How can you discover God's will for your life?

On my website once, I posted a spoof news item which was taken from a satirical website.

The headline was, man 91 dies waiting for will of God.

It was meant to be a joke poking fun at the way many Christians think that we need to pray and pray and pray for God to supernaturally and unmistakably reveal his will for our life before we can actually do anything.

However, something strange happened.

Some visitors to my blog clearly didn't realize it was a joke, and in this case, they thought it was true.

Take this comment left by a Christian man called Evan. Oh man, this hit me hard, said Evan. Dang, if I didn't have to get up and

walk around in the middle of reading this tragic post, it made me cry. Now, I did feel a bit

guilty about making Evan cry, but actually, that is an

entirely appropriate response to this idea that we somehow cannot make decisions about who to date,

who to marry, where to live and where to work, unless God gives us some kind of clear,

supernatural nudge or inward impression. So how can we know

God's will for our lives in any given situation? Well, biblically speaking, God's will is

spoken of in two ways. There's what theologians call the revealed will of God,

and there's also what's known as the hidden will of God. You see both referred to in Deuteronomy,

chapter 29, verse 29, which says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law.

The things that are revealed. This is what theologians mean when they talk about the revealed will of God. God has revealed

his will for our lives by giving us his law, his commandments. So, in that sense, what is his

will for your life? That you should obey his commands. As long as you're obeying his commands,

as you make your decisions, you have great

freedom in the specific options you can choose. Search for the phrase God's will in the New Testament,

and you'll find passages such as 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 3, which tells us it is God's will

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