God’s Will
The first book I ever read on discernment was The Will of God as a Way of Life: How to Make Every Decision with Peace and Confidence by Jerry Sittser. He said this about God’s will: “If we truly seek God above all, then we will always be doing the will of God, no matter where our particular choices lead us, because seeking God’s kingdom first is God’s will” (p. 39). He wrote this in a chapter appropriately titled, Our Astonishing Freedom.
There is astonishing freedom in what he says. It’s liberating to let go of the unnecessary anxiety surrounding decisions about our future. And I agree with what Sittser writes: “As it turns out, the weightiest choice we make is never between two future options –say, taking a job in California or staying in Iowa—but between two ways of life, one for God, the other against God” (p. 39).
Not long ago, a dear friend of mine was trying to decide between two good possibilities for her future. Most of her friends were assuring her in a Sittser-like way that she really couldn’t make a bad decision – that no matter what, God would bless her in her decision and so she should just make one and go with it.
I asked if this brought her comfort at all. And she said that on one level it did, but it some ways, that kind of encouragement was just frustrating and unhelpful. The fact remained: she still had a weighty decision to make.
Enter: Dallas Willard and his book, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. He writes, “If you wish to know what God would have you do, it is no help at all to be told that whatever comes is his will. For you are, precisely, in the position of having to decide in some measure what is to come. Does it mean that whatever you do will be God’s will? I certainly hope not” (p. 61).
Who do you agree with? What kind of commentary on God’s will has been helpful to you in your decision making?