Declarations for Purpose: When You Don't Know What's Next

Two verses get quoted more than any others when somebody is deciding what to do with their life. Both are genuine promises. Both are routinely stretched into shapes they were never built to hold, and the stretching creates a crisis later when reality declines to cooperate.

The Two Verses, Read Properly

Read verse ten before it. After seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you. This is spoken to exiles who have just been told the deportation will last most of a lifetime. Jeremiah has, in the same letter, instructed them to build houses, plant gardens and seek the welfare of the city that conquered them.

Most of the original hearers died in Babylon. The promise was true and it was fulfilled in their grandchildren.

Which does not diminish the verse. It relocates it. Jeremiah 29:11 is a promise about God's long intention across generations, and it is not an assurance that this quarter will go well. Take it as the first and you are standing on granite. Take it as the second and you will eventually conclude that God broke His word, when in fact you were reading someone else's mail as though it were a personal forecast.

The condition sits in the middle clause and is regularly skipped. Lean not unto thine own understanding means guidance frequently will not feel like understanding. If you are waiting to feel certain before you move, you may be waiting for a sensation the verse has already told you not to expect.

A Lamp, Not a Floodlight

The psalmist is precise about how much illumination is on offer, and the precision is easily lost on readers who have never walked anywhere without electric light.

An oil lamp in the ancient Near East was a small clay vessel, held low or tied near the foot, throwing a circle of light perhaps a metre across. It showed you where to put your next step on an unpaved road. It did not show you the road.

To see further you had to walk, and the light moved with you. That is the shape of most guidance in Scripture. Waiting for the entire route to be lit before moving is not caution; it is a misunderstanding of the equipment you have been issued.

God Guides People Who Are Moving

Look at how direction actually arrives in Scripture. It is almost never given to the stationary.

• Abram is told to go to a land that I will shew thee. The destination is withheld until after departure.
• The Red Sea parts after Israel is told to go forward, with the water still in front of them.
• The Jordan does not stop flowing until the priests' feet are in it. The text is explicit that the waters parted when they stood in the brim.
• Philip is sent to a desert road with no explanation and finds an Ethiopian official reading Isaiah.
• Paul plans Asia, is prevented, plans Bithynia, is prevented again, and only then receives the Macedonian vision. Two closed doors preceded the open one, and he was travelling for all of it.

The pattern is consistent enough to be a principle. Guidance clarifies from inside a decision far more often than from outside it. A stationary believer waiting for certainty is asking for something God rarely distributes.

Two Kinds of Will, and Which One You Are Asking About

Theologians have long distinguished two senses in which Scripture speaks of God's will, and confusing them causes a great deal of unnecessary distress.

The first is His sovereign purpose: what He has determined will happen. This is not something you can miss, frustrate or step outside of. He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. You are not capable of derailing it.

The second is His revealed will: what He has told us to do. This one can be disobeyed, which is why it is stated so plainly and so often.

Almost everybody agonising over guidance is asking about a third thing that Scripture does not really discuss in these terms — a specific plan for their individual circumstances that God is holding privately and must be coaxed into revealing.

The New Testament does not describe the Christian life that way. It describes a person being transformed, taking wise counsel, and choosing freely within the boundaries God has set. There is enormous liberty in that, and most people find it more frightening than the treasure-hunt model, because it hands them responsibility.

Wisdom Is the Ordinary Method

Look at how the early church made a significant decision when it had no direct instruction.

In Acts 15 a genuine controversy arises about Gentile converts. There is no vision and no voice. What happens instead is a gathering, a long debate, testimony from people with relevant experience, an appeal to Scripture, and a conclusion the leaders describe with striking modesty: it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us.

It seemed good to us. That is the language of considered judgement, and it was sufficient for a decision that shaped the entire future of the church.

Paul operates the same way constantly. I trust to see you shortly. I thought it necessary to send Epaphroditus. If it be meet that I go also. He plans, adjusts, changes his mind, and does not appear to regard this as a spiritual deficiency.

Counsellors, plural. Not one friend who will agree with you, which is what most of us actually go looking for. Two or three people who know you well enough to say the unwelcome thing.

Ten Declarations

• God's thoughts toward me are thoughts of peace, to give me an expected end. (Jeremiah 29:11)
• I trust in the LORD with all my heart and lean not unto my own understanding; He directs my paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
• Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalm 119:105)
• A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps. (Proverbs 16:9)
• If I lack wisdom, I ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not. (James 1:5)
• Mine ears shall hear a word behind me, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it. (Isaiah 30:21)
• He which hath begun a good work in me will perform it. (Philippians 1:6)
• In Him I live, and move, and have my being. (Acts 17:28)
• The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me. (Psalm 138:8)
• I am created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained. (Ephesians 2:10)

James 1:5 deserves a second look. Whoever asks for wisdom is promised it liberally and without reproach. The word translated upbraideth not means God will not make you feel foolish for asking. Many believers hesitate to ask for direction because they suspect they should have worked it out already. Scripture removes that anxiety explicitly.

Purpose Is Bigger Than Occupation

Much of the anxiety in this area comes from a category error: treating purpose as a synonym for job.

Scripture's statements of human purpose are consistently larger and less specific than a career. To glorify God and enjoy Him. To love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself. To be conformed to the image of His Son. To do justly, love mercy and walk humbly.

None of these depend on your occupation, and all of them are available in it. Which means the question what is my purpose has an answer you already have, and the question what should I do next is a smaller and much less urgent one than it feels.

He hath shewed thee. Past tense. The great matter has already been disclosed, and it turns out to be about character and conduct rather than assignment.

Doors That Close

A closed door is one of the most common forms of guidance and one of the least welcome, and the New Testament is unusually frank about it.

Paul was forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. Then he assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered him not. Two closures, no explanation given in the text, and then a vision of a man in Macedonia.

Two things worth noticing. First, he was moving when both refusals came. He did not sit still waiting for certainty; he made a plan, was redirected, made another, and was redirected again.

Second, the closures were the guidance. Had Asia been open, there would have been no Philippi, no Thessalonica, no Corinth and no letters to any of them. A great deal of the New Testament exists because Paul was told no twice.

So when a door shuts, resist the two easy readings. It is not necessarily an attack to be resisted, and it is not necessarily a verdict on your worth. It may simply be steering, and steering requires that the vehicle already be in motion.

When You Fear You Have Already Chosen Wrong

A great many people are paralysed less by not knowing what comes next than by suspecting they missed it years ago. The wrong course, the wrong city, the wrong decade.

Scripture is remarkably relaxed about this, and the examples are not marginal.

Jonah went in precisely the opposite direction from his commission, by sea, deliberately, and arrived in Nineveh anyway. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers and later told them that what they meant for evil, God meant for good. Peter denied Christ three times on the night it mattered most and was restored on a beach over breakfast a few weeks later.

God is not so fragile that a poor decision at twenty-three has permanently derailed His intention. The doctrine of providence means He works through your errors as readily as through your obedience, and neither is a surprise to Him.

Three Ways People Get Guidance Wrong

Treating Peace as the Only Test

Colossians speaks of the peace of God ruling in the heart, and the verb brabeuo means to act as umpire. It is a genuine instrument of guidance. It is not the only one, and it is easily confused with relief, familiarity or simply having made a decision.

Jonah had considerable peace on the boat to Tarshish; he slept through a storm. Peace is a poor sole witness. Weigh it alongside Scripture, counsel and circumstance rather than above them.

Treating an Open Door as a Command

Paul describes a great door and effectual opened unto me, and in the same breath notes that there are many adversaries. Opportunity and rightness are not the same thing. He also, at Troas, had a door opened of the Lord and left anyway, because he had no rest in his spirit for want of Titus.

An open door is information. It is not an instruction.

Waiting for a Voice

Some believers are effectively paralysed waiting for the kind of direct address Paul received on the Damascus road. It is worth noticing how rare that is in Scripture, and that it generally came to people who were not asking for it, often while they were going the wrong way.

The ordinary equipment is Scripture, wisdom, counsel and a mind being renewed. Romans 12 says that we prove the will of God by the renewing of the mind, which describes a faculty being trained rather than a message being received.

What God Has Already Made Clear

Here is something that ought to be said more often. Most believers seeking direction are asking about a decision Scripture is silent on, while a great deal that Scripture speaks about plainly goes unattended.

The New Testament states God's will explicitly in several places, and none of them concern career or geography.

• This is the will of God, even your sanctification. (1 Thessalonians 4:3)
• In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
• For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. (1 Peter 2:15)

There is an old piece of pastoral counsel that holds up well: do the next right thing you already know to be right, and the unclear things tend to clarify. A person walking in what they understand is far better positioned to receive guidance than one standing still waiting for it.

A lamp to the feet lights the next step. To see further, you have to walk.

On Psalm 119:105

The Long Gap Between Calling and Commissioning

Scripture is remarkably consistent on one point that almost never appears in teaching about purpose: the gap.

• Joseph dreams at seventeen and stands before Pharaoh at thirty. Thirteen years, most of them in a household and a prison.
• Moses knows at forty that he is meant to deliver his people, kills a man attempting it, and spends forty years keeping sheep before the bush.
• David is anointed king as a boy and spends more than a decade hunted through the wilderness.
• Paul is converted and then, by his own account in Galatians, goes into Arabia and does not begin his public work for years.
• Jesus is thirty before He begins, having spent the preceding years in a carpenter's shop with no recorded ministry at all.

The pattern is too consistent to be accidental. Whatever God is doing in those intervals, He does not appear to consider them a delay.

Which reframes a stalled season. If you know roughly what you are for and cannot yet do it, you are in the most populated part of Scripture. The question worth asking is not when does this start but what is being formed here, and that question generally has an answer.

Called Out of Something Before Called To Something

The order in Scripture is consistent and it is the reverse of how we usually think about vocation.

Abram is told to get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee. The leaving is specified in detail. The destination is withheld entirely.

The disciples are told follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. What they are becoming is described in a phrase; what they are leaving is nets, boats, a father and a business, and Mark says they left them immediately.

Elisha is ploughing when Elijah throws a mantle over him. He asks to say goodbye to his parents, then slaughters the oxen, burns the plough to cook them, and feeds the people. The exit is made irreversible before the new work has begun.

This suggests something uncomfortable about waiting for clarity. Frequently the clarity is on the far side of a departure, and the departure has to be made without it. Which is not a licence for recklessness — Abram was addressed directly by God — but it does explain why so many people who feel stuck also feel that nothing has been asked of them yet.

Small Obedience Is the Test

There is a principle the Lord states twice, and it applies directly to anyone waiting for a larger assignment.

The parable of the talents makes the same point from the other end: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enlargement follows faithfulness rather than preceding it.

So the practical answer to what should I do next is frequently duller than expected. Do well the thing currently in front of you. Turn up on time. Finish what you agreed to. Serve where you are already standing.

This is not a substitute for guidance. It is the condition in which guidance is generally given, and it has the considerable advantage of being available today.

Practical Order for a Decision

When something genuinely needs deciding, work through it in this order rather than waiting for a feeling.

• Does Scripture speak to it directly? If so, the matter is settled and no further guidance is required.
• Ask for wisdom, plainly, and expect to receive it without reproach.
• Take counsel. In the multitude of counsellors there is safety, and Proverbs says so more than once.
• Weigh circumstances honestly, remembering that open doors are not always the right doors and closed ones are not always refusals.
• Then decide, and move. A decision made prayerfully and in good conscience is not made less valid by uncertainty.

Speak the verse, then take the step. The ram was already in the thicket before Abraham reached the top of Moriah, and he did not see it from the bottom of the hill.