What if, when we ask for guidance from God, we listen out for the voice of a heavenly parent rather than that of a divine sat-nav? How do you think Father God would answer? How would he seek to awaken your dreams rather than merely reveal a destination on a map?
You go for you.
Go to/towards yourself.
I'm not surprised when I seek guidance from God and hear him asking me a question of his own.
“What would you like to do?”
God wants to be consulted and involved in our decision-making—what parent doesn’t appreciate being asked for advice?—but he doesn't want to decide for us. We may think we want "traffic-light" navigation, but God values our freedom to choose.
God's call is about imparting us with the faith to move on. It echoes within the places where we have stalled, stirring within us the incentive we need to act upon dreams that have been laid aside or trampled upon. While we walk on autopilot along the river roads or sit unfulfilled in Haran, God delights in inviting us to join him in rediscovering and restoring our dreams.
Go!
Do it!
Take a chance!
I will show you.
We have misunderstood God's call to be about knowing God’s will for our lives when it's actually about discovering our deepest selves.
And that's an issue because too few of us know what our dreams are or know ourselves well enough to identify when God is calling us to pursue them.
So let's look at five sets of ideas that may help us figure out what our dreams are: looking to the past, involving others, forgiving others, breaking judgements, and making boredom your friend.
Looking to the past
Before plunging into figuring out the future, it's a good idea to pause and reflect upon the past. Our lives tell a story that we're not meant to ignore when praying for guidance. There are signposts and sticky notes and previous attempts to call us that God has scattered throughout our lives.
Instead of trying to make ourselves a clean slate for God to use, let us instead ask ourselves questions that can help us embrace our joys and passions, wants and desires.
What do you talk animatedly about?
Which stories, issues, or injustices do you emotionally connect with?
What thoughts or daydreams come repeatedly to your mind?
What do you spend your money on?
What activities do you spend your time doing?
How would you use your time if money were not an issue?
What would you do if you could afford to leave your current job?
What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?
Which tasks bring you the most satisfaction?
What do you like doing for others?
What are you better at than those around you?
What have others said you're really good at?
When you were a child, what did you want to do as an adult?
What drives your curiosity?
What causes you to feel restless?
When do you feel most like yourself?
This is not an exhaustive list, just an example of the questions we can try asking ourselves to help us reflect on what God may be calling us to. I recommend writing your thoughts as they come to mind. Often, the creative act of writing can distract us from analysing everything we're thinking and stop us from dismissing thoughts before we’ve reflected upon them.
Involving others
I would have loved to have overheard the conversation between Abram and Sarai and Lot immediately after God called Abram in Haran. Since Sarai and Lot ended up leaving with Abram, I imagine they positively affirmed that he wasn’t crazy in response to whatever he told them!
Surely, only a god who truly knew him would know to tell him to continue on to a destination he’d failed at reaching previously.
That's the thing with involving trusted mentors or friends when we're exploring our dreams. They can often see our true selves better than we can and will be quick to point out which paths seem like a good fit for us and which ones don’t.
Some may even be willing to come along for the ride, like Sarai and Lot did.
Our individualistic Western culture means we can often go all self-reliant when making big decisions or simply don't discuss them outside of our nuclear families. This tendency is one influence we will need to leave behind in pursuit of our dreams, especially if we're struggling to identify them. We're not meant to go it alone.
Involving others deepens our relationships with them, while also regularly gifting us with new insights or perspectives into ourselves or our situations that we simply wouldn’t have thought of on our own.
Forgiving others
We should not underestimate the role our own parents, guardians, teachers, and mentors have had on the choices we've made. When people in authority over us affirm us or draw alongside us to point out what we are good at, they open up new avenues of possibility in our minds. When they do the opposite, they can close down our options.
The sad reality of our world is that the very people meant to nurture our dreams and inspire us to follow them are often people with either their own dreams in tatters or their own sense of purpose still a mystery to them.
Abram's father Terah is a great example of both the good and bad influence others can have on us. Terah initially set Abram on his migration west to the land of Canaan, but he's also the one who caused that movement to stop and stall in Haran.
If you're struggling to identify your dreams, maybe you need to untangle yourself from the hurt of the past first. When others are disloyal to us, betray our trust, or abuse us, the wounds they cause attack our identity. Their words or actions, or the absence of them, can leave our will and sense of autonomy damaged. This makes it that much harder to connect with our dreams.
To find healing from such mistreatment, I invite you to enter a cycle of lamenting and forgiving. You can discover how to do this in my book Lament Forgive.
Breaking judgements
As we pray for guidance, we may need to release judgements we have made where we've restricted our futures or discounted ourselves from taking certain paths. The likelihood is that this will not be determined by where our ancestors were buried, as it was in ancient times, or by where rivers flow, but by other factors equally persuasive.
“My family will never understand.”
“I’m not clever enough.”
“I will never have enough money.”
“I can't leave until such-and-such happens.”
Our words, thoughts, and attitudes either release faith or they create unbelief. Whenever we judge what is impossible or unlikely, we risk our futures becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, we don't need to be guided by our cannots or our nevers. Many of the expectations, obligations, and traditions we adhere to are about people-pleasing or a low view of our own self-worth. It's therefore time to stop thinking the way we've always thought. This is what repentance is all about. By repenting of our judgements, we change our opinion on what's possible to match what God thinks.
Making boredom your friend
Just think about how many people you know who pull their mobiles out in the shortest of queues or the briefest of lulls in conversation to check social media or their emails or the football scores. Or notice how often your mobile phone is the last thing you touch at night and the first thing you reach for when you wake up. And let's not mention how we cannot pee or poo without a device in our hands now. Even when we're exercising, or walking the dog, or pushing a child on a swing, we often cannot do so without putting headphones on to listen to music, audiobooks, or podcasts.
This isn't a diatribe against technology; I'm merely highlighting our cultural tendency to fill every empty moment with consuming copious amounts of media and information. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. Our mobile phones reduce the time we spend in our own heads with our own thoughts and discovering our own dreams. They remove our boredom. Or, paradoxically, decrease our resilience to being bored.
It's difficult to hear God's voice when other voices are constantly distracting us. This is why we need to embrace boredom as a friend rather than as something to be eliminated. If we're never bored or still or allow ourselves to feel restless, we're never giving ourselves time to reflect or dream or imagine a better future.
Give yourself permission to be bored—or do something fun or out of the ordinary and definitely devoid of media stimulation!—then keep your spiritual ears open. Listen out for any Holy Spirit and us "seemed good" moments (see Acts 15:28) that we explored in God will show you, where God unexpectedly beckons you to discover your deepest self.
Because Abraham listened to me
There's a comment God makes in Genesis 26 to Isaac that nearly undoes the grace of guidance. God is reiterating the promises he gave to Abraham and explaining why he's passing them on to his son Isaac, but he's using words that carry negative religious connotations, like "obeyed" and "commands."
"I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.”
— Genesis 26:4-5 NIV (emphasis mine)
However, we can also translate the Hebrew word for "obeyed" as "listened." Both the NLT and CSB translate Genesis 26:5 as, "because Abraham listened to me" (emphasis mine).
As for those "commands," "decrees," and "instructions," Jesus summarised them as "love" (see Mark 12:28-31 and Matt. 22:36-40): love God and love your neighbours as you love yourself. Which is particularly apt when you're creating a new kind of tribe that seeks to bless others.
We can assume God is looking for obedience from us when he's actually wanting us to listen out for his call to go to/towards our deepest selves. Why? Because we are his children. Because he wants us to become like Jesus, to love like Jesus, and to respect others like Jesus. And because our dreams lead us towards him and the world he dreams of seeing.