About four months ago, I was faced with a very tough
decision. I’ve felt very called for
about a year to serve in ministry after college. In March, I was offered the chance to go back
to one of my favorite youth summer camps to serve for the second time with a
ministry called Life Teen. At the same
time, an offer was opening up for me to invest more of my talents into serving
with a Catholic ministry at Ohio State, Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO). Both opportunities were incredible. “What a good problem to have”, I
thought. But also, what a difficult
decision I had to make.
I struggled with making a choice for about a week, believing
that one was the route God wanted me to take and the other wasn’t. I was so passionate about both
organizations. I’m grateful for Life
Teen because it provided a welcome mat for coming back to the Catholic Church
and fertile soil for seeds to be planted.
I’m grateful for SPO because it has provided water for those seeds to
grew, develop, and become firmly rooted in the Lord.
After some intense prayer, I knew with confidence that the
Lord was actually giving me a choice.
He wasn’t opening two doors and just
hoping I’d pick the one He wanted. God
actually gave me the chance to choose which path I wanted to take and made it
abundantly clear that He would bless me regardless of which one I choose. Why?
Because I was making the decision with a desire to do His will.
Every day of our lives is filled with these types of
choices, though they’re not always of the same magnitude and sometimes the
choice isn’t between two good paths.
It’s one of the things about life that can’t be changed. As a risk-avoiding individual, much of my
time is spent over-thinking all the different options I can choose from,
convinced that I can’t afford to make a wrong choice. This was my fear when I realized I had to
make a decision between Life Teen and SPO.
You know the saying: When
one door closes, another door opens.
While this may be true – God certainly does want to open doors of
opportunity in our lives – I don’t think it’s always the best approach to
living a Christian life. As I mentioned,
I’m the type who hates making bad decisions and I’m usually willing to wait
until the next door opens before making a move.
But what happens if I pass up a door God was hoping I would take because
I was too afraid of the risks? Even
worse, what if I’m actually crippled by the fear of straying from God’s plan
because I so strongly desire to follow Him?
Choices do present themselves in our lives, but rarely does God tell us
exactly which way to go, and He loves us too much to force our hand. These choices require us to move and
sometimes that means moving before we see an open door.
Free will can be a funny thing. God has given us the freedom to make our own
choices. We don’t have to follow Him. But
again, this also means we have to make decisions on our own. He will guide us if we let Him, but at the
end of the day, it’s still our decision. God can’t move a parked car. You
can take that next promotion or you can leave your job and start a new
career. You can live in your hometown
all your life or you can move thousands of miles away from friends and family. None of these is an inherently wrong decision. If we’re making it prudently, we should be
able to choose one way over the other with confidence.
Yes, God has a will for our lives. He didn’t just create us and then leave us to
figure things out on our own. But God’s first
desire for us is simple. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
God has a plan for our life-long vocations – holy matrimony,
priesthood, religious life, and single life.
But ultimately these vocations actually pale in comparison to God’s
desire for us to know Him, love Him, and follow Him. The first question isn’t whether a man
becomes a husband or priest. The first
question isn’t whether a woman becomes a wife or a religious sister. These are very important decisions in our
lives, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t the most important. What God cares about the most is that we
discern His will faithfully and with Him in mind. If we do that, the decisions come easier.
The more faithfully we follow the Lord in our daily lives,
the more likely it is that He will actually open more doors for us. Opportunities tend to present themselves when
God’s sons and daughters show a commitment to our Heavenly Father. Many of those who have mentored me in my
faith journey over the years are men and women who are highly talented and
could have easily chosen to pursue a “typical” career path, but instead made a
difficult decision to follow the Lord in faith and use their talents to build
God’s Kingdom through full-time ministry.
God likely would have blessed their work regardless of which direction
they went, but they made the difficult choice and stepped out in faith to where
they felt God was calling them.
It’s true that when God opens one door, He will open
another. But that door doesn’t always
open up immediately and sometimes He will open more than one door at a
time. It’s not that He’s trying to
confuse us or test our faith. Rather,
it’s one of the many ways He shows us how much love He has for us. He wants us to have opportunities and He
wants us to have a say in our lives. We
can have confidence knowing that if we truly desire what God wants for us, He
will either show us the way or gently steer us back in the right
direction.
Let us walk as a people who desire to please God by our
actions and through our words. May we
make decisions with our hearts oriented toward Him and carry them out with
courage and confidence, always seeking His voice and being bold enough to
listen and to follow.
