How to Discern God's Will for Your Life

             

            Have you ever wondered what God’s will for your life was? Perhaps you have wondered at various points things like what job does God want me to work? Where does God want me to live? What college does God want me to go to? What cause should I donate to? Who should I marry? There are lots of times in life when we face decisions that are both extremely difficult and yet extremely important and momentous. And so we worry if we’re making the right choice, because a wrong choice could have big consequences. And so we pray to God for discernment. We ask for God to show us the way, to reveal to us what decision to make. But here’s the problem… if you’re like me, God’s will is not always so obvious in my life.

            Paul in Acts 16:6-10 though, he has God’s will made obvious for him. Paul is out on a missionary journey and he knows that he has been called by God to be an apostle to the Gentiles, to spread the gospel outside of Israel and the Jewish community. But the thing is, there are a lot of Gentiles in the world. So how does Paul know where to start? Whether to go west to Europe or east to Asia or south to Africa? It’s not clear in the book of Acts if Paul is being led directly by God every step of the way, but at least right here at this one fork in the road, Paul is given clear directions. The Spirit prevents him from going to Asia. The Asia they are talking about here is really the northern part of what is modern day Turkey. Instead, the Spirit tells Paul to go to Macedonia which is modern day Greece. And this is a momentous decision. This path brought Paul to places like Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth and other places where he’d establish important churches. And it was perhaps this very decision that had major effects throughout world history, with Christianity becoming more prevalent in Europe than in Asia for many centuries (even though tradition has it that other apostles like Thomas did make their way to Asia as missionaries). 

            The story of Paul’s decision here reminds us that we can’t be called to everything in life, our lives are limited by time and space and energy. It would be good for Paul to get to go to Europe and Asia, but sometimes we must recognize that though there are millions of different good things we could be doing in the world, we are called to just a few specific things. Not everything is yours to do. This was true even of Jesus in his earthly life. In Matthew 15 Jesus said that his primary call was to the lost sheep of Israel. Though he allows some interruptions to this primary call at times, Jesus spent most of his life and ministry with the Jewish people. His role was to bless Israel so that they can be a blessing to the entire world.

            So it’s ok to have interruptions at times, but we must also have a main task we are called to, because we can’t do everything. Paul can’t go everywhere at once, he must choose to go to Europe or Asia. And it’s a fascinating story there in Acts of how Paul is led by the Spirit to one option over the other. It shows how God is providentially guiding history and guiding our lives. But I think stories like that can also give us quite a bit of anxiety, because though Paul had clear revelation from the Spirit of what decision to make in that moment, so often it feels like we aren’t given that same clarity in our decisions. When we come to an important crossroads like Paul did of deciding, "Should I take this job or that? This role or that?", we may worry that we will choose the wrong way, that we might accidentally go to Asia when we should’ve gone to Europe, that we'll mistake what our main mission is.

            A lot of authors, recognizing our great anxiety in these various major life decisions we have to make have seen that they can make quite a bit of profit by pretending to have profound answers for us of how to discern God’s will in these decisions. But when you investigate what they're selling, many are just peddling dubious answers. The advice of some basically boils down to looking for coincidences in your life. Like if you’re trying to decide whether to major in math or English and you receive an unexpected gift in the mail of a Charles Dickens book, you decide that that’s a sign you’re meant to be an English major. The advice of others basically amounts to testing God, even though we are told not to put the Lord our God to the test. They have various mechanisms where they try to force God's hand into revealing something to us, like being like ok God, I'm going to open up the Bible at random and point to a random verse, and that's going to be how I know what you want me to do, you'll show me something in that verse. God cannot be manipulated in this way. Others tell you to rely on internal feelings and urges to discern the moving of the Spirit, and while the Spirit can move in that way, I've found it can be difficult to discern what is really the moving of the Spirit and what is our personal feelings or emotions, to discern what is my gut telling me not to do something and what is my gut just simply being upset from eating too much junk food too quickly. So there are a lot of dubious ways of trying to discern God’s will, and they can be dangerous. For there have been people in history who have thought they knew God’s will and used that as an excuse to do terrible things, things that were almost certainly not God’s will.

            In general, I think people are far too laissez faire with claiming to know God’s will, even otherwise godly Christians and pastors. Pastors, for example, when they switch churches, they often say something like "God called me to go there instead, that’s why I’m leaving." And I get why they say it, it means that nobody can question their decision making. But if they haven’t really heard definitively from God that call, well I personally would be scared to be saying God said, when God did not say. That’s what false prophets do. That is condemnable in the Bible. Why not speak with a little more humility, and say something like I sense God may be leading me here or there. Because so often we just use the God card as an excuse; like when someone breaks up with their boyfriend or girlfriend because, quote, “God told me to.” 99% of the time God did not actually speak to them saying that, they just are using the God card to avoid telling the person the real reasons they want to move on.

So, some people have dubious means of discerning God’s will, and some people are too quick to think they have discerned his will. But some gurus of discernment give less obviously dubious answers, they give answers that sound really smart and spiritual. Theologian Frederick Buechner, for example, says in terms of vocational discernment that where you are called to is, "The place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet." It’s a nice quote. It’s saying that God is calling you to something your deep inner self really enjoys and is passionate about, and something that can simultaneously benefit what the world needs in tangible ways. That sounds really smart, and might even often be right. But then I look at the call of Jonah. His vocational call was not in a place of deep gladness for him. He wanted nothing less than to have to go to Nineveh to preach there. Sometimes God calls us to do hard things that we really don’t want to do. Others say that vocational call should come from recognizing what talents God has given you and using those. So, for example, if you find you’re really really good at drawing art, that’s a pretty good sign God is calling you to be an artist. Again, this sounds pretty smart and might often be true. But then again God called Moses to be a leader and a speaker when he was slow of speech. God called him to something that seemingly was not where his talents lied. So how do we know God’s will for us?

            What it really comes down to is that no one has the secret knowledge of how to discern God’s will, and the true tools are fairly basic: read your Bible and pray. But these are not the most satisfying answers. Because while the Bible reveals a lot about God to us, you won’t find any verses in there saying, “Joel, you specifically are called to take this job at this time.” You simply won’t. And while we should certainly pray in hopes that God might make it more clear to us what decision to make, God simply doesn’t respond in obvious ways to all of our prayers.

            So unfortunately today I don’t have the silver bullet answer that everyone wants of how to definitively know God’s will for you in every decision of your life. But I do want to make a few points that will nevertheless be helpful for you. 1. It’s interesting to me that a lot of people who are really really concerned about knowing God’s will in certain major life decisions like where to work or who to marry, that many of those same people could care less on obeying God in matters where they are certain of his will. For example, when they’re dating, they really want to know who to marry, and that’s understandable, but they already know God is calling them to self-control and to avoiding sexual immorality, but some of them are just not interested in obeying those things in their dating journey. It's probably far more important for your life that you worry about obeying God in the aspects of his will that you do already know with clarity than it is to worry about following God in a decision where you are uncertain of what His will is. It’s more important whether or not you love your enemies and spread the gospel than it is whether or not you work at McDonalds or as a doctor. It’s more important whether or not you shun greed and live peacefully than it is whether you go to college at Mizzou or MACC. Focus on obeying God where you do know His will. Yes, be open to hearing if the Spirit is leading you in your present day decisions like the Spirit did with Paul, but for the most part, God’s will for you will be found in the Bible more than it is revealed anywhere else.

            Now here’s point number 2: God’s will is going to be done. God’s plans for the redemption of the world, for the salvation of the faithful, these things will be accomplished no matter what we do. We cannot impede God from accomplishing His will. If God wants us to choose one thing over another and we choose the wrong thing, guess what? God can steer us back in the right direction, just like God used a whale to get Jonah to Nineveh. If the decision is really that important, God will get us to the right place eventually. Further, we know God is someone who can work even evil towards good. Joseph’s brothers clearly disobeyed God’s will by selling him into slavery, and yet God used that very disobedient action to set up a way for Joseph’s family to survive a famine. God will accomplish His will no matter what we do, so don’t stress too much about it. Obviously it is better for us if God’s will is accomplished through us instead of in spite of us, but take heart that his will will be accomplished.

            Point number 3: God doesn’t micromanage us. What I mean is God will reveal some things to us but not everything to us. God will likely not reveal to us exactly when we need to wake up each morning, exactly what clothes we need to wear, exactly what food we need to eat. God has given us freedom and gifted us with reason. He wants us to use those things to make choices for ourselves based on what things we think are smarter and wiser decisions. If you want God to micromanage your life, He won’t. He doesn’t want you to be His robot with every aspect of your day commanded. If you aren’t hearing from God’s Spirit or from God’s words in the Bible a direct reason to pick one decision over the other, then use your own personal discernment skills. Maybe God wants to give you freedom to choose. And don’t live with anxiety as if every decision of our lives is as momentous as Paul’s Europe vs. Asia moment where only one decision aligns with God’s Spirit and God’s will. Most decisions have two or more options that are all probably fine options.

            And finally, point number 4: Want to know God’s will? Jesus says that he is the way. Walk like Jesus walked. Live like Jesus lived. Then you will be living out the will of God. Jesus’ life is of course not a step by step blueprint for our lives, but it is a model that we are inspired by. If our lives are marked by service and truth and love and sacrifice, well, that’s a good sign we are living in God’s will.

            So, in conclusion, spend some time in discernment seeing if God is calling you to something specific in your life right now. Might you have a main mission that is yours to do? Seek to follow the Spirit, but don't get lost in worry about your decisions, because God's will will triumph. And if you merely obey what you do know about God’s will from the Bible, well that alone will be a task of sufficient difficulty to keep you occupied and to keep you doing great good for the world.