Figuring out what God wants me to do

A close friend recently sent me a link to a very helpful Facebook post. It’s written by Martyn Iles, an Australia Christian who has had an unusually public profile in recent years (in Australia Christians don’t typically get much press). Who he is isn’t as important as the wise things he’s written, so I won’t write any more about him. He wrote this in a Facebook post, but sharing a Facebook post is only helpful if someone has a Facebook profile, so I’ve copied the text here (for my future reference, if nothing else):

How can I know what God would have me do?

When I speak to people personally, some variant of this question is possibly the most common question I am asked.

There is a four principled decision making framework which has never failed me yet.

Importantly, all four principles are to be discerned in the context of sincere prayer about the decision.

1. Circumstances

Your circumstances will change (or not), without your manipulation or control, in a way that enables or reveals the right course of action. Because God is sovereign and works providentially.

2. Scripture

If you are a habitual student of scripture, it is likely that your reading and study will speak into your circumstances in a way that confirms the right course of action. Because God speaks to us reliably in His word.

3. Peace

It may take time - it's often the final confirmation - but ultimately you will be at peace about the right decision. That is to say, it may be hard or daunting, but your conscience will quietly confirm it. Because the Spirit of God works in our conscience.

4. Patience

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait!!!! STOP RUSHING! The scriptures are packed full with exhortations to "wait on the Lord." There are countless examples of God's slowness in the face of our hurry. Learn the discipline of patience or you will constantly make bad decisions. And you will *never* be worse off, or miss out, because you were patient. If you do, it just means it was never meant to be.

Now, you can be mistaken on one of the above - misreading circumstances, wrongly applying scripture, etc - but it is utterly unusual to be wrong about all four at the same time, especially in the context of patience and prayer.

When all four line up, that tends to be when I act. But often they don't, so I simply resist action, which is very hard.

Now, for matters of very great importance, I may have thought that all four principles were in alignment, yet the gravity of the decision was such that I was still reticent to make it.

In such circumstances, you can do a Gideon. You can pray for special confirmation and clarity - a "fleece." In His grace, God is ordinarily willing to provide it.

The alternative to the above is to plan your own way and make your own decisions, and expect God to catch up. That simply is not a life of faith. (End of the quote)

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(Very annoyed right now because I've just lost several paragraphs here that I'd written here the other day...so on to to remembering what I wrote...)

What we see on earth is but a poor reflection of
what's truly going on (a much worse image than
we see here in a photo of the pond in the Japanese
garden at Mt Coot-tha).

I imagine that many people think that the decision of becoming a missionary must be one of the biggest we've ever made and that other decisions would be easy in comparison. While I could write much about the original decision, I will just say that there have been quite a number of times since then where decision making (and waiting for God's plan) has been hard.

A sample of times when this has seemed especially true in the last 25 years:

• When we were working towards to come to Japan and it took longer than we’d hoped
• When there was no teaching position for David in Japan for five years after we made ourselves available for that
• When my Japanese language ability never made it to a level suitable for working in it
• When I spent more time with sick kids than in doing any kind of outside ministry (or language learning) in our first term in Japan
• When our attempts to help our eldest learn Japanese language and culture by enrolling him in a Japanese primary school failed (we had to move him out after just 15 months)
• When we nearly didn’t get back to Japan in a timely fashion five years ago due to financial reasons
• When one of our sons encountered difficulties significant enough to derail our plan of moving him to Australia in 2021

Right now, as I've mentioned before, we're walking through the situation of seeking affordable rental accommodation for our younger two sons so that they can carry on their lives here while we head back to Japan. For various reasons we want to do that sooner rather than later.

What adds to the difficulty of this is not just that the rental system is under great stress here, but that our "public" lives mean that we've asked lots of people to pray about it, including our church. And people keep wanting updates. I want to jump straight to the end of the chapter and tell them a "success" story . . . but it's taking a while.

I really appreciated the wise older gentleman in our church who asked me last month, "Are you making progress?" 

This was a gentle and discerning way to ask and I could answer a wholehearted "YES". I felt encouraged, rather than needing to explain where we were up to and why we hadn't "succeeded" yet.

Back to the earlier quote, I really appreciate the emphasis on "wait". I am not naturally good at that, in general I tend to barrel ahead at considerable speed. Though I'd have to say that I have grown in this area in the decades since I became an adult. This particular waiting seems to be trying my patience and trust in God more than usual. But I'm trying hard to keep my eyes on Jesus.

I had coffee with a new friend this morning and we reflected on how we often don't know why God is doing something, or what his timing is, but we need to trust him regardless because he's so much wiser, more loving, and more powerful than us. That his thinking isn't the same as ours is clearly seen throughout the Bible, but perhaps no clearer than in the book of Job.

Here are a couple of verses I found along this line:

God’s voice thunders in marvellous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.  (Jobe 27:5 NIV)

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' (Is. 55:8–9)

So, we still await the end of this chapter of transitioning our sons to accommodation separate from us. It's going to be a good one! I can't wait to tell you about it!