Figuring Out God’s Will for You

You come to a fork in the road you are walking along. There is no sign and the guidebook enigmatically warned of the two men who hang out there that one of the two always tells the truth, the second always lies. Because this is a puzzle, you only get one question to figure out which direction leads to your destination. What question will get you where you want to go?

The answer is that you can ask either of men the following while pointing either direction forward: “If I were to ask you if this is the way I should go, would you say yes?” The truthful man will give the correct answer. The liar will lie about what lie he would tell, which is a convoluted way of saying he would be forced to tell the truth.

But life is not a neat puzzle and we don’t face forks in the road watched over by a liar and a truth-teller. Instead, we face real-life issues of deciding what is the best course of action and there are not usually just two answers. And when there are just two answers it is a real dilemma, which is a question with two wrong answers, ranging from bad to worse, and we don’t know which one is worse. This is not a column about politics, which sometimes seems like a choice of the lesser of two evils or even a choice against the evil of the two lessers.

This is a brief take on the process of discernment, which for Christians is how we try to decide what God’s will is in a given situation. Do I do this or do that? “Which choice is better?” is one kind of question and it is a good one to ask as you weigh the options and consider the choices logically.

I always advise doing this and for important decisions it is good to think through your options with someone you trust. I also know that your intellect is God given and I assume that reasoning helps solve many issues.

But then there are other times when you feel like what you really face is not merely whether to go to Shoney’s or Cracker Barrel after church. It is something which is more important and for life-changing decisions, we really need God’s will rather than our own. So what is God’s will?

In some cases this will be evident by God’s word. If you are considering adultery or murder, God has already been quite clear about those and you are just trying to justify a wrong action with some complicated argument that will not likely even convince yourself, much less anyone else.

When the problem is less clear, such as whether to take one job or another, there are a few time-tested options. First, last and in between, pray. Really hand the decision over to God and ask for God’s will to happen.

One way of praying for this I have found to be powerful is to truly trust God and ask for the wrong doors to be closed and the right ones to open. This is not as easy as it sounds, because this is not The Price Is Right and we are not equally attached to all options. But if you want to get at God’s will for you, you do need to really give it to God and really open yourself up to the possibility that God will close off the direction you prefer.

The other downside to this approach is that discovering God’s will never seems to happen on my timetable. Sometimes nothing happens for months, while I wonder if my house was built with a special prayer-deflecting ceiling. But even in that case, I keep praying and keep trying options, trusting God to close the wrong paths and only open the right one. Sometimes what I thought or hoped was a wrong option opens up right away.

Yet, I have seen these prayers do amazing things. Not only will a sure thing suddenly go away, but sometimes what looked like a wall, becomes a wide open doorway as God makes a path where none existed before.

One wrong turn in discerning God’s will is to take something you get into your head to do and decide that God told you to do it. I’m not saying that God can’t speak to you. Not only would I be out of a job if that were true, but I have also experienced God speaking to me both in a still small voice of my conscious being nudged and in something more akin to a two by four to the forehead.

What I mean is don’t let an idea that comes to you alone become God’s revealed Word to you. God doesn’t work that way. Human pride works like that. So no matter how wonderful or even godly the idea sounds, don’t assume what came into your head, even in prayer, came there from God.

Instead, take an idea you think is of God and test it. Ask some trusted Christian friends to pray with you about it. Listen to the council of trusted spiritual advisers. And mostly listen for God to confirm it.

I find that God speaks in stereo and is extremely good at confirming something through various means. You will have someone say something in passing, and then hear something else on TV, and yet something else in a sermon or Bible reading and all of it will confirm what God is speaking to your heart. That is then much more likely to be God’s will.

Finally, you will know it is God’s will when you set out on that path and face some obstacles and find unlikely help and support that gets you through the problems. Then you can look back and say God was in it.

If as you have read this column some dilemma in your life has come to mind, begin to turn it over to God in prayer. Don’t ask for your will but for God’s. Let go of your timetable and your solutions and ask for God to close the wrong path and open the right one. Then keep praying. If it is of God, a way will be opened and that path will be confirmed. If it is not God’s will, you won’t want it to work out anyway.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)