Across the Great Decide

Written by Brian D. McLaren

This aritcle is courtesy of Christian Single magazine

The girl I loved had agreed to marry me. We both loved the Lord, and we both had prayed about our relationship from the very beginning. We wanted God’s will, not our own, to be done. We had run our decision through all the relevant “tests” and gotten “green lights” at every fork in the road:

• We felt that we fulfilled the biblical qualifications for marriage in that we were both committed Christians, so we weren’t becoming “unequally yoked.”
• We sought counsel from our friends and parents, and their feedback encouraged us to pursue marriage.
• We both had a firm inner sense or intuition that we were a match.
• Logically, our match made sense, and the timing seemed right from all angles. In very practical matters, such as our work situations and financial position, getting married seemed smart.
• We had a strong desire to get married, and we believed that God wanted to give us the desire of our hearts.

Then, seven weeks before our wedding date, the girl I loved told me she didn’t want to marry me. I was crushed. And so was she. And we were both embarrassed. What went wrong? Had we “heard” God wrong? Had we fooled ourselves into thinking we understood God’s will for us, but really were stubbornly pursuing our own agendas? Even though we prayed a lot, should we have prayed even more? Had all the “green lights” we had perceived along the way been a cruel trick – a plot of the devil to sidetrack us? Was God disappointed in us, punishing us, or even worse – were we simply cast adrift, on our own, without God’s guidance in the biggest decision of our lives?

Maybe you’ve asked questions like these – looking ahead to a major decision in your life, not wanting to make a mistake, sincerely desiring God’s will to be done – or perhaps looking back on a decision that, in spite of your fervent prayers and pursuit of God’s will, went south. So just how is this decision-making process supposed to work? What is your role? What is God’s role? And how can you know if you’re following His will or your own?

If you’ve been around the Christian community for very long, you’ve met someone (or been that someone) who says, “The Lord told me to do such and such” – quit a job to become a Christian rock singer, drop out of college to become an evangelist, propose marriage to someone, or start a pretzel business. And you smiled and tried to be enthusiastic, but somehow, their certainty that they were acting on God’s mandate made you nervous. You secretly wondered if their bringing God into the equation involved more self- convincing than divine revelation.

You’ve probably heard preachers like me give sermons about Gideon, who used a sheepskin fleece to get God’s guidance. Some of the preachers probably talked about this as a valid way of determining God’s will, while others probably warned against it. Who was right? Is seeking a sign itself a result of strong faith or weak faith? It’s confusing.

You’ve probably also heard preachers like me talk about “recipes” or “blueprints” for finding God’s will, as if God’s will were an “X” on a treasure map, and you had to find and follow the clues to discover the buried loot. You may have heard some of us talk about “missing God’s will,” suggesting that we missed one clue, and now, we’ll never find the treasure at all. Maybe there’s some “plan B” consolation prize for us, but the best is gone forever.

As you can see, if finding God’s will is hard, figuring out the cosmic equation for God’s will is even harder.
Here’s a maxim to keep in mind: If you find yourself struggling to make a decision, perhaps you’re asking the wrong question. Or, maybe you’re asking the right question, but in the wrong way. Maybe when we ask, “How do I find God’s will?” there’s something wrong with the way we’re framing the question.

Let me explain by creating an imaginary conversation. Let’s pretend the much older and perhaps a little wiser me could go back in time to the broken-hearted me a few days after I got the ring back from my lost love:

Old Brian: You look pretty down.

Young Brian: Yeah, I thought I was following God’s will, and it just blew up in my face. How can I ever have confidence that I’m really following God’s will in the future?

Old: Why is that question important to you?

Young: Well…because I want to obey God. I want to do God’s will. I’m a Christian, after all!

Old: But I wonder…is there a deeper reason?

Young: Well…If I really think about it, yes. I guess I believe that if I follow God’s will, things will go…you know…right. I’ll have a good life. I mean, I know that God doesn’t promise a life without trials, but I figure that if I seek God’s will, life will go better.

Old: Hmmm. That’s honest. Now that you’ve put it into words, what do you think about that reason?

Young: Well, I think of all the promises in the Bible that I’ve memorized. You know, like “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Or “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Or “Seek first the kingdom of God and…”

Old: No need to repeat them all. I know the same verses, and I believe them. But let me ask you: Why did you memorize those verses?

Young: Because…because they’re the ones I needed. I needed to know that God would guide me so that my path would be straight and I would get the desires of my heart and all the things I need would be added to me.

Old: Any other reason? Young: Well…so things like broken engagements wouldn’t happen to me!

Old: Okay. That’s what I thought…or knew. It strikes me that you seem to assume that God’s greatest desire is to make your life easy.

Young: At this point, I wouldn’t mind that.

Now I need to tell you, most emphatically I need to tell you, that I do believe there are ways that God guides us – through Scripture, the counsel of friends, the outworking of circumstances (i.e., “open” and “closed” doors), intuitions, and even more dramatic ways at times. But I also need to tell you, and no less emphatically, that God’s ways are not our ways.

God doesn’t seem at all interested – in my experience, or in the experience of anyone I have ever known – in making life easy. Easy means tame, boring, predictable, safe, and faithless. And the life He wants for us is nothing if it’s not adventurous, exciting, challenging, mystifying, risky, and faith-stretching. True, after the breakup, or the rejection of your manuscript, or getting cut from the team, or losing the promotion or the job or the contract or the sale or the scholarship, we feel terrible and would much rather be spared “adventure” if it includes those things.

But God is God, not a genie. And God has a bigger frame of reference than we do. So, how do we retain some idea of God’s guidance in our lives without turning God into an insurance policy to protect us from interesting, useful, and adventurous things like failure, delay, disappointment, surprise, challenge, insufficiency, bewilderment, and risk?

Here I think the Bible helps us – especially the teachings of Jesus – in a way that is so obvious that we are prone to miss it. In Scripture, God doesn’t speak to us much in the language of blueprints or recipes or treasure maps, but rather in the metaphors of kingdom, fatherhood, and discipleship. 

Editor's Note: Please continuing reading Across the Great Decide, Part Two to learn more about discovering and following God's will.