God's will for YOU

     When I was a newly saved teenager, and even into my twenties, I was very concerned about God’s will for my life. I pictured it as a fixed plan with all the details laid out as to education, job, location, wife, and all the rest. Any preacher who ventured to speak about knowing God’s will had my full attention. But they never answered my questions the way I wanted.

     I finally had to let go and more or less follow my own inclinations. I’m a firm believer in free will and now, looking back, I see that my picture of God’s will for my life was rigid, fixed, and far from free. In fact I now believe that the approach I finally took was exactly what God wanted, with the proviso that each decision should consciously be made to please the Lord.

     To illustrate from my own life—I studied chemistry in university. I was never that good at it, but at the time all the money was supposed to be in science and technology. (Not the best choice!)  When I first came to Toronto, there were two churches I considered joining—one had relatives and friends, the other was much closer to work. I chose the one closer to work and my home, as being the more God-honouring, and He blessed me in turn, by having me meet my future wife there. (A good choice!)

     To summarize, my understanding of finding God’s will for your life is this:—

•  Realize that God has no fixed mould of a plan that you must fit into. That would be determinism, and complete over-ruling of your free will.
• Read your Bible—this is the only place where you can “find out what pleases the Lord” (Eph. 5:10) and this is where God speaks: “Listen to Him!” (Matt.17:5)
• Make good choices. We learn how to make good choices by reading and listening and praying. For example, when two or more alternatives face you, try to prioritize them from “most pleasing to the Lord” to “least pleasing”, bearing in mind your own gifts. Aspiring to be a nurse when the sight of blood makes you ill, would be inappropriate.
• Follow other general guidelines set out in Scripture for all believers, such as, “not giving up meeting together” (Heb.10:25); “do not be yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor.6:14); “on the first day of every week…set aside a sum of money” (1 Cor.16:2); “love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8); and “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable…think about such things.” (Phil.4:8) 

     There are many other suggestions that could be given, but we want to keep this simple. God has given us a will that can agree with Him or oppose Him. Once again, a motto that I’ve tried to apply to my own life is:

“Find out what pleases the LORD!”