Most of us have wrestled with questions like these at one time or another:

• What career should I pursue?
• Whom should I marry?
• Where should I attend college?
• What church should I attend?
• Should we have another child?
• Should I accept a job offer that moves my family far away from our hometown?
• What community responsibilities should I accept?

And so on …

You recognize, of course, that questions of this sort are much more significant than simple ones like, "Should I wear my green shirt or my gray one today?" What we decide about which shirt to wear, and other questions of that ilk, generally has no bearing at all on the direction of our life. But what we decide about jobs, marriage partners, and relocating often makes a considerable difference in how our lives go.

Some Christians maintain that for these …