How To Know God’s Plan For Your Life: Most of the time we attach feelings of worth, importance and value to how much we have achieved so far in life. This is especially true as we live in a society where everyone seeks relevance in doing one thing or the other either for the purpose of making money or to seek fame.
And for some folks, no matter how much they achieve, they do not derive satisfaction from their various achievements and accomplishments. Hence, there is a need to know and follow God’s plan for our lives to gain utmost satisfaction when we must have finished all we have to do here on earth. Some people refer to the quest of knowing God’s plan as a means of finding purpose in life. It is defined as knowing “the why” of our existence on earth. From a popular verse of the scripture that is often recited, Jeremiah 29:11,
“For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the lord, “plans to prosper you, and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.
It is evident from this scripture that God already knows the plans he has for us, plans that would prosper us and give us hope and a future. It is left to all of us to get to also know the plans God has for us and work towards living up to those plans to fulfil purpose and attain utmost satisfaction at the end of the day.
In this article, we shall examine the various steps to take as you journey through the path of finding purpose i.e. steps on how to know God’s plan for your life.
How To Know God’s Plan/Will For Your Life
1. Develop a Close (LOVE) Relationship With God: The first step to knowing God’s plan is by developing a close relationship with God. Yes. Such a relationship that must exist between you and God must be one that does not lack the existence of a bond of love and the responsibilities that come with it.
In real life situations, the only people that can really be able to know your thought patterns and possible action in any given circumstance, are those who are in a very close relationship with you.
So God desires for you to have an intimate relationship with him, and it is this kind of that would entitle you to have unrestricted access to the contents of his heart at every point in time.
2. Learn to Obey and Depend On God’s Word: As you grow in your relationship with God to different levels of intimacy, you’ll get to understand how God magnifies his word above his name. How is this even possible in the first place? It’s possible because God upholds his integrity very highly. So every word that comes out from his mouth and all his promises, he has always fulfilled them to the last.
Hence, through the word of God as contained in the Bible, God has given a lot of instructions, commandments and even promises to us. So by reading the Bible you will get to know the expectations God has from you, and work towards fulfilling them. In obeying God’s instructions and commandments, you begin to get clearer pictures of the plans and purposes of God about your existence. And even from the promise he makes, you can know the plans he has for your life.
3. Learn to Hear God’s Voice: Another step to knowing God’s plans for you is by learning to hear God’s voice. This is learnt in the place of praying. Prayer is the act of speaking to God and listening as he also speaks back to you.
So while you pray, talking to God in praises, thanksgiving, and making known your needs and aspirations, he also responds to you in different ways. And in learning the act of hearing God’s voice, you will begin to know and understand God’s plans for you.
4. Learn to Surrender Your Will: As you continue in your intimate relationship with God, there are some instances where what you want contradicts with what God wants you to do.
For example, in our everyday relationships and even between husbands and wives, there are times when there are disagreements. At such times, conflicts can arise because of those disagreements but it can also be resolved when both parties decide to reach an amicable consensus.
Such disagreements can also happen between you and God, so learning to just simply give up what you want or what you’re holding onto that is against God’s will, makes God’s plan to become clearer to you. You must be committed to doing whatever it is that God desires for you to do. This is because God will likely be reluctant to show you his plan if he knows you will not accomplish the plan anyway.
5. Discover Yourself (How God Has Wired You): God has created and wired everyone uniquely, each one to fulfil a specific role in this world. There is no one else who can achieve completely what God has purposely created you to do.
Therefore it is pertinent to pay very close attention to how specially God has created you and discover those unique abilities, talents, gifts and potentials that he has put into you. His plans for you will always be directly related to the gifts that he has bestowed upon you.
6. Know Your Identity in Christ and the Responsibilities that Come With It: Knowing what Christ has made you to become in Him and the responsibilities you have based on the many privileges he has made available for you to enjoy freely would also help you discover the plans and purposes God already mapped out for you before you began to exist in this world.
From the Bible we are made Kings and Priests to God, were a special people, a chosen generation, an holy nation, a royal priesthood, lively stones and so on. As you affirm and assert these various positions and fulfil the responsibilities that stem from them, the plans that God has for you will become clearer.
7. Seek Godly Input From People in Authority: Seeking the input of godly advisors in your life is another step to knowing God’s plan for your life. The importance of having a spiritual covering, for instance, mentors, spiritual fathers and mothers, pastors and so on, cannot be overemphasized.
They help to provide guidance and spiritual covering. This in turn makes you become accountable to them and helps to foster transparency. Their advice and guidance also helps to provide a push that would keep you streamlined in God’s plans and purposes and further make God’s plans more clearer.
8. Take A Close Look At The Circumstances Around You and Maximize the Opportunities God Has Made Open To You: God would often clearly reveal his plan for your life by allowing a line up of circumstances in obvious ways. In each of these circumstances, being open to know and fulfil God’s will regarding what he wants you to do and the doors he has opened for you, will make the plans God has for your life to become clearer.
God is pretty good at opening and closing doors. He did that for Apostle Paul and his entourage in the book of Acts. God often uses closed doors to show you clearly what he does not want you to do. And even sometimes when he allows you to have open doors, it is to show you what he wants you to do. This, however does not mean that every open door is definitely God’s plan, but it does help to give you some basic direction.
9. Seek for the Right Company or Godly Friendship: Some times, God may choose to bring our way those people who think and reason the way He wants to us do, by way of showing us practical examples of what he expects from us for the good of our future in His plans.
These people may come in form of friends or company and the person who seeks to know God’s plan for hos life must be sensitive to attract these right and Godly friends around him and get acquainted with them.
One of the signs of these Godly friends is that they will encourage him to keep walking with God and correct him whenever he errs as to that regard as it is written in Proverbs 13:20 that “whosoever walketh with the wise shall be wise, but the company of fools shall be destroyed”.
Today, Godly friends can be found in christian gatherings or assemblies such as the church or in any other christian-based fellowships.
This is so important because if other determinants of God’s plan for an individual are in place, but he keeps wrong company, it may ruin and scatter those determinants because “evil communication or friendship corrupts good manners“.
10. Live your life in Providence: This implies that a person who seeks to know the plan of God for his life must live his life under the protective care of God (to whom he believes). He must act with the knowledge that God sees him at all times and that He will protect him from evil or wrong decisions (which may be taken by him or by another against him).
A good scriptural case study (Genesis 39:7-13) as to this regard is Joseph who fled from what is evil in the sight of God when Potiphar’s wife wanted to commit adultery with him. He was conscious of the presence of God in that place and that God is already taking him through a process in His plan for Joseph. But because Joseph lives in Providence, he was able to overcome the circumstance and at the end, God’s plan for him was fully actualized.
Providence plays one of the major roles in a quest to know and bring to pass what God’s plan for an individual is. This implies that God’s providence protects and propels us in life to fulfil His plans..
From all that has been said so far about the cues and steps to take in knowing God’s plan for your life, it is very important to understand that seeking to know God’s will at every given point in time is key to knowing God’s plan for your life.
