The hardest decisions usually aren’t between good and bad options. We render those judgments every day and rarely give them a second thought. The choices we lose sleep over are the ones where there are potential positives and negatives either way. Do we take a job where the pay is better but the commute is further? Do we move to an area where the opportunities are greater but we’re away from family? Oftentimes, the uncertainty bothers us most: we don’t want to miss the great by choosing the good.
We appropriately want God to guide us; but too often, we only bring Him in late in the process. We have our two options, and we ask Him to show us which is better. Yet, this is a huge missed opportunity. When you have the Creator of the Universe looking out for you, why ask Him to choose from A or B when He has the whole alphabet to work with? That’s why the Scriptures speak so much of asking “according to His will”. It’s less about tacking on the words “if it’s Your will” as a caveat to praying for our will than it is about truly caring: what does God want?
Paul wrote, “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Timothy 2:3-4). What if we as Jesus’ disciples set out to make this the basis of our decisions? Imagine how things fall into place when our starting point for choices about our jobs, homes, and family life is how to help more people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
If God is our starting point instead of ourselves, we are going to be considering a completely different set of options than if we’re chasing our own wants (with God’s occasional input). We may even find that we get to confidently choose between two equally good options without anxiety or regret. What God wants is crystal clear. The challenge for us is learning it, wanting it, and then actually doing it ourselves.