Dear ______:
Yes, I agree, it would be awfully nice if God would speak up more often and give direct answers to our questions — like whether you are called to ministry.
Most of us want divine guidance. We all face serious struggles and deep confusion at times.
And it isn’t like God doesn’t care about our choices. Couldn’t God just lift the veil and tell us what to do? It feels like third down with a long way to go, and a new play from the coach would be great.
I’m happy to share a couple more thoughts on discerning God’s will. Christians take a lot of different approaches to this but here are some perspectives I see in my own tradition.
1. God does speak personally.
What we want is the personal direct whisper of the Spirit: God’s own word on our own question. It happened in scripture so it can happen now.
But look at the biblical stories of God speaking directly to people.
Abraham and Mary are knockout examples. But think about the details:
- Abraham had to wait about 75 years to hear from God
- Mary heard God’s message when she was young, but it was not the message she wanted
- And in both cases the whole history of salvation hung in the balance.
There are smaller instances of course:
- Gideon got direct guidance — when the safety of Israel was on the line.
- Paul got direct guidance — when God was working out the mission to the Gentiles.
So we know it can happen. And it does happen still. But in my tradition we tend to assume God is most likely to speak personally if God’s own big plans are involved.
2. God has already spoken clearly.
On the other hand, we view the Bible itself as God’s word. This is where God has already spoken, and so we expert to hear God speaking there still.
We go to Scripture for guidance. That does not mean plucking a verse out of context and finding that, in a mysterious way, it applies to our own situation.
What we do in the Reformed tradition is we dive into the Bible to get to know who God is, and what God is like. We learn what kinds of things God values.
When you know those things you can have a very good idea of what God wants from you today.
I sometimes imagine God saying
Remember those Ten Commandments? That’s my guidance. Get going on them, and we can talk more later.
And doing the kinds of things God says to do in Scripture will take you a long way down the road to ministry. After all, ministry is all about participating in God’s mission.
3. God wants us to become mature.
There is a third kind of guidance that grows from this. In the Bible, we find that God does not want us to remain children. God wants us to grow up, become mature, and learn to make wise decisions. As Paul put it
we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, (Ephesians 5:15 NRSV)
God wants us to become like Jesus,
conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29 NRSV)
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18 NRSV)
We start out in faith as we do in life: as children who need to be told what to do. But the point of growing up is to learn how to make good decisions. We are supposed to become wise.
So in this case, God’s guidance is a matter of good choices, freely made, to do what God himself loves to do.
A grown-up Christian makes choices that reflect the character of Christ. That too can take you a long way down the road to ministry.
There are other ways to find guidance in Scripture, but I’ll save that for another time.
Blessings,
Gary
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1. Thank you for including the Pinterest button. I may be the only one using it, but I love that platform and find it extraordinarily useful for keeping track of things I want to remember. And things that I think my followers on that platform will find helpful and/or useful in their own lives.
2. Thank for including the references. Yet again, God has used you to highlight a few verses I need to embed in my memory bank. The concept was not new to me, but I so often forget the addresses, that reading them again aids me since I am a visual kinetic learner.
3. Love catching up all at once. It rather like reading a book series. I simply hate to read the first book and then have to wait a year for the second installment. I think there is a benefit for me to have taken the summer off “blogs” for gardening, and now that it is getting cooler and harvest is wrapping up, returning to my indoor activities on these chilly nights.
Thanks for your affirmation Susan! I think you are the only one who uses the Pinterest button, but I’m really happy that you do. I keep thinking I ought to try that platform out…
Happy harvest!
If you do decide to check out the platform, feel free to test cruise by finding my boards and pins under Susan Mosey Honeycutt. I have a few followers, so when I pin your blog, your outreach is automatically extended by 1300 or so. I do find it super helpful for a wide variety of things. Will be the first to admit that it can be a great organization tool, but there are those who find it addictive. I simply limit my time and subjects. I will be the first to admit it has changed a great deal since first becoming a platform.
Thanks Susan!