This big long post of mine, which ended up perhaps not being wholly relevant to the situation at hand but nevertheless more generally relevant, is worthless without scriptural backup. And so here I intend to provide that, while refining the balance of what I intend to say with what I should have said. Again, this post is not particularly meaningful to those of you who are not Bible-believing Christians. So with that understanding, I proceed.

The Bible does not speak of "God's plan," in those exact words, for each of our lives. Time and time again, however, there are phrases such as, "and this is the will of God." If we want to know God's will concerning our lives, the obvious thing to do is look here first. What God's will is concerning our lives is the biblical basis for the commonly used phrase "God's plan for our lives." As I said before, we often take that phrase and apply to it OUR definition of a life plan (career, spouse, kids, location, etc), not stopping to think about whether God's idea of a life plan matches up with this. Biblically, what it says God's will is in our lives tends not to be these sorts of things. (Which is not to say that God is always unconcerned about your choice of career, etc, but we'll get to that later on.)

I Thessalonians 5:18 says, "In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." (That passage of I Thessanlonians has a number of other things that indicate how God wants us to lead our lives, including the rather famous verse 17, "Pray without ceasing." [Which, as a side note, means to pray continually, rather than to pray continuously; "cease" means "stop, never to start again" rather than just "pause."])

So the first step to knowing God's plan for your life is to find out what all the gimmes are -- the ones that the Bible just says, flat out. Doctrine for this church age, following Christ's resurrection but before the Second Coming, is documented in the writings of Paul, the apostle who was given the gospel of grace to preach to the Gentiles, which are the books of Romans through Philemon. (What some forget is that what Jesus preached in the gospels was not the doctrine for this age -- Christ hadn't died on the cross yet. He didn't preach to believe in him and what he did on the cross to be saved [as Eph. 2:8-9 and Rom. 10:9-10 teach]; rather, he instructed others to keep the Commandments to be right with God. So while the principles he taught [turn the other cheek, do unto others has you would have them do unto you, etc] are important, the specific issues of doctrine may not all apply to this post-cross time.)

Now, here comes the meaty part. What about those things that AREN'T specifically stated as being the will of God concerning you? There are two key verses that go together.

Romans 12:1-2 says, "[1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. [2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is
that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

What a great couple of verses this is. There's no question it applies directly to this question. Verse 2 is the one I'm keying in on. If you don't know what God's will is concerning you, based on something the Bible says flat out, then you can find out what God's will is by "[being] not conformed to this world: but...transformed by the renewing of your mind."

So how do we do that?

Titus 3:5 refers to the "renewing of the Holy Ghost." God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, does this renewing. Romans 8:1-16 is important reading on this subject. It compares the "carnally minded" (a mind conformed to this world) with the "spiritually minded" (a mind renewed by the Holy Spirit). The highlights are "[1] ...to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." "[6] For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." "[14] For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "[16] The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit...." Romans 8 affirms that the Spirit leads us.

So to sum up so far, we can find out God's will by renewing our minds, which is done by following the lead of the Holy Ghost, which leads all of us. Unfortunately, that's where the story ends for some.

The question now is, how does the Holy Spirit lead us? The short answer is, the Holy Spirit leads us by our reading of the Bible, the Word of God.

A good pair of verses is I Corinthians 2:13 says, "...not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual." What spiritual things are these? John 6:63, Jesus said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth [enlivens]; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."

So if we be conformed to this world, i.e., the things of the flesh, it profiteth nothing, and to be fleshly [carnally] minded is death. However, if we follow the lead of the Holy Spirit, we are quickened (alive). And what spiritual things should we be concerned with? Jesus' (God's) words. More verses:

Psalm 119:11 says, "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." II Timothy 3:16-17 says, "[16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: [17] That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

The Word of God what you need to discern spiritual things, to be instructed in what is right. The Word of God is compared time and time again to things like milk, meat, honey, and so forth -- all things we need for fleshly nourishment, except in this case, God's words being spirit and all, this is spiritual nourishment. If you go a week without food, you'll starve. Being healthy in the spirit, led by the Holy Spirit, and spiritually minded requires DAILY reading and studying of God's Word. Arguably the best verses that illustrate this are Hebrews 5:12-14: "[12] For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. [13] For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. [14] But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." The things to key in on: (1) The Bible is compared to milk and meat. (2) Milk is the foundational stuff of God's Word [Hebrews 6:1-2]. (3) Meat is the spiritual things that build on top of that, and the key is: (4) exercising the meat, i.e., putting God's Word into practice, develops your mind so you have a greater discernment between good and evil.

By studying the Word of God, we increase our powers of discernment in God's will in our lives. Furthermore, above and beyond the increase in discernment, studying God's Word does something else:

Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." Question: is God going to give you desires of your heart if those desires fall outside God's will? I Timothy 3:1 says, "...If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work."

If we're studying God's Word and basically being right with God in our lives (nobody's perfect, but if you're basically on track), then not only will our powers of discernment be increased about what the right thing to do is, but our own *desires* will start to fall in line with God's.

And therefore, when concerning life decisions for which the choices are not clear by an explicit reading of the Bible, you can make these by being renewed of mind, which is done by the Holy Ghost as you study his Word. To have the discernment to follow the Holy Spirit's lead, it is important to study it daily. If you are faced with a decision, and you're not sure what to make, see if you can figure out if you have a certain peace about one choice over another (Romans 8:6).

But to a large extent, God is going to leave a lot of things up to a personal decision. One of the greatest testaments to the power of God's plan is that he can put 6 billion people on the planet, give them all free will, yet assure that his plan isn't going to get messed up. We too often think of God's plan as being a single, unchanging course of action that's so fragile and breakable. God works his plan through our personal choices. This can be seen in the Bible countless times. The story of Abraham, for instance, who, with his wife Sarah, disbelieved that God would give them a son, so he took sinful action to bring God's prophecy to pass. It wasn't how God would have had that prophecy come to pass, but note how he worked with those human choices to bring about what he planned to have happen anyway.

God gave us free will for a good reason, I believe, and I don't think it was for us to be spiritually led in every day-to-day decision, and probably not all those decisions that we think of as "life decisions" either. Sometimes he'll have a preference, sometimes not. The way to do this is to be spiritually led by the study of the Word of God.

I hope the above is helpful and informative. I close with a note that the research that produced the above turned out to be as much a conviction of my life and a reminder of where I should be as a Christian as it is a teaching tool for anybody else here. I do need to get back to reading the Bible on a daily basis, a habit I've been out of for some time now.

At any rate, comments and questions are welcome.