> Track 4 (Youth and community teams) is available, but I didn't feel like that's what God wanted me to do.
>
> I am sad and confused.

First, sorry to hear that it doesn't seem to be working out. I know you were pretty excited about the prospect of doing this, inasmuch as you were fearful, too.

But with regard to "what God wants you to do," there are two comments I have to make. One, if the doors are shut to you, how can this be what God wanted you to do? God wants you to do something you are unable to do? That doesn't make any sense. If God wants something to happen, he'll make the way for it. I would not necessarily use this as an excuse to back down at the first setback, because the roads we travel are usually fraught with them, and it takes trusting in God to see the journey through. However, there is something to be said about being practical and realistic. If this is truly a dead-end, then there can be no other explanation but that you were mistaken about what God wants you to do. Maybe it isn't *this* opportunity you were meant to undertake but something along similar lines. Maybe it wasn't even that. I don't know. I wouldn't. But God is never going to ask you to do something without allowing it to be possible in the first place.

The other issue in this is what our perceptions are of "what God wants" in our lives. I've spoken about this before here, and it raised a red flag in my head when you first mentioned this, but I wasn't about to second-guess what God was telling you. I still don't want to do that, but here's something to think about. My feeling is that many Christians are overzealous about the specificity of what it means for God to have a plan for our lives. We tend to think of God's "plan" for our lives in the way we tend to look on what a life plan would entail -- career, relationships, kids, ANY large undertaking, really -- but is this really how God sees our life plans? I think the Bible is pretty forthcoming about what God's plan for our lives is. Jesus's teachings were scarcely about anything else. Paul's epistles to the churches were about it. We're to love God, love our neighbor, strive to lead holy lives, study the Word, witness to others, and so on.

Beyond that? I believe that sometimes certain of us are called to be preachers, others teachers, others this or that -- this is directly biblical as well -- but I believe in these cases, at least the majority of the time, God has given these people the talents and desires it takes to see these paths through. In other words, if God calls someone to be a teacher in a Christian school, as an example, then assuming this person is right with God in the first place, becoming a teacher will be a rather natural consequence.

But I don't believe these situations to be very common, relatively speaking, and even so, "becoming a teacher" (or whatever) is still a very general thing. I don't believe God, at least very usually, makes such designations as "you go live in this place" and "you marry this person" and "you sign up for Viz-a-Viz for this position." It may happen now and again -- I honestly don't know -- but I think in such cases, there will not be any confusion about it, for someone generally right with God. The simple fact is, God can use you wherever you are, in whatever phase of life you're in, in whatever career you're in. If it's not you doing God's work in one particular area, God will use someone else, and there will be different things he'll want from you. To quote RU4, it's all good.

What you have to determine at this point is to take a step back and decide if you really think God really wants you to do this specific thing, or if you simply saw an opportunity to implement something more general and attributed that to God. Maybe you are called to do this general kind of work but not necessarily with this specific opportunity. Or maybe what God wants from you is even more general than that. All I can really say is that if you're seeking out a goal you think is God's plan for you, and you can't reach that goal, for whatever reason, you have to be mistaken about what God really wants from you. Maybe you're mistaken about the whole thing, or maybe just one of the finer details, but *something* is missing from the puzzle.

Generally speaking -- and I mean generally -- I think that within God's plan there is ample room for our own desires. Continuing the example of teaching from before, if you want to be a teacher, that will undoubtedly fit into God's plan. If you want to be a software engineer, that can work, too. If you want to wear red clothes on Thursdays for fun, it's probably just dandy, and if you want to stay single or get married and have seven kids, all the best to you either way. Clearly we are called to do things we, being in the flesh, are fearful or reluctant to do, but I think it's generally clear what these things are just by reading the Bible. Pray continually. Witness to others. Read your Bible. And so on.

Pray about it. Think it over. See what conclusions you come to. Regardless of what happens, there is no need to be sad for diligently pursuing the doing of God's work, and no need to be confused when what God wants with us is writing right down in black and white (and words of Christ in red) for us to refer to as needed.