What direction does God want YOU to go?

One of my greatest failings as a Christian is my inability to truly hear what it is that God wants me to be doing with my time, with my life.

I do what I think He wants of me.

And while that's better than nothing - it's not quite right, either.

The Lord has a tendency to do things that - well, aren't what we think He wants us to do, or what we think He should do.

Want proof? Read your Bible.

As the Hebrews crossed the (miraculously dried-up) Jordan River, following forty years of exile in the wilderness, their first big challenge was the largest city of the Canaanites, Jericho. Heavily fortified, walled on all sides, the Israelites were deciding how to attack this pre-medieval castle of a city. Then Joshua was surprised by the presence of a "Christophony", or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ in the Old Testament (of which there are many), at the end of chapter 5 of the Book of Joshua.

At the beginning of chapter 6, the Lord tells Joshua His Plan for the Israelites to conquer Jericho:

1Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, and none came in. 2And the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. 3You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. 4Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. 5And when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.” 

Did you catch that? March around the city each day for six days. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, then blow the trumpets and "shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat". You know, like heavily fortified cities do.

Now, there is NO way Joshua would have come up with this plan on his own, mostly because the plan was certifiably insane. But Joshua knew enough to trust the Lord and follow His plan to the letter, and of course it worked to the letter.

For that matter, consider the Crucifixion. Now, there's a preposterous plan!

Everyone who figured out (or at least who believed) He was the long-awaited Christ, the Messiah of Isaiah 53, assumed that if God had sent Him to lead the world, He would take control of the world like every other leader had ever assumed power: militarily.

God's plan, of course, was completely different. The principal reasons stem from the fact that (1) God didn't need to ASSUME power; He had all the power already; (2) He had a two-step plan in mind that even the OT prophets hadn't forecast; and (3) Christ would be leading the world through the Holy Spirit, leading spiritually rather than militarily anyway.

So even thought Jesus said to the apostles over and over again that “the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.” [Matthew 20: 18-19, among many others], they simply didn't believe Him because they couldn't fathom that possibility. It did not match their assumptions about Christ's mission on earth.

Here's my point: What plan might God have for you that you simply can't fathom? 

More to my immediate point: what plan might He have for MY life that I've ignored because I already think I'm doing God's Will?

As I've gotten sicker, He has certainly encouraged me to write, and to write for His Glory, as I am able to do. God has gradually pulled me out of the teaching mode, both music and the alternative school, and given me more and more time and opportunity to write novels in the Christian genre, to write for this blog, and tangentially for a pair of Australian sources for sports - one for Australian Rules football, one for "US Sports", which apparently includes Canadian football as well as NCAA and NFL football. (Those don't give me many chances to evangelize, but there are the occasional opportunities as they appear.)

But is that really what He wants me to be doing with my time? 

I don't know. I just don't.

My girlfriend and I have similar thoughts about our own relationship: is marriage as obvious a plan for us as it seems? And remember, with God, "obvious" is not all it's cracked up to be.

So, how do you know God's plan for you is? Well, is it too obvious to say, "Ask Him"?

Pray. Pray a lot, pray fervently, pray often, pray privately, ask others to pray for you, pray, pray, pray.

The other thing you should do is read your Bible, and for two specific reasons: you'll need to know what His Word can tell you in your specific situation (and don't doubt that Scripture has useful answers for most of our situations), and you'll want to make sure that whatever you think God is telling you is Biblical, because if it isn't, it didn't come from God.

But most importantly, pay attention to what you hear and see and read and feel the Holy Spirit telling you. Trust in the Lord and not in your own understanding. Never forget that His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.

And don't be surprised if He surprises you.