When I was a teenager, I would spend hours wondering what God wanted me to do with my life.

Where should I go to college?
What should I study?
What sort of job should I get?
Would I get married?
And my favorite (also the scariest) question to think about . . . who would I marry?

I used to have the idea that only teenagers wondered about God’s will for their lives. Kind of like once you become an adult—and especially a parent—you already have the whole “life” thing mapped out. 

As I grow older, however, I find myself daily asking the Lord to teach me his will and ways. Becoming a parent has only increased my desperation to know what God wants for me as a mother to four of his children. Currently, my husband and I are praying about relocating to a place where Jonathan can serve as a senior pastor. So I’m not only asking God for wisdom to know His will in daily choices, but also in what some would call “life-altering” choices as well.

My thoughts have turned lately to this question that first troubled me through my teen years:

How can I know God’s will for my life?

Here are four biblical principles that have been bedrocks for me during this time:

God can use people around me to offer biblical counsel.

I am thankful for the countless times God has guided me through wise counselors in my local church. Sometimes God has used the (painful) ministry of confrontation. Other times friends encourage me by sharing ways God has guided them in the past. When I humbly submit myself to those around me, I am able to benefit from the wisdom God has given them.
“Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14).

God’s will for me may be wildly different from my current plans and desires.

We’ve all heard stories of people who always wanted to live in a certain location and now they’re serving right where they always wanted to be. But that’s not always the case. God’s will for Jesus was that he suffer for the sins of the world. Jesus, in complete obedience, lovingly obeyed his Father, despite his prayer that God “remove this cup” from him.
May my prayer be the same as Jesus’s words: “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

If I am proud and convinced my way is best, I blind myself to God’s leading.

It is impossible to lead a proud person because they are convinced they know the way. I recently finished reading Absolute Surrender and was struck by this quote:

“How often we ask, “How can a person know the will of God?”
And people want when they are in perplexity to pray very earnestly that God should answer them at once.
But God can only reveal his will to a heart that is humble and tender and empty.”

– Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray –

How easily I can convince myself that I am right and everyone else is wrong. When I’m convinced my way is best, I will not listen to any other opinions—not even God’s. In order to be led, we must first be a humble follower.
“He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way” (Psalm 25:9).

The only way to know God’s will is to have a close relationship with him through his Word and prayer.

I can receive wrong counsel from others.
My desires may lead me astray.
But God’s Word and the Holy Spirit will never mislead me.
“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21).
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105).
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” (Psalm 32:8).

May God give us grace to humbly and earnestly seek him.
May we respond in obedience to his direction.

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13

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