Purpose & Calling
I keep asking God for a clear sign and nothing obvious ever comes. Am I supposed to just guess?
“And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water.”
Gideon asks for the fleece test after God has already spoken to him plainly and given him a sign, and then he asks again in reverse to be certain. The narrator reports all of it without applause. God accommodates a frightened man, which is a mercy, but the story is describing weak faith being carried rather than prescribing a method for finding direction.
“For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;”
The Jerusalem council had to settle a genuinely contested question about Gentile believers, and they did it by hearing testimony, examining scripture and arguing it out in a room together. The conclusion they wrote down credits the Holy Spirit and themselves in the same sentence. That is what guidance looked like for the early church at its most consequential moment.
A path forward
Write down the wisdom you already have: what scripture says, what wise people say, what your circumstances actually allow. Sign-hunting usually starts where that work stops.
Take the question to two or three praying people and decide together in one sitting, the way the Jerusalem church did.
Ask God plainly for wisdom rather than for a sign, then make the wisest choice available to you. He guides walking people more often than parked ones.
Closing verse
“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.”
- Psalm 32:8
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