It is as sharing in some faint degree in our Lord’s High-Priestly action, bringing the needs of the world to the altar of God, and going forth from the altar of God bringing bread and wine to the needs of the world, that the Christian priest’s life of prayer must be lived.1
—EVELYN UNDERHILL
Nothing good comes from Nazareth.
Most Bible readers—even the most dedicated ones—will likely be unfamiliar with the ancient city of Megiddo, which was situated in the northern hills of Israel and along the Jezreel Valley. But in the ancient world, this city held great strategic importance. In the words of Pharaoh Thutmose III (fifteenth century BC), “The capture of Megiddo is the capture of a thousand cities.” This is because Megiddo sat along the Via Maris—or Way of the Sea—a major trade route situated along the Mediterranean Sea. This trade route was crossed over by other trade routes, which allowed people to travel between Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Whoever conquered Megiddo exercised significant control over trade in the known world, and whoever controlled trade thus controlled the economy, and whoever controlled the economy largely controlled the world.
Understandably, Megiddo became one of the most fought-over cities in the ancient world. Archaeologists have discovered at least twenty-six layers of civilization there. It is nicknamed the “City of Kings” because of the number of kings who conquered and ruled it. One of those kings was King Solomon, who refortified the city during his reign in the tenth century BC (1 Kings 9:15).
Just eleven miles across the Jezreel Valley and within eyesight from Megiddo is another city. Unlike Megiddo, however, this city today is one of the most familiar in the world: Nazareth—the boyhood town of Jesus.
But in the ancient world, Nazareth was not a place kings fought over, let alone talked about. When people sat around their campfires in Nazareth, they would have told stories about the kings who conquered and the warriors who fought over Megiddo. They did not tell stories about protagonists from Nazareth. There were none to tell.
Nazareth at the time of Jesus would have had only between four hundred and two thousand people. It wasn’t mentioned in Jewish literature until the third century AD.
No wonder Nathanael was so dumbfounded when Philip told him that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” he asked (John 1:45–46). The King of kings and the Lord of lords is not supposed to hail from Nazareth, is He?
Sometimes the people God uses aren’t the ones we see as most important. They don’t come from where we expect, and they may not look significant.
The paradox of Nazareth is one more reminder of the paradox of Jesus, one more reminder of the paradox of the heavenly kingdom juxtaposed with the kingdoms of this world.
God’s ways flip the ways of our culture upside down.
SELF-DECEPTION
At the center of the idea of “God’s will for my life” lies a subtle self-deception that “life is really about me.” We all like to think God’s will for our individual lives is to write us into the story as the central character.
Whether we’re aware of it or not, we carry with us a subtle sense in our pursuit of God or in our prayers, that at any moment we will break out of the fog or the challenges of life and enter into a season where it is all about us. Where God’s plan has us in the driver’s seat. Where we are each the most important person in the world. Where everyone else will recognize our extreme importance.
And self-righteousness always has its roots in self-centeredness.
With an inflated sense of our own importance, we tend to approach God as if He is eager to write us in as the central character in His drama—as Hamlet in the school play. The sin and selfishness in all of us is that we want to be the center of the universe. We see ourselves at the center of everything (and all things bending to meet our desires). It is subtle, and it can hide behind good intentions. The absurdity is the obvious fact that not everyone in the school play can be Hamlet. There is only one Hamlet, and everyone else, to some degree, is the supporting cast.
Nothing illustrates the false illusion of worldly power and centrality we have more than Jesus of Nazareth.
We want to write God into our story; but God prefers writing us into His.
Our flawed perspective shows itself in many ways. One of the most common phrases we hear in talks about suffering is, “God wants to build character, not comfort.” It’s one of those Christian sayings that you nod along with before you even finish hearing because it sounds so obviously spiritual. But the idea that suffering exists to bring character rather than comfort is flawed, as it still articulates a self-centered way of understanding the reality of daily life. Even the suffering and resultant character is ultimately focused on me and about me. I’m still the hero of the story, and the suffering only makes sense if it is to help me grow.
Self-deception has two related opposites, and both are essential to our becoming mature, to our becoming all that God intends us to be. And whereas making everything—even character-building—all about ourselves comes very easily to all of us, humility and teachability come only with difficulty and submission. T. S. Eliot wrote, “Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself.”2
And related to the issues of humility and teachability is the issue of accurate self-assessment. According to G. K. Chesterton, “What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.”3
Perhaps even more apt is Pascal’s observation:
It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and unwilling to recognize them, since this entails the further evil of deliberate self-delusion. We do not want others to deceive us; we do not think it right for them to want us to esteem them more than they deserve; it is therefore not right either that we should deceive them and want them to esteem us more than we deserve.4
Saint Augustine described the process as he experienced it back in the fourth century: “O Lord, you were turning me around to look at myself. For I had placed myself behind my own back, refusing to see myself. You were setting me before my own eyes so that I could see how sordid I was, how deformed and squalid, how tainted with ulcers and sores. I saw it all and stood aghast, but there was no place where I could escape from myself.”5
This process isn’t easy—it can be incredibly difficult, and messy. But it is critical. When we see ourselves for what we really are, the picture can be bleak and humbling. Becoming aware of our own pride and our own selfishness is the first step in becoming teachable enough to begin the process of renouncing some of our commitment to self.
Instead of asking what God’s will is for my life, I should be asking how I can serve God’s will with my life.
This subtle deception, thinking I’m talking about God’s will when in fact I am really most concerned with myself, is why we’re always looking for that dynamic, amazing plan God must have for our lives. It is why we have such a hard time with day-to-day faithful, righteous, and just living as a manifestation of God’s will for how we should live.
This challenge is an enormous reality in a consumeristic society. Nearly everything reinforces the commitment to and primacy of self. Our culture does a better job of raising up consumers than instilling compassion. Both as a society and as individuals, we tend to focus much more on human rights than on human responsibilities. We see ourselves more often as the victims of society than as shapers of circumstance and members of society.
God doesn’t promise that all will play the central character, or that we’ll get to be the Moses, David, Rebekah, or Paul. What God does promise, however, is that He will love all, lead all, meet us all, and provide the guidance and wisdom needed through the Holy Spirit to find, rest in, and follow His leading in our lives.
But we still have questions. We still want guidance.
One of the most human of all questions is, “Why am I here?” It seeks to understand the role we play in the universe and extends to what we do and how we make life decisions on a daily basis.
And what about God’s calling for my life? What is my purpose, and how does God want me to use my gifts?
Our heads spin with these questions and countless others every day. We recognize the significance of these governing questions and the decisions that follow them.
Much of life is governed by major decisions that affect all our other decisions and options. Where we go to school, whom we marry, and what profession we choose all affect virtually every other aspect of our lives. Unlike where I eat for lunch today, these bigger decisions affect everything downstream. So, understanding our purpose and making good decisions to higher-order questions is incredibly important.
GOD’S WILL FOR OUR LIFE
Though there are several biblical principles to help us define direction and chart our course in life as believers, the reality that God shows us in Scripture is that personal calling and mission are often best understood looking backward, rather than peering into the future.
Though life is messy and it is impossible to have perfect insight about the future, in Christ we can find hope that provides sufficient grounding for daily life. We must balance our desire for specific direction with an ability to be at peace in our current situation and the leading God has for us today.
Somewhere along the line, as Christians, we are led to believe that there is a very clear map of God’s will for our lives, one that would make wisdom, prayer, and wise counsel from friends unnecessary because we would have such a clear understanding that all those things become irrelevant.
As the verses below illustrate, God’s will is a broad concept, having to do with our minds and the entirety of our lives, rather than specific steps.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)
For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. (1 Peter 2:15)
As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. (1 Peter 4:2)
Believing this false ideal—that simply discerning the correct next step in life equates to walking in God’s will—has become for Christians one of the most rampant and destructive impediments to our maturity and spiritual growth.
God’s will in my life may not be so much about what college I attend, or a “mission impossible”–type message delivered to me about how I’m going to save the world before it self-destructs. Rather, it can often be more about how I live my life than the specifics of what I do.
The question isn’t simply what will make me happy, but the more complex one of what is good, true, and beautiful, and what promises has God made that I can have peace in?
It is a pretty powerful thing to see or hear God say, “I will.” There are probably no stronger, more comforting, or more final words in life than when the sovereign God says, “I will.”
I had a professor, Jerry Root, who once said that we can have sure words, but God gets last words.
There is no stronger last word in Scripture than when God declares, “I will.”
These declarations are present throughout Scripture (note the added emphasis in all of the following passages). In Genesis, God said, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great” (12:2), and later, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised” (28:15).
In Exodus He told His people, “I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you” (6:6). He continued, “I will establish your borders. . . . I will give into your hands the people who live in the land” (23:31).
He told Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel” (Joshua 3:7), and through the prophet Jeremiah He said, “See, I will defend your cause and avenge you” (Jeremiah 51:36).
Jesus used these strong words in Mark 14:58, “I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days [I] will build another, not made with hands.” And in John 2:19 Jesus answered His enemies, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
God’s promises are backed by the declaration of His power and His intention to act. In everything, we can trust Him and rely on His power at work in the world and in our lives.
WHAT IS GOD’S PLAN FOR MY LIFE?
We may not all be the main character or have a dramatic calling, but some people will. And even if we don’t, God cares about us deeply and has something for us as part of His glorious plan. Ephesians 1:11–12 says, “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.”
So how do we find our path? How do we surface the answer to our questions regarding God’s will without succumbing to the idea that God has seven billion wills, one for every person? Could it be that God’s singular will is big enough to fit seven billion people?
God often answers the bigger questions through a series of smaller questions and actions. There are a few principles along these lines I find useful when trying to discern where God is leading.
1. DO WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW
The Bible is full of wisdom about godly living and God’s will for us to become more like Him, to glorify Him, and to love others. Here is where we should start: with obedience to God and with faithfulness in our daily lives and relationships.
As Paul told the Christians in Thessalonica, “you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (1 Thessalonians 4:10–12).
Rather than acting on what we know, we Christians seem to spend a disproportionate amount of our time and energy trying to figure out the 10 percent of God’s will that is mysterious. We are enamored with the part that seems exciting, engaging, and adventurous, and somewhat bored by doing the 90 percent that we already do know—the obvious, the cliché, the morally obligatory ways of living sacrificially with good character and faithfulness.
2. FIND GOD IN SOLITUDE
Nothing centers us more quickly than removing ourselves from daily routines and spending time in solitude with God.
The word solitude comes from the Latin word solitudo, meaning “loneliness,” which has the root solus, meaning “alone.” It’s a subject we don’t often talk about or think about.
When we think of what Jesus taught the disciples about prayer, we tend to reflect on the words. What we miss is the posture or position of prayer that they witnessed when they saw Him regularly spend lonely nights on mountaintops. It’s as important as the words He said and the prayer He recited to them.
Arguably, Jesus’ primary teaching on prayer was His personal example, which was so often set in the context of solitude.
Solitude is about being alone with God. We never hear God’s plans for our lives more clearly than in solitude.
3. LEARN TO SEEK GUIDANCE RATHER THAN FINAL PLANS
Sometimes the more relevant prayer is not, “God, what is Your specific will for my life?” but, “God, help me understand what decisions to make today, what endeavors to undertake, what people to pursue, and which goals to set.”
We have a class at Kilns College called Personal Calling and Mission. The goal of the class is to move students who are originally looking for a definitive, specific calling to having an understanding of prayer and a theology of seeking guidance. We want to create students mature enough to confidently and excitedly seek and follow God’s leading in their lives on a daily basis.
Faith is not only a choice in the moment, but a commitment into the future. We don’t always need to see where the road leads; we simply need the faithfulness and commitment to take the next few steps in front of us.
I once heard the phrase, “Your misery is your ministry.” It simply means that if something drives you crazy, then maybe you should do something about it. If you’re the person always critiquing worship, maybe you should be involved in worship ministry. If you’re really concerned about how children are taught, maybe you should be involved in children’s ministries. If it frustrates you how homeless people are treated or ignored, maybe you should try to be more involved in social work and outreach.
In short, what really bugs you at a deep, spiritual level creates a lot of energy, focus, and passion for effecting change.
Our passions come from God, our experiences, and what we’re good at—and they are often obvious places to start.
GOOD FROM NAZARETH?
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
It was not the place of prominence, yet it is where God birthed His vision for salvation. Nobody could have foreseen it, but in many ways, looking back, it’s consistent with all the other parts of God’s saving work. God seems to always be about turning the categories of this world on their heads. Jesus was the picture of the insider becoming the outsider. He showed us the importance of the one with power surrendering it for the benefit of others.
Jesus is not the Hollywood hero, unless the Hollywood hero—taking his lead from the gospel narrative—patterns its plot after Him.
Part of faith is trusting that your calling, as well as your steps, may remain a mystery. Life is lived forward, but understood backward. What we can bank on is that when we surrender our plans to God, we’ll find that we are successful at serving God.
Our personal calling and mission in life is often confusing. Paul wasn’t so sure of his calling at the front end of his ministry. John the Baptist knew his calling from the beginning, but later suffered a crisis of doubt. Moses was certain that he had lost his calling. There’s no formula or universal pattern for calling in the Christian life. What we are promised is that God is faithful, that He honors those who serve Him, and that we have been given the Holy Spirit specifically so we will have the guidance, leading, and input in our lives to faithfully and confidently continue forward.
In fact, faithfulness is often the best gateway to our calling or path in life.
Kierkegaard is said to have written, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” Pursuing your calling or ministry as a Christian is a big risk. It’s hazarding your own life with the belief that somehow, there is no life apart from it.
Our idea of God’s bigness, and the bigness of His plans, needs to grow. We get to join God in His work in the world. We are included, not out of necessity, but because of the relational nature of God and His plan that, not only would He be righteous, holy, and loving, but that His creation would be so as well.
What is God’s will for your life? Simple. It is that you live out His will for the world. That you bring goodness, truth, and beauty to the world.
Christianity doesn’t serve me; I serve the cause of Christ.
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
—MATTHEW 9:9