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When I was a young man, I seemed to continually
wrestle with knowing God’s will for my life. I wanted more than anything to follow His plan.
Interestingly, now that I’m “old” (currently 47 years old), I still wrestle with doing His will in my
life. I have come to learn that this is not just something that a young
person does early in life; it is a lifelong pursuit in order to stay in the
exact center of His plan.
So, then, how can we know God’s plan for our lives? Over the past twenty-five
years that I have been in ministry, I have discovered eight vital keys to
knowing God’s will. Here they are:
1)
Walk with God.
For starters, if you are interested in knowing
God’s plan for your life, then you must learn to walk with God. You need
to develop a relationship with Him. Christianity is all about relationship
rather than just religion.
And so you must cultivate your
relationship with God. You must seek to know Him and not just seek
to know about Him.
You will cultivate that relationship best by
spending time in His Word, taking time for prayer, and taking every
opportunity you can to be involved in church and small group Bible study
opportunities. When you seek these disciplines in your life, God will begin
the first steps to revealing His plan to you.
Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and
lean not on your own understanding; 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, and
He shall direct your paths.
2)
Surrender your will to God’s.
Many times when we say we are seeking God’s will, what we are really wanting to say to
God is this: “OK, God, here’s what I’m planning to do. Now I need you to rubber stamp this, all right?” I must tell you that this is not really
effective in finding His true will.
Before God will begin to reveal His will to
you, you must be committed to doing whatever it is that He desires for you
to do. God will likely be slow to show you His plan if He knows you will
likely not do that plan anyway.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of
God.
Jesus was willing to die for us, so shouldn’t we be willing to live for Him? When we
surrender to Him, that is when He really begins to direct our steps.
3)
Obey what you already know to be God’s Will.
Many people seem to want to know what God’s plan is for their lives, but they overlook
the fact that 98% of His will is already delineated carefully through His
Word. God is very clear about many, many aspects of His will. For instance,
it is clearly His plan that we abstain from sexual immorality (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
If we do not obey the things that God has shown
us clearly to be His will, why would we think He would reveal any further
information regarding His plan for our lives? Obedience is an important
first step.
4)
Seek godly input.
One key component to finding God’s will is to seek the input of godly advisors
in your life. If you don’t currently have 3-4 godly mentors, then I would highly recommend
that you seek them out right away.
Think of it this way: you should understand
that you are basically a composite of the five people you spend the most
time with. So, then, it is vital that you choose those five people well. If
you choose to surround yourself with godly advisors, they will be
instrumental in helping you discern God’s plan for your life. But if you surround yourself with people who
are far from God, your hope of finding His best for your life will be
greatly diminished.
Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but
in the multitude of counselors there is safety.
The church is designed to help you greatly with
this. I would encourage you to be in church every single time the doors are
opened. The more you involve yourself with a community of believers, the
greater your chances will be of finding godly men and women who can help
you discern God’s will.
5)
Pay attention to how God has wired you.
God has created you to fulfill a specific role
in this world. There is no one else who can achieve completely what God has
purposely created you to do.
The Apostle Peter gives us this admonition:
1 Peter 4:10
As each one has received a gift, minister it to
one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
God has gifted every one of us to perform a
special mission for which we alone were created. How amazing is that? Wow!
So, when you seek to discover God’s will for your life, pay attention to how He
has gifted you. His plan for you will always be directly related to the
gifts that He has bestowed upon you. The great news is that you will
automatically be good at whatever it is that He has called you to do!
6)
Listen to God’s Spirit.
I experienced a major turning point in my own
prayer life when I learned simply to shut up while I was praying.
That may sound odd to you, and it seemed odd to me at first.
You see, I used to do all the talking when I
prayed to God. But then, several years ago, I read Bill Hybel’s book, Too Busy Not to Pray. That book
completely changed the way I approached God through prayer. Since reading
that book, I have added a significant component to my prayer life:
listening. I take time to listen to what God might have to say to me.
Practically, the way I go about this is to
bring a notepad with me when I sit down to pray. Then I write at the top of
several pages things like the following:
During my prayer time, I meditate on questions
such as the above. Often, God will start flooding my heart with ideas and
information regarding one or more of those questions. I write as fast as I
can as He speaks to my heart. What a glorious experience that is to sense
His Spirit on me, guiding my thoughts and words.
Through experiences like this, He has shown me
many times with great clarity what His will is for my life. I long for
those experiences when He speaks to me like that. Those times are truly
life changing.
John 10:27
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and
they follow Me.
7)
Listen to your heart.
In addition to listening to the Spirit, I also
recommend listening to your heart. To understand my point here, consider
the following passage:
Psalms 37:4-5
4 Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He
shall give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD,
trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. (NKJV)
I love this passage, because it shows me that,
when I am walking with the Lord, He will actually let me do many really
cool things that I actually love to do! When you are close to Him, He
actually begins to shape your desires so that you desire the things that He
has already called you to do.
So then, His plan actually becomes a
super-exciting adventure. I always have the most fun in life when I am
doing God’s will. And that is because He shapes my “wanter” to want to do the things for which He has actually created me.
8)
Take a look at your circumstances.
God often clearly demonstrates His plan for our
lives by lining up circumstances in obvious ways. And He also shows us what
His will is NOT for us to do in that same way. It is not His will for you
to take the job that is not offered to you. If you are 5’ 6” tall and weigh 125 lbs., it is not likely that God has created you
to play professional football.
Over the years, I have discovered that God is
pretty good at opening and closing doors. He even did that for the Apostle
Paul and his enterouge in Acts. Take a look at this passage:
Acts 16:6-10
6 Now when they had gone through Phrygia and
the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the
word in Asia.
7 After they had come to Mysia, they tried to
go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them.
8 So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas.
9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A
man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
10 Now after he had seen the vision,
immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had
called us to preach the gospel to them.
So, even Paul had to face closed doors in his
ministry. God often uses closed doors to show us clearly what He does NOT
want us to do. And He also uses open doors at times to show us what He DOES
want us to do. Of course, this does not mean that every open door is
definitely God’s plan, but it does help to give you some basic direction.
A
Closing Thought:
The next time you begin to ponder God’s plan for your life, I would encourage you to
mull over the above eight keys. Use these principles to help you to hone in
on His plan. And when you seek His will earnestly, you will find it!
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