Jerry Sittser in his book ‘The Will of God as a Way of Life wrote:
“For many years I followed. . . a conventional approach to discovering the will of God for my life. Not that I did it consciously or critically. If I had been more critical I certainly would have raised questions about it. I simply assumed it as true and then pursued it with considerable anxiety. I wanted to get it right the first time around.
But over time I discovered problems with this conventional approach. For one, it focuses our attention on what appears to be the important decisions, which might not be as important as we think. For example, we think long and hard when we choose a college, a job, a career, or a spouse. But we give little thought to how much TV we watch or how often we talk on the phone or how seldom we praise our children. Yet little choices we make every day often have a cumulative effect far exceeding the significance of the big choices we have to make.
As I look back now on the ordeal of deciding between medicine and ministry I am both amused and embarrassed. I was preoccupied with that decision for months. I prayed, sought advice, and thought long and hard about the benefits and defects of both options. I wanted to know which one was God’s will for my life. But regardless of how fervently I searched, I could not make a decision with the assurance that I would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the one I chose was right. Like a traveler on a long journey who comes to a major crossroad with no signposts marking the way, I had to choose without the sure knowledge that I was going to end up on the right path. I felt confused and miserable.
In the meantime I did not realize what was happening to me. I had become as self absorbed as a child standing in front of a mirror and as unpleasant to be around as a nervous cat. My wife Lynda finally jolted me out of my self-absorption. “Who really cares what you decide?” she asked. “I just want my husband back!” Ironically, I was worrying so much about my decision that I had ignored what was staring me right in the face. I was neglecting Lynda, losing interest in my studies, and overlooking mundane responsibilities. I thought almost exclusively about myself.
As it turns out, Lynda asked the right question. It broke the spell of obsession. I began to ponder the choice itself. “Does it really matter which option I choose?” I was familiar with physicians and pastors who were rogues. So I knew that neither profession guaranteed that I would become a good person or serve a noble cause. How I functioned in either field of service would depend on the quality of my character, the depth of my convictions, and the degree of my competence, which are developed as we do our daily routines.
I finally concluded that the choice of medicine or ministry was beside the point, for it was not attentive to the little choices I made every day—to be a diligent student, a kind husband, a disciplined Christian—the whichever path I chose would never lead to the kind of fruitfulness I really desired for my life.
We do not, therefore, need to fret when we have to make big decisions about the future, worrying about the terrifying possibility that we might miss God’s will for our lives. We simply need to do what we already know in the present. God has been clear where clarity is most needed. The choices we make every day—to love a spouse after an argument, to treat an unkind co-worker with respect, to serve soup at a soup kitchen—determine whether or not we are doing the will of God. If we have a problem, it is not lack of knowledge; rather, it is our unwillingness to respond to the knowledge we have.
As we will see, of course, we still have to make difficult choices regarding the future, as I did when I had to choose between medicine and ministry. But these choices are secondary all the same. Who we choose to become and how we choose to live every day creates a trajectory for everything else. Perhaps that is why the Bible says so little about God’s will for tomorrow and so much about what we should do to fulfill his will today. ~Jerry Sittser, the Will of God as a Way of Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2000,2004), 23-25
