Sometimes I Need to be Reminded of the Destination

Do you ever wish that God’s guiding were as clear as typing an address into an Iphone and pressing the “give me directions button?” Sure, Iphone directions are occasionally circuitous, but I’ve always ended up at the destination. I don’t always feel that way about God’s will. Then I remember that I often view God’s will as a particular path, when instead it is a destination and there are many routes to arrive at that destination. The destination is full redemption of the human person.

Meanwhile there are the paths that we trod here and now.

Several years ago a friend and I read Hearing God by Dallas Willard on the topic of God’s will. She was in Africa homeschooling a couple kids and I was in California just becoming a teacher. We both fell into the jobs we were doing at the time. And yet, both of us understood our jobs as God directed.

Willard argues that instead of one path, one God mandated right or wrong action, for a marriage, a job, or who to hang out with, God instead allows us choices of different paths. Granted within the various paths open to us we are expected to be prayerful (we are also expected to behave as children of God so robbing, lying, manipulation are out), because occasionally God gives very specific commands. I don’t know how often specific commands come or even how they come. I only know that sometimes they do come. (See Peter being commanded to meet Cornelius). Or at least so Willard argues. When a specific command is not given, we are given the freedom to choose the paths that desire or circumstances or both opens up to us.

Ultimately, there is a destination. The destination is that me, Nathan, Felicity… people— are to be redeemed and to be made into creatures that God intends us to be. Lewis speaks of our unredeemed reality as little more then ghosts, ephemeral vapors that need to be hardened and made solid. God’s will is that we become solid, real people and oftentimes circumstances are incidental to that.

Sometimes when I’m really worried about what to do, which job to take or what to do with my time, I have to remember that God is often more concerned with how I approach my tasks and not what the tasks are.

God may I have the endurance to become like you in my everyday life within the freedom you granted me and the wisdom to know if you are leading me to a particular task, conversation, or job.

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