What is God's Will for My Life?

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Prov. 3:5

Many times throughout a week, I talk with people who express a desire to know what God's will is for their life. They feel gratitude for having escaped death's grip and feel a burden to live up to the purpose or the job for which theyve been spared. The quandary comes, however, in that they don't know exactly what that purpose is or how to go about finding it.

I can relate when people tell me this, because, many times, I've felt the same way. I remember when I first began to sense God's calling on my life, I felt at a complete loss for "knowing" what God wanted me to do. I often prayed that God would reveal His will to me and became frustrated that it wasn't apparent to me. I felt like I was wasting my time and effort during this time, because my wife and I were moving from one ministry to the next without any sense that we were accomplishing anything. We helped out at the international mission at our church and a whole host of other church ministries without ever gaining any clear sense of direction.

Once I understood the nature of my calling, I began asking God about the how or where of His will. My question became, "How do I accomplish Gods will?" God wasn't any more forthright on this aspect of His will than He was with the what part.

Now when this happens to me, I get frustrated with God's apparent lack of timeliness. If you've ever experienced that overwhelming sense of "how in the world am I going to do that" after you finally discovered your life's purpose, you know what I mean. You also know what I mean if you've ever been faced with a choice between two equally good jobs, two equally good career choices, or the like.

Caught in a trap
Sometimes the momentous decisions just described can paralyze me. I believe we can get so worried about knowing the details of God's plan, written out in triplicate, that we can get caught in one of two traps. The first is becoming frozen by the fear of missing God's will; I know I do this. Every step can become a potential landmine, as we seek to fulfill our calling "without stepping outside of Gods will." The pressure can grow to such an extraordinary level that any momentum gained in this minefield of faith can't last long. It's hard to find any joy in accomplishing God's will when we're constantly worried about being punished. Pleasing God then becomes like pleasing the earthly father who refuses to be satisfied with his child's accomplishments; the child eventually gets so tired of trying to figure out what his disappointed father wants of him, he just gives up trying.

The other trap we fall into in seeking to know God's will is that of taking matters into our own hands. I think most people with a strong sense of calling or destiny probably fall into this second category. Doing this, however, means relying on our own understanding, something this passage prohibits. The main reason for this is because we are to "trust in the Lord with all our hearts." Humankind was created to reveal Gods glory through our dependence on Him "that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God; there is no other" (1Kings 8:60). When I lean on something other then God, I'm proclaiming there's another power to which I can turn, and I make that thing an idol.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and He will make straight your paths. Prov. 3:6

Hide and seek
The good news in discovering God's will is being assured that He's not playing hide and seek with His children. God, I'm happy to report, doesn't find pleasure in playing guessing games with His will or obscuring His will so He might punish you when you can't discover it. This doesn't mean, however, that God will necessarily make us privy to His secret council.

Dependence on God is His will for your life
Always having to know everything shows lack of dependence on God. My daughter is at that age where she's gaining a greater sense of independence and doesn't always trust her parents' sense of direction. Several times, during a recent vacation, she questioned her mother's direction. Mom finally told her to simply trust our directions. "If you know that we love you," she stated, "you know we'll not steer you wrong. Have we ever steered you wrong?" My daughter had to agree we had never done so. Likewise, I believe we doubt God's sovereignty when we express a constant need to know were He's leading us and how He'll get us there.

Having to know the details of God's plan for your life is not dependence on God. The main thing about dependence on God is being content with His direction and trusting Him, whether He chooses to reveal to you what job you are to take or not. If I'm relying on the details of what God is going to do with me, where God is going to use me, and how He'll get me there, then I'm relying on something other then God. I'm making the facts into an idol rather than simply having faith in God's ability to be God and perfectly direct my life.

So what is God's will for your life? According to the passage we just examined, it's for us to trust God's leadership so that through our dependence, we may prove His ability to direct our steps. His will for our lives has two parts: ours is dependence and His is directing us. If we're trusting His leadership in everything we do, we'll be pleasing to God in whatever we do and wherever or however we do it.

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