What if you missed God's will?

Greetings,

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a lawyer.

It wasn’t a passing idea. It was the plan. When I chose psychology for my first degree, I didn’t choose it because I loved psychology. I chose it because it was the road to law school. Psychology first, then law. I had the order worked out.

By the time I finished that first degree, I had stumbled into finance. I didn’t go looking for it. But I loved it. I was fascinated by what it had to offer. And I made a decision. I wouldn’t go to law school. I’d follow finance instead.

At the time, it felt like God was leading. I still believe he was.

And yet.

There are times I wonder whether I got it right. Not often, but often enough. Those moments usually come when I measure where I am against where I thought I’d be by now. I had big ideas about the kind of success finance would bring. Lavish ideas. And that level of success hasn’t come.

God has blessed me. I’ve done well. I’m not complaining. But every so often my mind wanders back to the road I didn’t take. Should I still go to law school? Did I miss something? Would law have given me the success I expected to find here?

I don’t think I’ll go back. I’m where I am in life, and it would be a long, hard road. But the question still visits.

You may know that question. It might not be law school for you. It’s the job you turned down. The city you left, or didn’t. The business you started, or never did. Somewhere back there is a fork in the road, and every so often you stand at it again in your mind.

I’ve had to admit something about that question. When I ask, “Was it the wrong call?” I’m not usually asking about the decision. I’m asking about the outcome. What I mean is, “I didn’t get what I expected.”

It sounds like discernment. Most of the time, it’s disappointment.

And I’m comparing two things that can’t be compared. One is my real life, with its lean seasons and unmet hopes. The other is a life I never lived. The imagined lawyer never had a bad year. He never lay awake over a slow quarter or wondered whether to keep going. He’s frozen at twenty-two, full of promise, with none of the cost showing. Of course he looks better. The road you didn’t take always has perfect weather.

That law career would have come with its own baggage. I just never had to live it.

I had the first half of that verse down. My heart planned its way: psychology, then law. What I never accounted for was the second half.

Scripture tells us to ask. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” Seeking his will isn’t the problem. I’d be worse off if I’d stopped praying over my decisions.

The problem is what I sometimes assume while I’m asking. I pray as if everything hangs on me hearing him correctly. As if God is standing on the sidelines, waiting to see what I choose, and if I get it wrong, I’m on my own. He isn’t passive like that. He’s guiding, even while I’m still asking. He’s taking my life somewhere, toward his purpose, and he knows what I need to get there far better than I do.

David understood that.

Before David lived a single day, every one of them was written. God didn’t just foresee them. He formed them. He ordained them.

That’s what keeps my wondering from turning into worry. In Trusting God, Jerry Bridges makes a point I return to often. God’s plan isn’t held hostage by our decisions. It includes them. The wise ones and the foolish ones. The ones we prayed over and the ones we rushed. That doesn’t let us off the hook, because we still answer for how we choose. But my wrong choices don’t cancel his sovereignty. A man who thinks he missed God’s will hasn’t slipped out of God’s hands.

In No. 35 I wrote that the good God works toward in all things isn’t our comfort. It’s our conformity to Christ. That “all things” includes the wrong turns. So the good he’s been working toward on every road I’ve taken was never the success I had pictured. It was Christlikeness, for his glory.

When I look back, I can see him doing it.

The road I took gave me something the plan never would have. Building a business has let me build my days around my wife and my children, instead of fitting them into whatever time my work left over. I’ve been present. I’ve been home.

I want to be careful how I say that. That freedom isn’t proof I chose right. And it isn’t a formula for you. Plenty of faithful men work long hours in jobs they didn’t pick, and God is establishing their steps too. What I’ve been given is a mercy. I didn’t earn it by deciding well.

And the success I wanted? It hasn’t come the way I pictured it. Maybe some of it still will. But I’ve grown more on this road, through the lean years and the slow ones, than I think I would have on the road I planned. I wouldn’t trade that. I’ve learned to trust God in seasons when his good doesn’t look like what I expected. It’s much better, even when I can’t see it.

Both things are true. I still wonder sometimes. And I can still see his hand.

The wondering doesn’t mean you missed God. It may just mean you’re still measuring his guidance against a picture you drew when you were twenty. The question isn’t whether you took the right road. It’s whether you’ll trust the One who establishes your steps on the road you’re on.

What are you measuring God’s guidance against, and who set that measure?

Grace and peace,
Seun

If this one landed, No. 35 goes further — seunadeyemi.ca/reflections/35-is-god-good-when-the-circumstances-arent