed for you. It's a plan to prosper you and not to harm you, a plan to give you hope and a future. It's a good plan!