God's Will?

How can we determine God’s will for our life?

This has been a question in my heart over the last couple of months? In my quest to determine whether or not I should plant another church, or which city I should plant in? And now that we have decided to plant in Atlanta, what part of the city should we plant and who should be our target audience? I know, I know I should just preach the gospel and allow God to bring the people. The problem is I’m a believer in the significance of contextualization,that God has called us to be both students of our culture as well as the scriptures. And these statements over simplify which makes being missional in the states more complicated. “Just preach Jesus” would not be the strategy if we were going on a mission trip to a foreign land, like China. Instead we would be trying to identify biblical principles and apply them to the context in the most appropriate way. Therefore, I have wrestled with this idea of God’s will specifically for me and the family of Issachar Fellowship. Because the answer to this question will shape us for the years to come.
More specifically about my journey and how I answered this question! Over these last few weeks, I continue to spy out the Land in the ATL. I began to see a tremendous need for Christ-centered families in the city of ATL. There is a huge vacuum, like most inner-cities of positive Christian examples, specifically of African-American Males leading their families. I was talking with a guy who works at a boys and girls club and I asked a simple question. “How many of these kids do you believe have both a mom and a dad at home?” His response simply was, “What’s that?” He continued to explain, although they service hundreds of kids each week, he would guess there are less than 10 kids with both parents in the home, and there are more examples of two lesbian women raising kids than the traditional mom and dad. Well, call me old fashion because this, as well as many other problems that are typical of inner cities, broke my heart.
Then I began to wonder about “my calling”, even though I don’t feel like my life is one that has prepared me for life in the inner city nor do I want to put my family in harms way. I see a huge need and I believe that Issachar Fellowship can begin to fill a small part of this neglected void that has been left by those who hold to a reformed theology.
So I go back to the question that started this rant, “How can we determine God’s will for our life?” Is NEED enough to feel the call of God in your life? because if you ask me what I rather do, or if I determined God’s will by the things that are traditionally used, such as my STRENGTHS, HEART, ABILITIES, PERSONALITY, EXPERIENCE, I will give you a much different answer. Therefore is it enough to say we are filling a void that needs to be met and we need to do all that we can to incarnate the gospel in a context that has many examples that are not of God. How do we die to ourselves begin to learn how to depend upon the strengths, heart, abilities, character and experience of God and not our own.

So I believe the answer is yes, need is enough, it’s not the only factor but if God’s wants it to be can. The real problem that I must face is how much of my personal comfort plays into God’s calling.

Pastor Dhati