How
To Determine God's Will for My Life
June 2001
| You may think,"
Surely there must be an easier way to decide what to do
with my life than to engage in this painful struggle.
Yes and no. These guidelines will help but I suspect
it will never be easy for you. After all God wants
you to learn to make difficult decisions. He wants
you to grow up. |
|
No. 1. Join God in what he is doing at this
point in history. When questioned Jesus said" I do
what I see my father doing". [1] The apostle Paul
said," Be imitators of me as I am of Christ."
[2] God makes history. At this point in time he is doing
some very interesting and very different things than he was
doing at other points in time. God is always the same.
You can count on that. You can discover what is unique
about what God is doing these days. The first and most
important criteria in deciding what to do with your life, is
look carefully at what God is doing and join him. You
can become part of his action and that will come naturally to
you.
No. 2 Obey God's Commands. The first and
most important commandment is love your God with all your heart
mind and strength [3]. The second is like it. You
are ordered to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
God commands us to: a.- love, b.- thank and worship him, c.
- spread the good news and heal people, [4] etc. Since
to love is to meet a person's need and since needs are definable
and knowable, there is no excuse for not knowing what you should
do.
No. 3 Listen to His Spirit. When God made
us His children He gave us His Spirit of love, courage and wisdom.
Because He is protecting our ability to choose, God's Spirit
speaks quietly and subtly within us. We must learn to stop scattering
and listen carefully. God's spirit can alert you to considerations
your rational mind would ignore.
No. 4 Do What Needs to Be Done. The parable
of the good Samaritan defines who is the neighbor. He
wasn't the man who lived next door. He wasn't the religious
person. He was the man who saw and responded to the person
in need. Now you must ask yourself," What are the
greatest needs in our world today?" There are approximately
60 million abortions annually. This means there are at
least 60 million innocent people dying every year for no good
reason. With rare exceptions there are no scientifically
justified surgical, medical, psychiatric or social indications
for abortion. This also means there are approximately
200 million women, men and children who are deeply damaged by
abortion. It's a huge epidemic. AIDS is tiny in
comparison. Using this criteria you should be trying to
determine what you can do to stop abortion and to treat its
devastating effects.
No. 5 Be guided by your blueprint. As a
unique individual you were designed for a unique purpose in
a unique time and place. Intuitively you will know who
you are and who you are designed to be. Therefore you
know what you need as you grow up. You were designed before
the foundation of the world [5]. Christians believe that
the universe was designed for humans not humans by the universe.
Like the honeybee you will feel most content and fulfilled doing
what you were designed to do. There are a variety of criteria
that will help you rediscover your blueprint. [6].
One of these is, who you dreamed of becoming when you were a
small child. God put those dreams in your heart.
You need to remember them and discover what they signified.
No. 6 Do What You Are Requested to Do by Others.
You cannot possibly do all you are asked to do or expected to
do. But sometimes God's direction comes in the form of
urgent pleas from other people. At the Angels direction
the Centurion sent messengers to Peter asking him to come and
speak the good news. [7] In a dream the apostle Paul saw a man
saying," Please come over to Macedonia and help us".
[8]. You may feel I can't keep extending myself.
Or you may think it is justified to conserve your resources
to look after yourself. God knows you better than you know yourself,
after all he designed you. Therefore he knows what you
can take. He will provide you the breaks you need when
you need them. Of course you will burn out. It's
the only way to go. You have to go out some way.
Would you rather whimp out, cop out, or rust out? You
are candle light to the world and candles burn out. Of
course God doesn't expect you to meet every request, but you'll
be surprised how much you can stretch if you put your health
and sanity and safety in his hands. Besides not infrequently
other people do know what they need, especially children.
When you cannot meet all these needs, you will have to ask for
help from God and from your neighbor. This is all part
of his plan to make you grow and keep you from pride.
No. 7 Work with a Partner. Jesus sent his
72 disciples out two by two. [9] We all need someone to
support us when we are misunderstood or attacked. We all
need someone to encourage us when we despair. We all need
someone to correct as when we are off track, to praise us when
we do a good job, feed us when we cannot feed ourselves, pray
for us when we believe God is not listening. Christ uses
the hands and hearts of our partner to show us His love.
The trick is to find the right person. [See how to choose
a mate on this web site.]
No. 8 Use Existing Resources. You do not need
to wait to: get enough money, build church, finish your
education or find the right job. There is always the urgency
in serving Christ but today there is almost universal agreement,
it is an emergency. Our civilization is going to Hades in a
hand basket rolling downhill at increasing speed. Yet
God owns the cattle on 1000 hills. [10] We need never
worry about having sufficient resources or that the task is
too large for just me and my partner. God is not interested
in what you achieve but what you become. You become the size
of the problem you tackle.
No. 9 Respond to a Specific Call. I believe the
last and least criteria is a special tap on the shoulder by
God. Yes you are specifically and individually invited to become
God's servant, a soldier in his army, a member of his family.
But once joined, you are now under orders. You wouldn't
expect the general to specifically invite each soldier to do
a specific task. God occasionally called people to do something
very unusual at a critical point in time. There are very few
calls in Scripture. There are many orders.
Using these eight criteria in rank order of importance
you should have less difficulty in determining what you should
do with your life. However it was never meant to be easy.
You would expected to get easier as you grow older but it doesn't
because God send you a more complex decisions.
Get moving. When you ask God to help guide
you and your trust He will, and you don't become stubborn, you
can count on him keeping you from doing something very stupid.
But it is impossible to steer the ship that is dead in the water.
So don't sit around pathetically asking God what to do.
Listen to his spirit and use your head. You'll be surprised
at the results. After all he loves you very much and wants
to be your friend. Herein lies both the privilege and
the problem.
To be God's friend you must choose to do so. He
never forces anyone to be part of his family. God created
us with choices to make and the ability to do so. First
we choose to be a child of God and then we make a whole series
of choices to help us grow and become mature friends of God.
A free choice would be one that had a 50-50 probability of any
particular outcome. Adam and Eve had a 50-50 probability of
choosing to know God, quietly walking and chatting with him
in a very beautiful garden or to become like gods ostensibly
knowing everything immediately. [11] Since that
time nobody has had a free choice. All human choices have
been influenced by individual genetic makeup, family heritage,
early development, nationality, education, government, time
in history etc. Some people have 80 : 20 probability of
coming to know God through Christ and others have a 20 : 80
probability. This inequality of opportunity gives people
major responsibilities toward others. If we believe all
men and women are equal and if we accept God's command to love
and if we recognize we have a relative advantage over our neighbor,
we must share. When we do not share it calls into question
our own beliefs. In fact we lose touch with reality.
When we lose touch with reality we are less able to recognize
all truth and we are more likely to go crazy. Unless we
share our relative advantage, we lose advantage of making choices.
Only God can put into action whatever he decides.
We have limited choice; limited by opportunity and limited by
ability. We are told in Scripture, choose you this day
who you will serve. [12]
God is pro-choice, in that he wants us to recognize
the necessity of choosing wisely. We can choose wisely
when we have all the facts available, when we have good trusted
advisers, when they are mature enough to understand the implications
of all the choices available and when we are not pressured in
any direction. God gives us a wide variety of choices
but there are some choices he does not want us to make because
they are his prerogative and only he is wise enough to make
the correct choice. For example choosing to abort or not
to abort an unborn baby. Only God makes choices of life-and-death
for others. But he protects our ability to choose and
doesn't immediately intervene when we make bad choices.
On many occasions he would like to protect us and those who
depend on us from the consequences of our bad choices.
But to do so he would have to suspend our privilege of making
choices.
How not to choose The Right Path for
Your Life.
No. 1. Wait till something turns up.
You may think you're being smart but waiting is after all a
choice. People can easily take advantage of you and make
things turn up that seem just right but are definitely wrong.
No. 2. Keep begging God to make the choices for
you. It may seem very Christian but it is certainly not
what God wants. If he didn't want you to make choices
he wouldn't give you choices.
No. 3. Wait for the right doors to open
and the wrong doors to close. You stop opening and closing
doors for your children when they were about 3. God doesn't
want you to stay at three-year-old Christian and keep opening
and closing doors for you.
No. 4. See what choice gives you a sense
of peace. Everybody's anxiety level increases when they're
trying to make a difficult choice. Whenever they decide,
what ever that choice is, the high level of anxiety subsides.
This sense of relaxation is interpreted as the peace that comes
with making the right choice.
No. 5. Ask a wise person to make a decision
for you. There is nobody apart from God who understands
you well enough to make the right decision for you, and God
will not do it. There are all too many gurus and charismatic
leaders who will happily making your choices to their benefit
and take your money.
No. 6. Look for a Sign. Jesus had
some hard things to say to those who were continually looking
for a sign. [13] The religious leaders of his day demanded
some hard evidence when the best evidence was standing right
in front of them. You can't expect something better than
the Spirit of God inside you.
No. 7 Test God. We are cautioned not to
test God. [14] You'll put out a flease hoping in the morning
when it would normally be dry or wet, it will be the opposite.
God responded (15) once but he wasn't very happy about that.
Like Adam and Eve we are inclined to choose
a quick fix rather than getting to know God communing with him
in a quiet garden. God wants us to be mature friends so he creates
difficult crises for us. For it is in the crises that
we mature. The crisis of a difficult decision is both the impetus
and the opportunity to mature. How would you like a friend
who was constantly asking you to open and close doors for him.
We would be inclined to say, "Grow up. Open and close
your own doors".
Struggling to make difficult choices will: 1)
make us mature, 2) increase our ability to make choices, 3)
increase our range of choices, 4) propel us to become wise judges.
The apostle Paul upbraided the Corinthians because they were
taking each other to court. [16] He said: "Isn't
there anybody among you who can make these difficult decisions?
You are embarrassing yourselves by admitting there is nobody
wise among yourselves, wiser than a heathen judge. Don't
you know what you get to heaven you will be judging the angels?
You have to be able to make difficult decisions if you are to
become a judge.
Stop complaining. Get moving. Listen
to God's Spirit quietly prompting you. Use your head.
Accept the immense responsibility and the amazing privilege
of making hard decisions. Instead of boring God with your
persistent complaining or appeal for help, immerse yourself
in the struggle and be glad of it. It is the most important
thing you are doing at this moment. You may not be happy
about it but it is good for you. So thank the Lord and
give him praise for his high expectations. . .
References:
1. Jn 5:19, 20
2. 1 Cor 11:1
3. Matt 22:37 39
4. Luke 10:9
5. Luke 10:33
6. Matt 25:34, Eph 2:10, Eph1:4
7. Ney P.G., Deeply Damaged, Pioneer Publishing
8. Acts 10:5
9. Acts 16:9
10. Matt 5:14
11. Luke 10:1
12. Ps 50:10
13. Gen 3:5
14. Josh 24:15
15. Deut 30:19
16. Luke 11:29
17. Matt 4:1
18. Judg 6:37
19. 1 Cor 6:2
