Finding the Will of God: No Magic Formulas

“We are very good at defining what guidance is not, but very bad at defining what it is.”

The issues are immediate and clearcut. Who do I marry? What job should I take? Should I go to a Christian or secular college? Which church should I attend? Ought I consider having another child? Should I move to Texas? Each of us has a customized set of these questions that hover oppressively over our daily routines.

It would seem reasonable to expect God to be involved in such major decisions affecting our lives. And yet, try to make sense, if you will, of the most commonly heard advice on the topic of divine guidance.

Mystical Guidance

The older strain of advice has a more mystical or supernatural aura about it. Some Christians teach that God has a plan for each of our lives, a wonderful plan, in fact, and that we only need discover it to know what school we should attend, who we should marry, what occupation we should choose, where we should live. God’s plan is individual and specific. For direction on how to decipher the recondite secrets of this plan, these Christians turn to such examples as Gideon’s putting out a fleece and Paul’s vision of a Macedonian call. To me, the selection of those two examples has always seemed curious in the extreme.

In the story reported in Judges 6 and 7, Gideon clearly emerges as an example of doubt and vacillation. Has anyone experienced such irrefutable guidance? After a personal visit from an angel of God, who gave exact instructions, Gideon asked for and got a confirming sign: the spontaneous combustion of his offering to the Lord. Still nervous about the military improbability of his task, he asked for another sign, that of a wet fleece. When that was provided, he had the audacity to ask for yet a third sign, the dry fleece. After all these supernatural confirmations, Gideon still shrank from his task until God recommended he stroll among the tents of the enemy and listen to their conversations.

“Putting out the fleece” hardly seems an appropriate model for someone seeking guidance. It better describes someone who knows exactly what God wants and still quakes before the task.

Similarly, the account of the Macedonian call offers a dubious prototype for guidance. The most evident fact is that this vision came as such a surprise to Paul. He planned his missionary journeys as strategically as a general plans army maneuvers. But this one time (Acts 16:6–10), he ran into a roadblock. “The spirit of Jesus” constrained him from his determined route and the vision suggested an alternative. In a survey of the Book of Acts to discern Paul’s reliance on guidance, the Macedonian call stands out as a spectacular aberration from normal experience—hardly the type of incident to construct a philosophy of guidance around.

Rational Guidance

Lately, a more pragmatic school of thinking about guidance has sprung up in Christian circles. A sincere questioner uses such resources as the Bible, the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, and external circumstances to descry God’s will. “Line up those three like harbor lights,” a popular analogy advises, “and your ship safely glides in.” Some add a fourth harbor light: the wise counsel of fellow Christians. In essence, this strain of thought has made the whole issue of guidance less mysterious, more rational.

Very recently a more iconoclastic school of thought has appeared. A book called Decision Making and the Will of God, by Garry Friesen, has sold 100,000 copies and stirred up considerable controversy. He spends the first few chapters developing a caricature of a pastor who gives seminars on traditionally accepted notions of guidance. Then Friesen asks a major question. Does God, in fact, have an “individual will” for me that specifies in advance the major choices of my life? Friesen concludes that God has a moral will, fully revealed in the Bible. But where no specific command or principle is given, the believer is free and responsible to choose his or her own course of action. Friesen devotes 452 pages to proving his point.

Some Examination

How, then, can we deal with the major anxieties about the future that hang over us? Whereas some Christians exhort us to seek a deep, mystical confirmation before deciding on a course of action, others admonish us to study the Bible and then make up our own minds. Where do we look for guidance to help decide on a philosophy of guidance?

Frankly, for various reasons I have found these common approaches confusing and at least partly unsatisfying. They often leave unanswered basic questions about God’s sovereignty and his readiness to impinge on human affairs. In thinking about guidance, I have tried to take a step back from the actual precipice of choice in order to consider more fundamental questions of how an infinite God could guide finite human beings. “What are his options?” I have asked myself (knowing full well that questions phrased like that are hopelessly inadequate when one contemplates an infinite God). In this process, I have relied on a wonderful, although densely written, philosophical work entitled Incarnation and Immanence, by Lady Helen Oppenheimer. The book is unavailable in an American edition, so I will try to compensate by freely borrowing some of its seminal ideas.

Lady Oppenheimer begins her discussion on divine guidance by first examining how we ask other humans for guidance. What do we ask for when we ask for guidance? She lists three common examples.

1. We ask some people’s support of the decision we are already leaning toward. Employees within large companies do this masterfully by seeking counsel with precisely those people who will build a ground swell of support for their own pet projects. Children are even more disingenuous: they possess an instinctive ability to sense which parent will most likely agree with their desires, and approach that parent for permission.

But surely this common technique does not offer us a model for asking advice of God. Going to him for approval of our predetermined ideas and plans would be sheer blasphemy. We must look to other models.

2. We go to some people because we truly want to be told what to do. “I can’t decide which college to go to—you tell me,” the befuddled teenager asks his parents. “Look, it’s up to you whether we have another child or not,” says one spouse. “You decide, and I’ll go along with whatever you choose.”

Professional counselors encounter this type of questioner often; the indecisiveness itself is the reason for the counseling. Such clients yearn for a wise parent to make all the important decisions in life. A wise counselor rears back from playing a direct parental role. The client needs not good advice, but the mature ability to make his or her own decisions. The counselor takes on a long-term goal of freeing the client from the unhealthy dependency of “victimization.”

The counselor’s response offers an important insight into one of the most puzzling aspects of the whole guidance issue. Why does not God forthrightly tell me which decision is the right one? Could it be because such a response would inevitably jeopardize human freedom, a course God has scrupulously avoided taking from the Garden of Eden onward? He desires not so much to run our lives as to have us, in full control of our lives, offer them to him in obedience and service. (I am speaking here of morally neutral issues. Anything revealed in Scripture needs no further guidance initiative; it is God’s Word to us.)

3. Sometimes we simply want a chance to think aloud, in the presence of a friendly listener. Whole schools of therapy have arisen to extol the virtues of such a role. The counselor should nod meaningfully, restate the client’s questions for him or her, and essentially help the client clarify a position without directive interference.

At first glance, the “friendly listener” approach does resemble our approach to the divine in prayer. But there are crucial differences, too. In prayer we have no visible proof of anyone listening, not even the bare minimum of a person nodding a head and restating our opinions. Lady Helen Oppenheimer expresses the frustration this way, “One cannot go on forever being grateful for silence. A good listener is not one who we begin to think has gone quietly away.” And we do, after all, want guidance, not just sympathy, from an all-knowing God.

Guidance And God’S Omniscience

These examples of human guidance can only begin to express the “problem” of an infinite God guiding finite human beings. Consider, for example, a healthy form of human guidance that falls under the second category of Oppenheimer’s list. We consult experts in fields such as law or medicine, freely subjecting ourselves to their superior judgment on issues of vital importance. We want, and pay dearly for, their informed advice. Is not an omniscient God an ideal “expert,” fully informed on the particulars of our lives, and the most objective adviser we could possibly imagine?

At this point, the difference between finitude and infinitude crops up. I go to a lawyer or a doctor in order to exhaust his advice. I want him to study books, talk to his colleagues, scan his computer files to gather the best possible advice. He helps me to the limits of his capacity. When he is done, I take the results and make the decision on my course of action.

With God, it is different. He has unlimited capacity. In a curious sort of way, it would be cheating at the most basic level of human independence to receive “the inside story” of how the future will turn out. There would be no meaningful opportunity for faith or obedience if I knew the inevitable result of taking one sort of action and not another. Human freedom would dissolve. An all-knowing God cannot “give advice” like a conscientious lawyer. Where does he draw the line? Imagine what would happen if one musician (or one politician, or one pastor, or one confused college student), but not others, had direct and limitless access to God’s infinite wisdom and creativity. The rules governing the whole planet would shift.

C. S. Lewis hinted at God’s hesitance to intervene directly: “He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.… Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to coexist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of ‘divine abdication.’ ”

Let me summarize the problem of “divine abdication” by referring back to Lady Oppenheimer’s three models for human guidance. It seems common forms of human guidance take on grave difficulties when God himself is the other party. Surely we do not want to use him as a rubber stamp on decisions (option one). He cannot easily fill the role of an objective “friendly listener” (option three) for paradoxical reasons: because of his invisible spirit nature and also because of his own unlimited capacity and omniscience.

The second example of guidance, that of “telling us what to do,” is probably the least likely avenue God will take, out of respect for human freedom. There are exceptions, of course, the Macedonian call and Gideon’s fleece being among them; but these stand out primarily because they are exceptions. Perhaps we have the key here as to why the issue of guidance causes so much frustration among Christians. Of the various alternatives, is not this the one we secretly desire—that of being told in our prayers what to do? And yet God, with good reason, usually refrains from guiding so directly.

Does God Guide?

Most discussions on guidance tend to vaporize at about this point in the argument. We are very good at defining what guidance is not, but very bad at defining what it is. I began with the personal issues of choice that hang over each of us, and I cannot go on forever pointing out the problems in divine guidance. To be honest, I must somehow address the practical matter of involving God in the decision-making process.

Yet I have begun to wonder if our problem with guidance centers in our tendency to see it in terms of a technique, rather than as part of a relationship. As techniques, the first and third examples presented by Lady Oppenheimer fail to satisfy, but seen in the context of a relationship they take on an entirely different light.

I think of the most intimate relationship I have ever had, that of marriage for 13 years to my wife, Janet. I quickly confess that in this human relationship, also, Oppenheimer’s second option is the rarest: I almost never go to my wife to be told what to do. But, within the womb of intimacy, I do often go to her to seek support for my own decisions (option one) and to seek out a compassionate “friendly listener” who has my best interests at heart (option three).

At times in the rush of a day, I have neglected to mention some important fact, even a pleasing thing that has happened to me, perhaps an article that has been accepted for publication or an award. If my wife finds out later, she confronts me with a wounded, sometimes fiery look. “You never told me that!” she accuses. She should know more about me than anyone else—hers is an entirely appropriate, even endearing, kind of jealousy.

Or, I think of negative things in our marriage: an irritation I try to bury deep inside, a necessary confrontation I seek to avoid, a fear or insecurity I wish would go away. After 13 years, I have simply given up trying to hide those things from Janet. They will come out sometime, maybe weeks later, maybe months. My own body will give me away: a tilt of the jaw, a quiver of the eye, a sudden stiffening, an unnatural silence.

The very fact of communication is almost as important as the content of it. In one sense, I almost never go to Janet “for advice” on an issue—not, at least, in the way I would go to a lawyer or professional counselor for advice. But in another sense, everything that I do and that I am I strive to share with her. When I do face a choice between two options, naturally I go through the process with her. But at the end, when the decision is reached, we are both quite unsure of who contributed what to the ultimate result. Such a division—who contributes what—would seem strangely irrelevant to intimacy. Certainly we both maintain our independence in the process, and yet somehow—if we are relating healthily—we arrive at a truly joint decision.

In the intimacy of human marriage, perhaps we can catch a glimpse of the intimacy longed for by God. A theme peals out from the Bible, a ringing of bells, a call for us humans to act like the Bride of Christ that we are. God is the lover, we the beloved. When we reject him, we prostitute ourselves—the sexual imagery fills the prophetic books.

Here is an important clue: The Bible contains very little specific advice on the techniques of guidance, but very much on the proper way to maintain a love relationship with God. What Janet and I are learning—the small and large communications that make up our life together—is a shadow of the intimacy God desires from me. He wants a conscious and willing acceptance of his presence whenever I make a decision. The spotlight of guidance shifts from technique to relationship.

The Psalms And Guidance

If someone asked me for a recommendation of a biblical text on the doctrine of guidance, I would quickly suggest the Psalms. Yes, that’s right, all 150 of them. I learned to appreciate the Psalms on a trip to Colorado, in the midst of the busiest and most anxiety-filled year of my life. I had to go somewhere to escape office pressures in order to concentrate on one last editing of a book manuscript, and I chose Colorado in the month of May. I also needed to seek out guidance on some major decisions about my future.

I determined to arise early each morning, drive or walk to a scenic setting, and begin the day by reading in order straight through ten psalms. Those mornings still stand out with all the bracing clarity of the morning mountain air. Clusters of bright green aspen trees were coming into leaf, staining the sheltered folds of the still-wintry mountains with a gash of life. I would stare around me for a long time before reading.

Previously, I had dipped into the Psalms one at a time, finding a familiar one here or there. I found the technique of reading ten in sequence jarring. Some of them offered praise to God in jubilation and thanksgiving. They extolled his everlasting love, his deliverance, his clear guidance in daily affairs. Others, often sandwiched in between the most triumphant ones, blasted God for his seeming absence, his failure to guide clearly, his apparent forgetfulness of the promises he had made. At first the discord seemed bizarre, almost as if the Hebrew canonizers had arranged the order with a streak of mocking irony.

After a few days of unresolved dissonance, I began to change my perspective on the Psalms. I stopped looking to them for specific advice and instead viewed them as spiritual journals, accounts of a few people who took seriously the intimate relationship between God and man. The authors were brutally honest, chronicling the full benefits of that love relationship, but also the outrageous disappointments. (Martin Marty, in his recent book Cry of Absence, characterizes one-half of the psalms as “wintry” ones and only one-third as summery ones. You must read all 150 to get the full picture, the welter of emotions and faith and doubt.)

The putative author of some of those psalms was called “a man after God’s own heart.” I now understand why. In his life, David always took God seriously. He intentionally involved God in every minor and major triumph and every minor and major failure. He railed at God, exalted him, doubted him, praised him, feared him, loved him. But regardless of what happened, God was never far from David’s thoughts. David practiced the presence of God in daily details, and then took the time to keep a revealing poetic record of the intimacy between them. The repetitive, even tedious, prosody of the psalms is perhaps their main point. They primarily communicate not concepts, but rather the record of how a relationship is maintained.

Not Magic, But Faith

I confess that I have shifted tracks in the middle of an article, but I have done so because I believe most of the questions about guidance, the “how-to’s” are misdirected. They are the typically impatient demands of us Americans who want a short-cut to the “magic,” the benefit of relating to Almighty God. There is no short cut, no magic—at least not that anyone can reduce to a three-point outline. There is only the possibility of a lifetime search for intimacy with a God who, as the psalmists discovered, sometimes seems close and sometimes far, sometimes seems loving and sometimes forgetful. We have little sympathy, as Lewis said, for the “problems” of Omnipotence. But God does not want sympathy, he wants love and a lasting commitment to take him seriously, every day, regardless. And if there is a formula for guidance, it would have to be that.

Does God guide? Yes, I believe that he does. Most times, I believe, he guides in subtle ways, by feeding ideas into our minds, speaking through a nagging sensation of dissatisfaction, inspiring us to choose better than we otherwise would have done, bringing to the surface hidden dangers of temptation, and perhaps by rearranging certain circumstances. (He may also still guide through visions, dreams, and prophetic utterances, but I cannot speak to these forms as they lie outside my field of experience.) God’s guidance will supply real help, but in ways that will not overwhelm my freedom.

And yet, I cannot help thinking this whole issue of divine guidance, which draws throngs of seekers to seminars and sells thousands of books, is powerfully overrated. It deserves about as much attention as the Bible devotes to the topic.

The sociologist Bronislaw Malinowski suggested a distinction between magic and religion. Magic, he said, is when we manipulate the deities so that they perform our wishes; religion is when we subject ourselves to the will of the deities. True guidance cannot resemble magic, a way for God to give us short cuts and genie bottles. It must, rather, fall under Malinowski’s definition of religion. If so, it will occur in the context of a committed relationship between a Christian and his God. Once that relationship exists, divine guidance becomes not an end in itself but merely one more means God uses in nourishing faith.

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