How Do I Find God’s Will for My Life?

00:00:00.000 | Well, God gives each of us a different blend of skills and inclinations, certain instincts,

00:00:10.240 | mental capacities, emotional strengths, tastes, et cetera.

00:00:15.560 | So how do I know what role I'm supposed to play with my own set of gifts?

00:00:19.520 | It's a perennial question, and today it comes from a college student named Sandra.

00:00:24.080 | "Pastor John, hello.

00:00:25.120 | My name is Sandra, a junior at Ohio State University.

00:00:29.240 | Thank you for this podcast and for your eagerness to hear from college students.

00:00:33.880 | I have been saved for about a decade, and I love Christ.

00:00:37.880 | In books I read and in conferences I attend, it seems more and more that I am being told

00:00:42.480 | to understand God's calling over me and my life, and I would sure love to know it, but

00:00:48.520 | I struggle here.

00:00:50.120 | Maybe I will go into business, maybe a mom caring for a home, maybe even a missionary.

00:00:54.880 | It would be helpful to know what God has for me, but I don't even know where to begin this

00:00:59.320 | process other than to pray.

00:01:01.680 | How can I discover God's calling over my life, Pastor John?

00:01:05.600 | Where do I even begin?"

00:01:07.520 | The question will never grow old, because generation after generation must answer it,

00:01:14.120 | and it is rarely easy to answer.

00:01:16.440 | So thank you, Sandra, for the chance to dig back into some of these great biblical truths.

00:01:24.000 | In fact, I find myself praying here at the front end of this question that God would

00:01:28.280 | use it to make hundreds of people find His precise, glorious, wonderful service.

00:01:37.360 | Now it may be obvious to you, but I'm sure it's not to everyone, so I'm going to distinguish

00:01:43.180 | three kinds of calling.

00:01:44.920 | First, the kind of calling that God speaks to us when we are dead in sins, and the calling,

00:01:53.160 | that calling which brings us out of that deadness into life in union with Christ.

00:01:58.960 | This is the calling in 1 Corinthians 1:22, "For Jews demand signs, Greeks seek wisdom,

00:02:05.360 | but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to

00:02:11.000 | those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of

00:02:17.200 | God."

00:02:18.200 | Millions of people come under the hearing of the general call of God in the preaching

00:02:23.360 | of the gospel.

00:02:24.880 | But Paul says some among those millions regard this message as foolishness.

00:02:32.440 | Some regard it as a stumbling block, but some experience through it, through that general

00:02:39.520 | call, they experience a divine inner call of God that causes them to say, "Christ crucified

00:02:48.760 | is the wisdom of God.

00:02:50.400 | Christ crucified is the power of God."

00:02:53.800 | And they embrace it, and they are saved.

00:02:56.920 | All Christians are called in this sense.

00:03:00.720 | We were made Christians by the sovereign call of God that brought us from death to life.

00:03:07.080 | Second, there's another kind of calling that we have in lifelong covenants that we make

00:03:14.520 | under God, and the main one that the Bible ordains is the covenant of marriage.

00:03:20.680 | When God joins two people together in covenant in this way, namely on the analogy of Christ

00:03:30.320 | and his covenant with the church in Ephesians 5, when God joins a man and a woman in Ephesians

00:03:37.040 | 5 like that, then Jesus said that God has joined them together in such a way that no

00:03:43.760 | man may put this asunder.

00:03:47.180 | So the calling that we have in marriage is unlike the calling that we have to any particular

00:03:54.960 | vocation.

00:03:56.640 | When you take a job, you're not forming a lifelong covenant under God.

00:04:03.520 | You can change jobs, but when you marry, your calling is "Till death do us part."

00:04:12.280 | So that's a second kind of calling, not like the third kind I'm going to talk about now,

00:04:19.480 | which is really the kind you're asking about.

00:04:21.680 | The third kind of calling is the process.

00:04:25.680 | I'm saying this call of God is a process by which God leads his children into fruitful

00:04:33.840 | positions of service, whether in the church or in the marketplace or in the home.

00:04:40.840 | The way we hear this kind of calling is to be attentive to six ways that God acts on

00:04:50.560 | our behalf to bring us into a fruitful position of service in the world, not necessarily one

00:04:58.040 | that we'll have for 50 years.

00:05:00.940 | We might experience movement as God's call moves, but the next one, and that's what Sandra

00:05:08.320 | is asking about.

00:05:09.320 | What's the next one that might be a lifelong calling or might be a 10-year calling?

00:05:15.400 | We'll see.

00:05:17.000 | So here are these six things, and I'll just say them very briefly because she said, "I

00:05:21.040 | don't know where to begin except for praying," and well, praying is one of my six.

00:05:25.240 | And so here's five more for you to focus on.

00:05:28.820 | Number one, God gives us in the Scriptures a worldview with Christ at the center and

00:05:35.920 | reveals to us that certain vocations and certain industries or certain ways of running industries

00:05:42.520 | are good and others are bad.

00:05:45.880 | And when it's not crystal clear what's good and bad, He shows us that certain paths of

00:05:51.680 | service are more helpful or less helpful in the world, more hurtful or less hurtful in

00:05:58.040 | the world.

00:05:59.040 | And in showing us this, He works to keep us out of callings that would be evil or hurtful

00:06:08.360 | or unhelpful in the world.

00:06:11.560 | So not every vocation is open to the follower of Christ, and that's a very important point

00:06:16.960 | of guidance that God gives us.

00:06:19.240 | Number two, God has spoken in His Word to show us both what true need is in the world

00:06:29.600 | and what the world really needs, and He has acted to incline us, His people, to lean into

00:06:38.640 | those needs rather than thinking only of our private security and comfort and wealth and

00:06:44.880 | ease as though that should guide us in our vocation.

00:06:48.440 | He has said, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and He has made us aware of how to define

00:06:57.000 | human need, and He has given us eyes and ears to discern where those needs are.

00:07:02.960 | So part of His acting to guide us is to incline us away from selfishness toward need-meeting

00:07:13.120 | and then show us the real needs of the world.

00:07:17.400 | Third, God has acted in every Christian to grant them various abilities, or we could

00:07:25.280 | call them gifts.

00:07:27.840 | Listen to the way Paul speaks about this, because if you do, you'll get a flavor of

00:07:34.480 | what I'm talking about, because I'm not just talking about something that you might say,

00:07:39.080 | "Oh, that's just spiritual and belongs in the church."

00:07:41.400 | Here's what he says in Romans 12.6, "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given

00:07:46.840 | to us," differing grace, "let us use them.

00:07:51.680 | Give service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his

00:07:59.560 | exhortation, the one who contributes with generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the

00:08:07.680 | one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness."

00:08:10.720 | Now those last three should cause us to sit up and take notice that gifts have application

00:08:18.000 | to both life in Christian community and life in ordinary human relationships in the marketplace—contributing,

00:08:25.800 | leading, mercy.

00:08:29.340 | And my only point here is that we all have different inclinations, intuitions, different

00:08:37.360 | instincts, different skills, different mental capacities, different emotional strengths,

00:08:43.040 | different tastes, different capacities for stress and endurance, different capacities

00:08:48.260 | for crowds and solitude, and on and on and on.

00:08:51.640 | Oh, how different God has made us, which means that he has designed us to be more effective

00:08:59.160 | at some things than at other things, and more at home in doing some things rather than other

00:09:05.160 | things.

00:09:06.160 | And mentioning being at home, I don't mean to absolutize that, that we should only do

00:09:12.840 | what we feel at home doing.

00:09:14.640 | I think that's a big mistake lots of young people are making today.

00:09:18.440 | They're saying, "I'm only going to do what perfectly suits my gifts.

00:09:21.800 | I'm only going to do what perfectly fits my inclinations.

00:09:25.120 | I'm only going to do what makes me feel really fulfilled, because it fits like a glove

00:09:32.600 | on my individual hand."

00:09:35.200 | Well, there have been many times in history when people, in order to stay alive or in

00:09:43.880 | order to do much good, had to do many things they did not feel suited to do because they

00:09:51.280 | needed to be done.

00:09:53.800 | Nevertheless, I'll back up and say, in a world where choices are many—and that's

00:10:01.000 | pretty true in the West—God's gifting becomes a more significant part of God's

00:10:08.840 | calling.

00:10:09.840 | Number four, God has put in our lives wise counselors and has ordained in His Word that

00:10:19.560 | we listen to them carefully about everything in this list of works of God.

00:10:26.320 | One of the real needs around us is that we listen to counselors.

00:10:33.520 | This is Proverbs 11:14, "Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in an abundance

00:10:41.060 | of counselors there is safety."

00:10:42.840 | So we don't act in a vacuum.

00:10:45.960 | Don't try to find God's will for your life in a vacuum.

00:10:48.840 | We are part of a community of wisdom and love.

00:10:51.600 | Number five, God has given us the gift of prayer.

00:10:55.400 | "Pray wisely for the purpose of becoming wiser in the choices we make.

00:11:00.080 | If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach,

00:11:06.320 | and it will be given him."

00:11:08.440 | So we pray over every one of these points day in and day out.

00:11:14.800 | I still do this at age 72.

00:11:18.120 | I pray, "God, don't let me make choices about what I do that would waste my life or what's

00:11:26.640 | left of it."

00:11:27.640 | Lastly, number six, and this one's a little controversial because it's the most subjective,

00:11:34.360 | but I would say that God, through all these things, and that's important, through all

00:11:39.080 | those five things, and then by His Spirit, more subjectively, works in our minds and

00:11:46.960 | hearts to produce recurring, strong desires for a certain kind of service in the church

00:11:55.640 | or in the marketplace, which are very significant.

00:11:59.600 | These desires are very significant in guiding us when they occur in our holiest moments.

00:12:10.960 | So yes, I'm saying that your desires are a very significant means by which God acts on

00:12:19.240 | your behalf to give you the guidance you need into the service where you belong.

00:12:25.160 | And I'm saying that those desires have three characteristics about them when they're most

00:12:30.880 | reliable.

00:12:31.880 | One, they're recurrent.

00:12:33.720 | They're not a flash in the pan.

00:12:35.760 | They come back again and again and again.

00:12:38.440 | Number two, they're strong.

00:12:40.640 | They're not passing and weak and insignificant like changing tastes.

00:12:45.400 | And most importantly, number three, these desires are not desires that are awakened

00:12:52.440 | while you're walking in sin, feeling distant from God, not enjoying worship, not spending

00:12:59.600 | time in the Word, not active in serving others.

00:13:02.920 | No, no, no.

00:13:05.040 | Desires that happen during those times are probably not very reliable at all.

00:13:08.680 | Paul said, "This is the will of God, your holiness."

00:13:16.320 | First Thessalonians 4.3.

00:13:18.760 | Students used to ask me, "How can I know the will of God?"

00:13:21.160 | And I'd say, "I know exactly what the will of God is for your life.

00:13:24.720 | Holiness, period.

00:13:26.480 | That's the will of God."

00:13:27.940 | And if holiness is God's will for you, it is safe to say that desires produced by holiness

00:13:38.560 | are significant for your guidance.

00:13:42.280 | So there they are.

00:13:43.360 | Number one, what kinds of service are good and beneficial?

00:13:47.580 | Number two, what are the needs of the world, the true needs?

00:13:51.540 | Number three, what has God gifted me to be more or less fruitful at?

00:13:57.080 | Number four, what is the counsel I receive from godly people?

00:14:00.240 | Number five, am I covering all of this in constant prayer for wisdom?

00:14:04.440 | And number six, what are my recurring, strong, holy desires?

00:14:13.720 | Such important connection to hear about holiness and our personal desires and God's will, which

00:14:19.400 | all stem, of course, from that incredible text in Psalm 37.4.

00:14:23.080 | "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

00:14:29.320 | Godward delight births in us righteous desires to follow.

00:14:34.400 | Really important connections here, Pastor John.

00:14:36.000 | Thank you.

00:14:37.000 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:14:39.440 | For more information, go to our online home, DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:14:45.800 | There you can explore all of our 1,200 past episodes.

00:14:48.280 | You can scan through a list of our most popular ones, read transcripts, even send us a question

00:14:52.840 | of your own.

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00:14:57.680 | John podcast through your favorite podcast app.

00:15:02.360 | Well in building a ministry around joy in God, it leads to a lot of good and important

00:15:06.640 | questions that we need to think through because if our ministry centers on joy, then doesn't

00:15:11.600 | this invite an emotional rollercoaster rhythm to each of our lives?

00:15:16.360 | It's a really important question that we have to think through and we will next time.

00:15:21.880 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:15:23.240 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:15:24.520 | [END]

00:15:25.520 | 1

00:15:25.520 | Ask a Pastor John Podcast - Desiring God.

00:15:26.520 | For more information, go to AskPastorJohn.com

00:15:26.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Do I Find God’s Will for My Life?

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