“Probably not!” says Don Miller fairly emphatically.
Clear guidance!
Did you have / are you having those debates (much loved of youth leaders in my younger days) talking about guidance and the trap of bad guidance talks when young people struggle to find “The One” who is God’s choice for their life partner?
Often when I’m talking with people young and older as they explore their interest in joining Wycliffe Bible Translators, I sense that there are a number of options that God would be perfectly happy about!
- Do their skills best suit Wycliffe Bible Translators or another agency? Well, probably both… and even some other agencies too!
- Should they teach Wycliffe missionary kids overseas or stay in their school in N. Ireland? I guess God would be happy with either of those – it’s your choice.
Does God have just one path for our lives?
Can we make wrong choices and God gives up on us?
Are there a number of choices we could make that God would be happy about?
Back in 1989, Ruth and I could have gone to teach missionary children in Yaounde, Cameroon and we would have had input into the then unbuilt Rain Forest International School, which is still operating and about to move into new buildings this summer.
The other option, which we chose, was to go to Vavoua International School in Ivory Coast which no longer exists partly as a result of the civil disturbances in the country. We taught some really wonderful young people – some of whom might even comment on this blog!
Had we chosen Cameroon, our lives would have been different – especially we would not have got to know the Kouya people and the Kouya translation project! But I don’t think God would have been unhappy with either choice.
Don Miller says some more stuff…
I want to write an essay saying the statistical chance of God having a specific plan for your life is roughly 1 in 227. I’d base that statistic on scripture, because scripturally, for every one person God had a specific plan for, there were 226 He did not. Joseph was in, Benjamin was out and so on.
Okay, I haven’t actually done the math. It may be 1 in 250 or 1 in 95, but that is hardly the point. The point is we think God is going to tell us exactly what to do, but chances are, He isn’t. It’s just not a Biblical idea.
God does have a general desire for everybody, for them to be reunited with the Trinity through Christ, and for them to have food and shelter and relationships, but I don’t believe God has mapped out a plan for your every day, or even for your every year.
And again…
But I could be wrong. Here’s how you know, based on scripture, whether God has a specific plan for your life:
1. If you are a virgin and you get pregnant anyway.
2. If your donkey talks to you.
3. If an angel wants to wrestle.
If any of this happens to you, God is definitely at work. He also wants you to see a counselor.
And there are a few more. You get the point. If God has something specific for you, you’ll know, I promise.
You can read the whole blog here: Does God Have a Specific Plan for Your Life? Probably Not
I am currently on the planning team for a high school / university student careers day in Belfast later this year: it’s called Right Move – Is There One? More later…
John 20:21 
I read a book a few years ago called (I think) “The last word on guidance”. It said a similar sort of thing. It looked at the proof texts that people usually use from the Bible to back up the claim for personal guidance and then showed that they didn’t really apply.
The assumption that people have is that “if I ask God for guidance on something that I consider important enough to warrant going to Him about, he will probably guide me as to what to do”. The trouble with that is that major changes in your life can occur because of small choices, like which route you go to work one particular day, for example. If you crashed your car then that would have major knock on effects.
What the book said is “when it comes to a choice, do the wise thing”. The Bible contains wisdom, not guidance on specific choices we have to make.