Finding God's will

It is human nature to wrestle with finding God's "will". If we take our beliefs seriously, we'd like to please God, right? For Christians, I realize that in a lot of situations the answers are already made clear in the Bible. For example, I doubt many devout Christians wrestle with the decision of whether they should knock over a bank or shoot a stranger. But what about for the more nuanced questions, particularly the ones to which there isn't necessarily a wrong answer?

Should I go to college in state or out of state? Should I stay at my current job or start looking elsewhere? What area of my church should I volunteer in? Should we have another child or should we stop at two?

A friend of mine was talking about this recently and summarized it pretty well... God's will calls me to trust God, have courageous faith, and set aside my own agenda. Those are great standards to set and I can guarantee they will lead to a life of adventure. When done with a heart set on going deeper with God, this method will get you there. For many of us in the United States, that third point might actually be the most difficult. Trusting God and having courageous faith are no problem if we think God will bend to our whims. We so often want God to conform to our own agenda...we aren't willing to die to ourselves and submit to His will.

When I returned from Brazil in 2011, I was faced with a number of opportunities that seemed to be divine. Want to be a chaplain at the State Fair? How about doing a weekly prayer walk in the neighborhood around the church? Use vacation time to attend a conference about reaching unreached and unengaged people groups? Continue the monthly soup kitchen? I needed a way to find answers.

I discovered that for me it meant to look for the path (or choice) that leads to "more God." More trust in God. More faith in God. More experience with God. More dependence on God. More God. Less me. Less of my own fear. Less of my own doubt. Less of my own agenda. Less of my own need for security. Less of my own need for approval from other people.

A missionary I met in Brazil told me that his goal was that in every situation, his response to God would be: "I'm all in. Whatever you ask." His life reflected it, too. By any American standard, he was living a life that was radical. He knew that nothing in his life mattered if Jesus wasn't the center of it all.

Some people think I'm crazy for flying half way across the world to build a chapel and share the gospel. But that's where God has led me, so that is where I'll go. In every other situation, too, I'm always looking for the path that leads to "more God."