How Do You Know What God Wants You To Do?

“I think that God is telling me to look for another job,” or “God wants me to buy this house instead of that one,” or “It’s God’s will that I be happy.”  As Christians, we may have made statements like this and we would assume that anyone making these types of statements has some way to know what God wants for them.  The real question is how do we really know?  Is there a formula or a ritual or a feeling that shows us what God wants for us?  You would think that if God is working with real and true Christians, then he would have a really clear way to show them what He wants.  So, is there a really clear way for us to see God’s will? This answer, like any answer to really difficult questions, has several moving parts because the subject of God’s will is enormous.  Is God’s will explicit or implicit?  Is His will specific or general?  Does God really care about the mundane parts of our lives - is His will present in the kind of phone we have or the dish washing detergent we buy? In this broadcast, we tried to simplify and focus the matter.  We began by establishing what God’s will is not. It is not like a dot on a piece of paper - so small and precise that the odds of hitting it are like the odds of nailing the exact center of the bulls-eye on a dart board.  These odds would be slim and frustrating at best.  Rather, God’s will is much more like a circle.  There is room for creativity, diversity and thoughtfulness within this circle because we as Christians are a collection of creative, diverse and free moral beings. So, if we can picture God’s will as a circle, then the next logical thing to look at is what makes up the borders of that circle.  Are there things (be they principles, actions or morality) that present themselves as definitive guidelines that separate us from being able to operate within or outside of God’s will?  Can we know what these borders are and therefore better know how to keep the scope of our decisions within the "safety zone" of the will of God? It turns out the answer is yes.  There are many clear and concise scriptural guidelines that define what kinds of decisions would be within the scope of God’s will and what kinds of decisions are wandering around outside those protective borders.  Check out our May 1st, 2016 program “How do You Know What God Wants You to Do?” and see if it can help to define and hone the relationship between God’s will and your decisions.