I still remember where I was sitting when the phone rang. It was the director of my mission board. We were only three months into deputation to join a missions team in Zambia, Africa. My heart had been set on that plan for four years. Everything fell into place. But in one phone call it was all demolished. Our coworkers were moving. Their new location didn’t need another family. All of our plans were off.
Three months later I was standing before a room of young people in the Philippines (our field today) with the assigned topic of “discerning God’s will.” We believed God had called us to Zambia. Later we believed we were called to the Philippines. Which time did we get it wrong? Here are three of the six foundational concepts I shared with the youth conference that day. (You can read the others here.)
Foundation #4—God’s will isn’t always a linear path
I hate wasting time when traveling. I see no reason to use anything but the shortest, straightest path to my destination.
God is wiser than that. He doesn’t always choose the path that leads most directly to His intended place. In fact, His plans often involve surprising turns in completely new directions. That’s because He cares more about what’s happening inside our hearts than the external where, when, or what. Our path towards Zambia wasn’t a misstep. It was part of God’s plan from the beginning, preparing us for the Philippines.
The problem is that our understanding of destination is wrong. If our goal is Christlikeness, we often come to that goal in the most troubling circumstances. Joseph’s path was hardly linear, but God’s promises were fulfilled and He received more glory because of Joseph’s godly response to repeated, nightmarish circumstances. That relates to a second foundational truth.
Foundation #5—God’s will isn’t always what we thought we wanted.
I once heard an interviewer ask Joel Osteen if he teaches prosperity theology. “No,” he said, smiling broadly, “I don’t teach that. I just tell people that God wants them to be healthy, rich, and happy.”
Osteen’s brand of prosperity theology is easy to spot. But sometimes we have a hidden form. It’s the unstated assumption that God’s will gaurantees a really comfortable, prosperous path in life. Her husband just left her? She must not have found God’s will. He got fired from His job for sharing the gospel? Guess he didn’t choose the job God had for him.
And we forget about myriad biblical examples—people who were certainly obedient to God’s will, and yet their paths were difficult. Don’t forget about Joseph, sitting in prison, wrongly accused of immorality he had run from. Remember Job, sitting in the ashes, scratching himself with a broken clay pot, not because he was out of God’s will but precisely because he was. Or what about Hosea, married to an unfaithful woman who was objectively God’s will—God told him to marry her? This week we remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Bowed in Gethsemane he utters the sinless response to suffering and pain—“nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” God’s will took Jesus to the cross.
Of course, the rest of the story is that each example ended with the overwhelming blessings of God on faithfulness. There is no greater joy than following God’s plan. To put it another way, there is nothing more miserable than a path apart from God—whether that path brings you money, power, fame, and the “good life,” or more typically, the destructive ravages of sin.
But the point is that there is no such thing as immunity for trials or problems. When challenges come, that shouldn’t tell you whether you followed God’s will or not—only Scripture can answer that question.
Foundation #6—Finding God’s will is an opportunity to exercise trust.
Making decisions is often quite paralyzing. “Why can’t God just tell me what to do?” When I was single, looking for God’s will for who to marry, I always wished a name would come to my post office box, like a seat assignment or a class schedule.
But where would trust be in that process? There is divine wisdom in every aspect of life; here is no exception. God places us in these situations for a reason. Major decisions are challenging because they remind us of our finitude—we can’t know the long-range ramifications of our choices beforehand. But God knows all of this perfectly, and He wisely compels us to trust Him through the process.
As you face challenging decisions, here’s biblical counsel: Ask God for wisdom (Jam. 1:5). Confess that you can’t possibly know what you ought to do. Submit to everything His Word has to say about your decision. And then step forward with confident faith in His sufficiency to guide, correct, or reroute your path.
As I stood before the youth conference in the Philippines, I felt no regret or embarassment at how God had led us. We openly, willingingly sought His will. He chose to redirect us. Which time did we get it wrong? Neither. We’re fully confident that God led us to Zambia; we’re equally confident that He ultimately led us to the Philippines. We look back now on His perfect plan with amazement and joy.
Through the process of making difficult decisions, God compels all of us to trust Him. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
