I wrote a final post on this topic, but it is very big. So, I am delivering it in two parts. This is the first part.

We Want to Know God’s Will for Our Lives

As Christians, we want, or should want, to do God’s will. In the last three posts, I wrote about what Scripture clearly tells us about what God’s will is for believers.  Leaning on the Holy Spirit, it’s essential to do those things. These are perhaps the hardest things to do, like loving other Christians with whom we disagree on some point.

However, often when we talk about knowing God’s will, Christians are thinking about whom to marry, what career to follow, or where to live. Sometimes, it can feel like being a detective, trying to solve a hard case. Before I talk about that process, I have a cautionary tale about myself.

A Perfect Will of God?

During my first year as a Christian, while a junior in high school, I had begun attending Bible studies at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. It irks me when I read treatments of the Jesus Movement as some historical thing that happened back then. I don’t feel that old to be “historical.”

Anyway, from multiple pastors, e.g., Greg Laurie, I heard that God has a perfect will for every Christian: what career to choose, whom to marry, where to live, and more. While they would dismiss the idea of finding God’s will for what cereal to eat for breakfast, I was taught that God had a perfect will for the “big things” In life.

As a junior in high school, questions of whom to marry and where to live were irrelevant. The question about career, however, was very important to me. For many years, I had planned on becoming a chemist. I wanted to provide benefits to humanity through my discoveries in that lab. Nevertheless, I began praying daily for God to show me his will for my future career, preceded, I was sure, by a lot of schooling.

I prayed and prayed and prayed about this. One day, I gave up and told God he could tell me if he wanted to, but I was done praying for this mysterious thing. I planned to become a chemist, but one night, out of the blue, I heard in my head, ‘Teach the Word.” As I had been attending Bible studies at Calvary Chapel, I thought that meant teaching the Bible in a church context.

I didn’t know one could go to college and take classes on the Bible. Calvary Chapel, like many conservative churches, had a negative view of college and cemetery I mean seminary education. I began praying that God would confirm that I heard him. I didn’t want to change the direction of my life based on maybe hearing from God once on this very important topic.

Bad Pastoral Advice?

God didn’t reassure me. I went to a pastor to seek wise counsel. Instead, however, of telling me how to test if I had heard God’s voice, and not my own imagination, he told me, “If that’s what God said, you need to get some training.” I learned later that most guys, if they told a pastor at Calvary Chapel that God called them to teach or preach, would first be assigned by a pastor to  be pull weeds. The advice I got was very unusual. I didn’t know that at the time.

I still didn’t know if God had called me to teach the Word, whatever that might look like, but I transferred as a sophomore into a Christian college.

I really wanted to learn Greek, the language of the New Testament, and my Greek classes went well. Hebrew, the primary language of the Old Testament, was harder, but I thrived on learning about the Bible and its original languages.

Lots of students there wanted to be pastors in the future. I assumed that would be my path, even though I didn’t feel “led” in that direction. As I began studying the Bible academically, however, I became passionate about teaching the Bible to future pastors.

God did not open doors for me and never said anything to confirm that he called me to teach the Bible. I probably should have switched back to chemistry, but I was passionate about biblical studies.

For the sake of a shorter blog post, I’ll skip most of the details and simply say that I now have a B.A. that focused on biblical studies, an M.Div. (a pastor’s degree) that focused on biblical studies, and a Ph.D. in New Testament studies. I didn’t think I should be a pastor. I think pastors need to show compassion, whereas I have the “gift of rebuke.” “You’re doing what??? Repent!”

With all that education, plus doing all the things one is supposed to do to get a full-time teaching job, like publishing articles and teaching as an adjunct professor, I never got that full-time position. I interviewed a lot, but never got it. I’m confident this was mostly the result of ableism, but I digress.

The upshot is that the pastor might have meant well, but I needed to do some testing.suggestion. He should have told me to test what I thought might have been God’s voice. At no point could I have said, “Yes, God definitely spoke to me on this topic.” Therefore, I didn’t charge ahead like I knew exactly what to do for a living. I kept praying and hearing nothing from God.

Did I Ever Find God’s Perfect Will for My Life???

Here I am now, about fifty years after thinking that maybe, just maybe, God had called me to teach the Bible. While I’ve sought opportunities to do that, the fact is that all that education, plus six dollars, will get me an overpriced latte at Starbucks, but nothing else. I really want to teach the Bible to future pastors, but while I have done that as an adjunct, and taught in adult Sunday school classes and small groups, it’s never become a full-time vocation.

I spend time almost every day wondering if I really heard God speak, or if I wasted a big chunk of time, money, and stress on something that was not from God. I still don’t know.

So now, what about God’s will for your life? Read the second part of this post.