Recognizing God’s Guidance in Life

 

Photo by Maddy Weiss on Unsplash

Introduction

To most individuals who believe in God, there comes a moment in their lives when they do have the same silent question; and that is how they know whether God is leading them. It is not necessarily a black-and-white. Life is pitiable, and almost on a daily basis, we make choices regarding relations, work, studies and the course we wish our lives to follow. There are those times when we are already sure of our decisions and there are those when we are utterly disoriented.

To the Christians, the concept that God leads the lives of people is significant. The Bible teaches that God is a caring God that does not leave his people to structure everything on their own. However, despite that promise, the guidance of God can not always be seen. God does not talk with loud and dramatic tones as we would think. His direction is silent most of the time. It appears in contemplation, in prayer, in the Scripture, or even in the persons with us.

So, as it were, Moses was brought on a trip by God, which he did not anticipate. Initially, Moses was not that much confident about himself and he did not even attempt to avoid the task that God assigned to him. However, with time, Moses began to see that God was indeed on his side as he grew to have faith. It is a story that makes us realize that determining the direction of God is an ongoing process rather than a snap decision.

Learning about the way God guides us would in fact give us much peace in our busy student lives. Those small episodes then become significant when we begin to notice how He is influencing our coursework, relationships or even the decision on what kind of snack to eat. And to be frank enough, many of us will not notice His guidance until we sit down at the end of the semester and think as to how all that went.

The Quiet Ways God Speaks

One reason finding God's guidance can seem like a difficult task is that we have gotten accustomed to a vivid sign, an epic kind of sign that we can see. Many people have their vision of an apparently dramatic situation that makes you halt altogether. Rather, God works in a lot more silent means.

Sometimes His hints are coming from sandals the way one should feel the tiny chest nudge. It is that weird tranquility of deciding to make the difficult choice or the diffidence of something wrong with a friend. Words cannot explain it but with time the majority of us know that it is our inner compass.

The hook is other times the scriptural text. You have been leafing through the Bible when you visited the library and then you encounter a verse and it seems to be addressed to your immediate problem such as the lecture notes of your own professor. We will find that in most cases, the teachings of Jesus tell us the type of life God desires us to have even during a midterm marathon race.

Next there are the events when God manifests himself in people. The unsolicited advice given by a friend may land at the moment when you are about to choose a wrong direction, a mentor may send you a piece of advice that alters your entire perspective, and a stranger in the campus coffee shop may say something that makes you halt your scrolling and start contemplating more.

One can easily dismiss such experiences as they seem to be a part of everyday life. However, when we stop and stop the ping of notifications every few minutes and actually start noticing what is around us, we begin to realize that divine guidance is not necessarily provided in the form of miracles or grand gestures it is often packed into the most mundane of situations and objects, immediately apparent and seemingly unremarkable to the naked eye.

It may be necessary to know how to listen in order to appreciate the guidance of God. And actually, that does not always come easy. Life in the university is noisy, there is dorm gossip, lecture notes and deadlines and the buzzing of our phones and social networks. Nowadays, the voice of God is so hard to hear with so many things clamoring our ears.

To a large extent, prayer is involved. It is not only about requesting a higher grade or a vacation break. It is also about finding a time of quiet and contemplation, such as the nights studying, where you are quite alone. During those silent times, you begin to think and feel more evidently of the thoughts and feelings, like attempting to work out the syllabus after a cheat sheet.

However, being able to hear God does not imply hearing particular words. At times it is the taking of notice of where your heart is leading you towards, such as in joining a club or enrolling in a course that you have long avoided. Once you pray with your heart, you then have a tendency to see things in a new light. Issues previously felt to be daunting begin to appear achievable, such as a difficult test that you do have the strength to complete.

It requires patience before developing that type of listening skill. Initially, perhaps it may seem that nothing is happening, you may have prayed and still have no idea where to turn next. The vagueness will result in exasperation, such as being torn between two choices on a group assignment. However, as time passes, some of us realize that our thoughts become more concise and the decisions more right in accordance with our faith. As such, something like a good study routine lowers the stress.

To some extent, it is similar to words: it requires one to learn to identify the direction of God. It is all confusing, at first, phrases you do not know, words you can never recall. However, over time, through learning and focus, understanding of the meaning becomes simpler, as was the case with the acquisition of the Spanish language in a semester.

The Leading of God in Life.

Life experiences can also be listed as another method which people use to realize the guidance of God. There are situations that happen by chance and we didn’t intend to go that way but afterwards discover that those times influenced our course and something happened like a life-changing internship. Take the story of Joseph. His life was a series of twists and turns. His brother betrayed him and sold him as a slave. He was later sent to prison yet he had not committed any wrong. Those experiences must have been extremely unjust at the time, yet, they turned out to be an essential aspect of his experience later.

Several years ago, I was stunned by the fact that I may find myself in a situation where I can make a significant difference by assisting thousands of people in a famine. On reflection of the entire story, it is obvious that God was guiding me on the hardships in my life.

Frankly speaking, many of us feel similar at the moment. One resulting job interview can collapse, and then you will eventually get a job that is even better. The circumstances that pose a challenge may push you out in the end to development or a new avenue altogether.

When we are deep into it, it will almost never seem like advice, but rather bewildered and irritating, possibly even hurtful. However, as we go on we begin to see the links that we previously overlooked. Patience and trust on our part is required to see that God is in it.

The Role of Trust

The essence of perceiving the guidance of God is trust literally. Lacking it, all of the curve-balls would be like a slip or a catch failure. Even the wobbling times may be made sense of with trust.

Having faith in God doesn't mean that life is easy; the pain from challenges won't go away, there will always be times of uncertainty or doubt, and there will always be some sort of challenge/question raised in your mind; therefore faith is about having trust in something even when difficulty and/or uncertainty are part of your experience.

Rather, trust is having faith that God is watching out on us even when we are not able to see the bigger picture.

The story of David tackled that point. Prior to becoming king, he had several years to run away. The future of his life was dubious, and his road was pitted. But in the coarse years he continued praying and worshiping God.

The example of him teaches us that it is not always smooth sailing. At times it is about suspending judgment and struggling along knowing that God is not gone.

Trust has the benefit of allowing us to proceed even when we are not even certain of our destination. Seeing Directives in Minor Choices.

When it comes to choosing to make gigantic decisions, most individuals only see the assistance of God, such as choosing a major, relocating to grad school, or any other significant life changes. However, the manifestations are able to appear even in banal things.

The examples of God in our lives may be in small things such as the way we treat our peers at school, how we deal with a challenging lecturer or how we spend our weekends.

You are incorporating that stuff in the bible into practice when you choose to be kind instead of angry, patient instead of frustrated or even honest instead of being dishonest.

Even when you think that those small decisions do not need to influence anything significant, they do form your entire path. As time goes by they develop personality and make your faith all revving engines.

Even though we are pursuing our cues sometimes are lurking there in those moments of daily life which we ordinarily pass over.

When Guidance Feels Unclear

It happens that the guidance of God is extremely obscure. You pray, and you are still caught and you are finding out that you cannot know what to do next is a mystery. That can freak you out. It may even leave you wondering whether God is listening or not.

But a good many of us find it is all a part and parcel of the ride being uncertain. Solutions do not necessarily blow up in your face immediately, it is actually a better way to learn to wait and have faith.

In case it becomes foggy, it is not necessarily a checklist, rather it is something to mold you to make better decisions. Religion might not clean up the uncertainty but it provides you with the courage to go on. Looking in the rear View and Seeing the way.

The intriguing part is that at the backward look, you begin to notice the advice that you have overlooked. Objects that some time ago seemed all foggy now appear like a roadside. A harsh struggle could have equipped you with something that you never believed.

Retro-gazing displays the trends in growth, surprising entrances, and companions which helped you on your way. Some of us get around to realizing that God was ever present in the mix even at the point of time when we felt the most lost.

The understanding of that does not nullify the storm-struck predicament, but gives the entire epic more elaborated meaning.

Conclusion

It is not always a straight and simple task to identify the hand of God. We tend to raise our hands and wait for some dramatic GPS coordinates and, in most cases it unfolds in less dramatic, more or less invisible ways such as the suggestion in a lecture by a professor or an epiphany upon looking at a stack of lecture notes.

It is very hard to learn to recognize such moments, and one should have a tremendous eye. It is like before the test, one takes good notes, reads carefully, ruminates about it, and hopes that somewhere, somewhere, the professor (or God this time) is directing something to him or her even when the syllabus is in the clouds.

The case studies of the university on the divine direction are the stories of Moses, Joseph, and David. Their accounts are filled with the university-style struggles, uncertainty in the hostels, and unintended twists of the story. In the long run, their course reveals how some greater power was pushing them to a greater goal, almost like a schoolmaster leading you to your major.

As it is with us, people of the modern-day generation, it is not that different. The advice is not necessarily delivered through crystal clear email. It manifests itself in faith, thought and trust--in the same way an understanding classmate might indirectly urge you in the right direction by silently poking you after a bad group project.

And really that is the comforting part. Those highlight reels are not the only place of guidance. It lies in the silent resolve to work at 2 a.m., the things we hear in the gullies of disappointment, the over-refined course, which gradually places us on the right track.

Ultimately, the ability to pin down God's guidance is not about getting an answer in a textbook but it is about establishing a relationship of trust with God. When you continue searching with that open-mind, as an anxious pupil, he can be found to have been by your side all along, even at the times when you seemed so disoriented as to which task to wager on first.

Written by Bertrand Karake Hirwa