What does God want you to do?

How do you make decisions?  If you’re a Christian, chances are you want to make the decisions God wants you to make (or at least that’s what you want to want to do).  But how do you figure out what God wants you to do?

Toward the end of Acts, the Apostle Paul begins to be compelled by the Holy Spirit that he should go to Jerusalem (Acts 20.22).  He’s warned by others that he shouldn’t go because it will be dangerous.  One man even appears to have a prophetic vision on the issue:

[10] While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. [11] And coming to us, he took Paul's belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’” [12] When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. (Acts 21:10-12 ESV)

I read this the other day and a few things occurred to me:

What God wants will not always make sense to others.

I don’t know about you but if I were trying to make a decision and every follower of Jesus I knew was trying to dissuade me, saying I’d get hurt, and another said they had a word directly from God saying I’d be tied up…aside from my natural skepticism and stubbornness, it’s probably a safe bet I’d take that as a way out. 

What God wants will not always line up with my comfort (or even safety).

God specifically wanted Paul to go to Jerusalem (and then Rome) to bring the gospel to the Gentiles.  It wasn’t Paul’s foolhardiness that got him there, it was God’s direction.  How often do I assume that if something is dangerous it must not be something God wants out of me?  Seriously – if someone were to tell me, and I actually believed them – that if I were to take Action X I would suffer imprisonment, I might very well take that as evidence it’s not what God wants me to do.  But here clearly in Scripture we see the opposite.

What God wants will not always give me a peaceful, easy feeling.

One common way Christians try to decipher God’s will for their life is to pray about something and if they “feel a peace” about it then it’s God giving them the go ahead.  It’s probably a safe bet that Paul has some wrestling going on inside himself over this decision.  Sometimes doing the right thing means moving forward despite an uneasy, uncertain feeling.  Relying on your feelings to dictate the will of God is a path that will probably more often than not lead you down a path of your own choosing.

Many Christians struggle mightily to decide whether God wants them to go to the left or to the right with regard to a certain decision.  Are they interpreting His will correctly?  Are they missing something He’s trying to tell them?  What happens if they make the wrong decision?  Are they then “out of God’s will” for their life?  It’s almost as if God hides His will for us like an Easter Egg and we have to jump through various hoops and learn various skills to properly “listen” to what God has to say, and if we don’t we’ll miss it.

I have much to say on this topic but here’s something to consider (not my idea, I first heard it from Greg Koukl and I’m sure he got it somewhere too): If God is speaking to you, you can’t miss it; if He isn’t, there’s nothing to miss.

Do the best you can with the decisions in front of you.  Paul clearly felt compelled by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem and did so despite the many spiritual-sounding outs he could have taken.  I hope to one day be at the point where I can say, like Paul did when he declared his intention to go to Jerusalem despite the danger, that “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish the course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:24, ESV)

When I can say that with all my heart and mean it, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about missing out on what God wants to do with my life.