From his book “The Will of God as a Way of Life,” Jerry Sittser wrote:
So we should listen for God’s voice, discern God’s purpose, and keep perspective. Still the time comes when we must make a specific decision, choosing one pathway and turning away from the others. Can we ever know for sure that the choices we make are the will of God? If so how? What criteria should we employ to judge the success of our choices?
Success itself is a dangerous criterion to use. If we judge the wisdom of our choices by how successful the outcome is, we will become confused and disillusioned in a very short time. Does success—whatever that means—that we have chosen God’s will and failure indicate that we have missed it? Not necessarily. It depends on what we mean by success and failure.
Benedict Groeschel, a Franciscan, cautions us about using success as a criterion for determining whether or not a decision is the will of God. Success is often misleading and so is failure. Success can make us complacent and proud; failure can inspire us to work harder to accomplish our goals.
It is commonly thought that if we begin a project for the Lord, the pieces will fall into place. It doesn’t work out that way. . . .
Disasters befall projects of the good spirit, as well as those of the bad. Success has never been a sign of God’s will.
As Mother Teresa of Calcutta observed, “God calls us to fidelity and not to success.” It seems to
me that a sure sign that a certain project is the work of God is if we have the
grace to struggle on without bitterness in the face of difficulties and frustrations.14
Some decisions become final. We close the door never to open it again. We should not try to second guess ourselves, wondering what would have happened if we had chosen differently. Of course, the results of the choices do matter. Every choice has consequences. I have chosen, for example to remain single rather than to remarry. I have friends who would like to see me married again and have pushed me in that direction. They tell me it would be good for me–“You are the marrying kind,” they say—and good for the kids—“Your kids need another mother,” they add. But I have other friends that warn me about remarriage. They testify how difficult it is to blend families. As one colleague said recently, “Jerry, you’re coaching a team in the middle of the fourth quarter. Keep your eyes on the game. Don’t start looking in the grandstands!”
In one sense their comments don’t matter. For whatever reason, I have chosen to remain single and to raise my kids alone. Is it God’s will for me to remarry? Who knows? I do know, however, that it is not God’s will for me to obsess about it and thus neglect what I know is God’s will, namely, to respond faithfully to him in my circumstances as they are right now.
Choice implies risk, even when we choose wisely. I have made my share of “right” choices over the last twenty-five years. I seem to have chosen the “right” profession taken the “right” jobs, married the “right” woman, made the “right” friends and bought the “right” houses. But my choices have not always turned out well, even when I made them in good faith. I have suffered along the way, too. Sometimes I deserved it; sometimes I did not. But the very idea of “deserving” is beside the point. What counts the most is that God is working in my life, writing a redemptive story. I can trust him and do his will wherever I am, whether or not I made the “right“ choices, whether or not those “right” choices had a good outcome.
Even our best choices will not always appear to turn out well, at least from an earthly perspective. We take a job that seemed perfect for us only to quit in frustration three years later. We marry someone who exceeded our wildest dreams, only to wonder ten years later, what went wrong. We go to the mission field with high aspirations, only to get sick and have to return home. We made choices in good conscience, but they might not always work out. We will be tempted in those moments to wonder if those choices were the will of God after all.
This natural tendency to doubt is why we must trust God and not look back. Life does not always work out as we expected or wanted. Even our best intentions and decisions can result in disappointment, failure, and suffering. But we must beware of coming to hasty conclusions about God’s will. The story we are living is more wild and wonderful than we think. It is not over yet over.
. . . .We had other options. All of them could have been the will of God, but only one became the will of God—the one we chose. This choice is the one God will bless and redeem if we dedicate our lives to him. We can be sure of this because God is good, and he has created us to be his. ~Jerry Sittser, the Will of God as a Way of Life (Grande Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2000,2004), 102-04
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
