Not long ago, I found myself pondering the arc of my life and vocation in light of a strange turn of events. Maybe it was time for a change? 

I reasoned that I could move into another line of work, something hands-on and more physically de­manding. A prayer circled in my mind: Lord, what do you want me to do?

Then an advertisement for work boots turned up in the mail. Was it a message in a bottle? How do we discern God’s will for us?

In 2 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul tells the church he’s praying for them — that they might be worthy of the calling Jesus has placed on their lives and that God will move in them to “fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith.” 

Paul desires that the aim of their lives be that “the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him” (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12).

In scripture, God is glorified when we orient our lives toward him, the One at the center of the throne around whom the seraphim sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). That’s worship. It’s what we do when we gather to sing, pray, hear the gospel and receive the gifts of bread and cup at Christ’s table. 

It’s also a life lived for God in the everyday. As the Apostle Peter puts it: “Worship Christ as Lord of your life”
(1 Peter 3:15, NLT). 

Biblical worship holds together love of God and love of neighbor, sanctus and justice. The name of Jesus Christ is glorified in us.

But Paul also called the Thessalonian church to aspire to be glorified in Christ. This means growing into the image and likeness of Christ (Ephesians 4:15). 

We live through him, with him, in him, animated by Jesus’ Spirit. That was Paul’s own experience. 

As he wrote to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (2:20, NLT). 

He told the Colossian church: It’s “Christ in you, the hope of glory” ­(Colossians 1:27). 

It’s why Paul reminded the Ephesians that they “are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (2:10, NIV). 

We let our light shine, but all the light we have is his (Matthew 5:16).

What if we took this as a guide to discerning our course of action? Aim to speak, think, will, love and do what honors God and leads us to grow into who God created us to be. 

Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th-century spiritual maestro, said it this way: “I choose what better leads to God’s deepening his life in me.” Honor Jesus. Become yourself in him. 

This is an orientation, not a set of rules for snipping clean decisions from life’s complicated tangle. We need a star to guide us. Otherwise, in seeking the will of God we risk becoming diviners of omens, haruspices ­reading the everything-happens-for-a-reason guts of whatever life flops our way. 

In my experience, God does send us signs, but we can only make sense of them within a broader framework of listening to the Spirit in fidelity to God’s will and ways. 

We read and internalize the Scriptures. We seek guidance from wise people who know us well. We pray, ponder and listen. God’s leading flows from a bedrock confidence that God has made us with purpose. 

As John Henry Newman, the great English pastor and saint, put it: “God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another.”  

Vocation and livelihood can twine in unexpected ways. Getting fixated on a boot advertisement just leads to anxious confusion. Which is why I chose to lean back into the solidity of God’s calling and timing — and recycle the postcard.