Direction

Author: 
Claude Hickman

Claude Hickman

How Do I Know God's Direction For My Life

Some students won't ever find their way to the right path God has for them, not because of disinterest or disobedience, but because of debilitation: the paralysis caused by too many options. Paul Borthwick calls this the problem of "overchoice." With the whole world before you and a passion to reach it, where do you dive in? Choosing one path seems like leaving behind several other great options. To a generation where keeping your options open is a high priority, fitting yourself somewhere into God's global plans seems like an overwhelming task. I've began to give students this advice, which is more of a principle based approach to finding direction from God on the journey He has for you. The process must follow these decision-steps in the succession they are laid out to ensure meaningful Great Commission decisions and to protect us from selfish distortions. I just call it the telescope.

In this "telescope," the first lens we look through is leading. This is the hardest to describe, but the most confirming in our spirit - because it comes from God. When I say leading I do not mean that you feel "called" to missions and some are not called. Us missions mobilizers get on edge when you start using this kind of language, because we maintain that everyone is called to be on mission with God in reaching the nations. We are all commanded to go - leading just tells us where to stop. Two main "leading" demographics to begin with would be 1) a religion group or 2) an area of the world. Do you see yourself working among Muslims, Tribals, or in an area such as China or Africa? Many times this decision lens of leading must be learned by experience. That is why every believer should determine to take at least one meaningful short-term mission trip in their life. Leading comes from experience because God clarifies in the midst of obedience, not beforehand. The apostle Paul tried to get into six cities before God clarified his Macedonian "leading" to him in a vision (Acts 16:6-10). As Keith Green said, "God can't steer a parked car." The idea is that we need to move forward, the rest of the details will come along the way. "Your ears will hear a word behind you, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or to the left" (Isaiah 30:21)

When you are obeying and delighting yourself in the Lord's will, there is a sense in which you can trust the inner leading of your desires - because the Lord will give you those desires. In the Psalms David writes, "Delight yourself also in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalms 37:4). The reason God can give David the desires of David's heart is he had delighted in the Lord enough that he had become a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22, 1 Sam 13:14). They were really God's desires within David. God is not out to crush your joy in life. If you find yourself desiring to reach a particular area or religious group with the gospel, the chances are that it is God's heart being evidenced through yours. Some people get worried about bad motivations for missions, but Jesus used at least eight motivations for His disciples to get engaged in reaching the world: Love (John 14:21), Guilt (Acts 20:26, Ezek. 33:6), Hell (Luke 12:5, Matt 13:41-42), Obedience (Matt 28:18-20), Compassion (Matt 9:36, Mark 1:41), Rewards (Luke 18:29-30), Purpose (Matt 16:26-27, 1 Peter 1:24), and His Glory (John 15:8, John 17:4). When we love God, we begin to love the things that He loves. You may find that God is leading you by the joy you feel in considering a certain path, and joy is not a bad motivation. "…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross" (Heb 12:2). This leading is only the first lens and we get clearer direction from the next lens. Being strategic?

The strategic lens is what ensures that we are not "building on another man's foundation" and that we are "finishing the race and completing the task" of reaching the unreached peoples of the world. The strategic lens asks the question, "Where in the area or religion group (first lens) is the most strategic place I can be used." Where is the greatest need for the gospel or greatest opportunity for its spreading? You might feel the Lord "leading" you to Fiji - "Yep, I can see myself there." But that might not be the most strategic in reaching the unreached. I may want to work among Muslims but just because there are Muslims in Kansas doesn't mean that is the most strategic place to reach them or that it will impact the unreached peoples of the Muslim world. Leading is gained mainly by experience, where "strategic" may be gained by education. This is the lens that filters out a wasted life. There are strategic ways to be anywhere in the world. Instead of just defaulting to America, we must move forward in obedience and in that process many may end here for a purpose bigger than Americans, because of strategy.

The next lens I call "gifting." This is the question of, "Can God use my talents, career, degree, or skills to serve in this strategic area where I feel Him leading me?" Right here is where most Christians and students will err, because they want to flip the telescope. They want to look through the lenses backward. I remember Steve Hawthorne, a mission mobilizer, relating a long conversation he had with a young lady about how she could use her Spanish among unreached peoples. After Steve had exhausted all of his knowledge of possible unreached people groups in South America, etc., he finally responded to her saying, "Why don't you stop telling God what you want to do for Him - and begin by asking God what He wants you to do." You can't look through the telescope backwards or you get a very small, narrow, limited view of how God may want to use you. He may want to use your talents, He may not. It is not a bad question to ask - we just need to ask it third and not first.

Finally, would be the agency lens. What mission agency or sending entity can train and send me to this area, whether using my degree or not. Again we can be tempted to look through the telescope backward if we only know of one mission sending agency, which many only do. It is a good idea to get familiar with several other agencies that work there just so you can allow God to lead you based on choice and not default.

These principles for allowing God to lead you should help you in making a good decision about what to do with your life. Don't give your life to the things that others can and will do, but to the things that others can't and won't do. The best thing you can do as you begin to work through each of these is pray for God's guidance as you plan. Surround yourself with Godly counsel who share a vision for the world and will be honest with you if you are trying to serve your own agenda. Allow God to make the North Star of reaching people from every tribe and tongue the guiding force for all your decisions. With the end firmly rooted in your heart, and saturated with God's word you can live life by the compass - making His agenda to reach the nations the decisive factor in choosing your steps along the journey.

"Must you go to China? How much nicer it would be to stay here and serve the Lord at home!" She made it plain at last that she would not go to China.

J. Hudson Taylor's new ex-girlfriend

You can do something other than working with God in His purpose, but it will always be something lesser, and you couldn't come up with something better.

Steve Hawthorne

I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world.

Robert Moffat

The command has been to "go," but we have stayed in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth... but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.

Robert Savage

While vast continents are shrouded in darkness... the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field.

Ion Keith-Falconer

I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China... I don't know who it was... It must have been a man... a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing... and God looked down... and saw Gladys Aylward... And God said "Well, she's willing."

Gladys Aylward

Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.

J. Hudson Taylor

The man... looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, "Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?" "No sir," said Morrison, "but I expect that God will."

Robert Morrison

Here am I. Send me.

Isaiah

And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives... and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.

Nate Saint

Jehovah Witnesses don't believe in hell and neither do most Christians.

Leonard Ravenhill

Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.

C.T. Studd

Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.

said to a young William Carey

Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals.

Robert Moffat

We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.

John Stott

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Jim Elliot

A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.

K.P. Yohannan

I have but one passion it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.

Count Zinzindorf

God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies.

J. Hudson Taylor

He must increase, but I must decrease.

John the Baptist

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.

C.T. Studd

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.

William Cameron Townsend

Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes.

Robert E. Speer

The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a "field full of wheat and tares."

Amy Carmichael

I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth.

James O. Fraser

It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global cause.

David Bryant

If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray.

Frederick Franson

What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?

Malla Moe

I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.

Robert Murray Mc'Cheyne

It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit.

Clarence W. Jones

Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power.

T.J. Bach

Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.

David Livingstone

From my many years' experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.

Sadhu Sundar Singh

I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been.

Lottie Moon

All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient.

William Carey

How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.

C.T. Studd

I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something.

Clarence W. Jones

Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.

William Carey

God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith.

Andrew A. Bonar

All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!

Jonathan Goforth

I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians.

Samuel Zwemer

The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.

E. Stanley Jones

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Jesus

All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ.

Keith Green

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

Oswald Chambers

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

A.W. Tozer

I have said that there is nothing in the world or the Church, except it's disobedience, to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.

Robert Speer

I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.

Alexander Duff

Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions.

Leonard Ravenhill

It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.

J. Hudson Taylor

We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.

Oswald J. Smith

God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know.

David Bryant

And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man's foundation.

Paul

Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?

K.P. Yohannan

If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged.

C. Gordon Olson

I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!

George Miley

God provides the men and women needed for each generation.

Mildred Cable

Oh dear, I couldn't say that my church is alive and I wouldn't want to call it dead. I guess it's just walking in its sleep!

Church member

When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.

said of John Geddie

I am ready to burn out for God. I am ready to endure any hardship, if by any means I might save some. The longing of my heart is to make known my glorious Redeemer to those who have never heard.

William Burns

At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.

John G. Paton

Save others, snatching them out of the fire.

Jude

The evangelization of the world in this generation.

Student Volunteer Movement Motto

Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.

Jesus

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

John Piper

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice.

John Stott

Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.

David Bryant

Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.

Francis Xavier

Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ.

Luther Wishard

We who have Christ's eternal life need to throw away our own lives.

George Verwer

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.

C.T. Studd

When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.

J. Hudson Taylor

God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation. Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth.

David Smithers

The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.

Mike Stachura

Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.'

C.H. Spurgeon.

There is something wonderfully misleading, full of hallucination and delusion in this business of missionary calls. With many of us it is not a missionary call at all that we are looking for; it is a shove. There are a great many of us who would never hear a call if it came.

Robert Speer

I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.

J. Hudson Taylor

I love to live on the brink of eternity.

David Brainerd

The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.

Helen Keller

'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.

William Booth

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.

Richard Bach

If God has fit you to be a missionary, I would not have you shrivel down to be a king.

Charles H. Spurgeon

The world is my parish.

John Wesley

Why doesn't your God speak my language?

Guatemalan Indian to Cam Townsend, founder Wycliffe Bible Translators

I am willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything for Jesus.

Luther Wishard

The 3.5 billion unreached people on earth would form a single file line that would stretch around the equator 25 times! Can you picture 25 lines of Christless people, trampling endlessly toward hell? Let that vision stay with you day and night.

Larry Stockstill

God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

Oswald Chambers

A little prayer, little power; no prayer, no power.

A Chinese Christian motto

When God's finger points, God's hand will open the door.

Clarence Jones

I will open Africa to the gospel or die trying.

Rowland Bingham

None but women can reach Muslim Women... So we have a solemn duty in this matter that we cannot shift. The blood of souls is on our skirts, and God will demand them at our hands.

Missionary wife from the Middle East

The church that does not evangelize will fossilize.

Oswald J. Smith

As long as there are millions destitute of the word of God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for me to devote my time and energy to those who have both.

J.L. Ewen

If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

Charles Spurgeon

We have a God who delights in impossibilities.

Andrew Murray

Why do you need a voice when you have a verse.

Jim Elliot

The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.

Samuel Zwemer

IT Summer Project