What is God's will? Can you make the wrong decision and step out of it? What would you say to someone facing two apparently neutral directions in life who came to you for advice? What would be the signs that one option is really God's will while the other isn't? Would a mistake take someone outside of God's will?
I don't know how much of a comfort this will be to you, but this is what I think: you can't step out of God's sovereign will.
Take a look at Proverbs 16:9:
In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.
This says to me, "Make your decisions, but know that you're not in control."
Choose. Make choices. Take left turns and right turns. Make decisions. But realize that God is in control. And in that sense, there is no way you can walk out of God's will. Life is not a chess game with God just waiting to crush you when you make the wrong move. I know we have been trained to think that way sometimes, but that's not how it works. Either God is in control or he isn't, and if he is, it should empower us to make choices with confidence, with faith.
Here's another verse that gets trotted out when talking about God's will, and I think we have to read it right to get it right:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Verse 5 says not to lean on our own understanding, which some people say implies we need clear direction from God to make apparently neutral choices because our own understanding is faulty. But what it really says is, "You have your own understanding, naturally. But don't trust in that. Have your understanding, but trust in God." It doesn't say wait for God to send you a text message telling you which job to take, which school to go to, which breakfast cereal to eat. It just says to trust God, not yourself. It says God is in control, so don't take the glory.
Look at verse 6: "In all your ways acknowledge Him." How do we do that? Does that entail having some secret knowledge about what specific choices to make? No. It means, making a choice, stepping out in faith, and acknowledging God as being in control of your life. In all you do, stay close to God. God will lead, God will guide, even as you make decisions. We can be ridiculous about this stuff. We spiritualize our indecision and pass it off as "waiting on God." When really we are just cultivating anxiety and worry, and ultimately, discontent with God for not speaking to us.
This stuff paralyzes well-meaning Christians who are deathly afraid of not doing God's will. What if I choose the option that is not God's will for me? God will hate me, and everything will go wrong. And so we enter this sort of stasis where we don't make any decisions or go anywhere for fear of stepping outside of God's will and getting zapped. If God's not going to tell me which decision to make, then I just won't make any. At least until he finally tells me. And so we have generations of Christians who think faith means doing nothing until God prompts them instead of walking forward and trusting God wherever their circumstances find them.
I call this sort of anxiety an idol because it is self-centered. When we trade active trust of God for inactive worry, we make anxiety an idol. Daniel 11:32 says that the people who really fear God stand firm and take action.
We also make anxiety an idol when we are really not as concerned about knowing God's will as we are protecting our own comfort.
We really want to be comfortable. So when we agonize over some decisions, we're not really saying, "God tell me what you want me to do," we are really saying "God show me the route that will be easiest and happiest for me." But many times God's will is for us to be very uncomfortable, afflicted even. It's a mistake to assume that, for instance, if you go into business with your friend and the enterprise goes belly up and doesn't pan out that you obviously stepped out of God's will. It's a mistake to assume that if you go across the country to take that scholarship in order to be close to your boyfriend and then he dumps you that somehow this decision was out of God's will.
It is the mistake of assuming that Christians are not meant for difficulty or trouble, and that if they somehow enter that, they are outside of God's will or have made a mistake. This is based on a Christianity that promises comfort and ease, though, not the real Christianity of the Bible. The truth is that Jesus promised trouble. The Bible prepares us for the inevitable life of difficulty that following Jesus brings. The testimony of Scripture is not that Christians have easier, more successful lives, but they have life even in the mist of difficulties. The Christian faith does not teaching avoiding pain by following God's will but finding God's will in the midst of pain.
We also make anxiety an idol whenever we spiritualize our indecision.
When I was in junior high school the "Experiencing God" book and curriculum by Henry Blackaby was just taking off. It had just come out and everyone in churches like mine were teaching it, studying it, etc. It was all about finding God's will for your life, and eventually, what really started as a practical approach to personal discipleship turned into a frenzy of individualized discipleship. So much so that in my church at least, "hearing from God" personally became an idol in itself.
Instead of teaching Christians to seek God's will in Scripture, where, frankly, we've got more than enough instructions that we'll never be able to master anyway, we teach them to worry about stepping outside of a will they can't step out of anyway.
God's promises are not contingent upon your good decisions. How arrogant are we to think we're in control anyway? You can't thwart God's purposes because he is God and you are not. You can't throw him off his game, mess up his plan, or undo what he plans to do. You just don't have that power.
Romans 8:28 tells us:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Do you believe that? If you do, don't worry about making a "wrong" decision. If you are trusting God and not choosing sin, even if your decisions result in failure by human standards, it is working for the good.
Here is God's will for your life, revealed clearly in the Bible:
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
That's God's will for you. To rejoice wherever life finds you, in easy times or hard times. To keep praying. To pray in easy time and hard times. To stay close to God. And then, whatever happens, to thank God for it. Not just the easy stuff or the obvious blessings. For everything. Don't waste your hardship, whatever your hardship may be. Thank God for it, thank God for his using it in your life.
Kill the idol of indecision and anxiety under the pretense of "knowing God's will" and seek out God's will already revealed to you and act accordingly, trusting him.
Jared Wilson is the pastor and co-founder of Element, a missional Christian community in
Nashville, Tennessee, and an award-winning writer whose articles, essays, and
short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
Jared's first book, The Unvarnished Jesus, releases Fall 2009 from Kregel.
A graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, he lives outside
Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
Encounter Jared's passion for the ongoing reformation of the evangelical church
almost daily at www.gospeldrivenchurch.com.
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