#100HappyDays Challenge: Day 51 - Thinking About God, Life, Work and Marriage.

Thinking deep thoughts always makes me happy. And right now they are coming at me from so many directions. 

In my new job I have three foreign coworkers who I work closely with and all of them have challenged me to think in new ways. 

I'm currently reading Ezekiel with a friend that is challenging me to think more deeply about prophecy. 

The thinking I want to talk about this evening comes from the book I'm reading at the moment, Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. 

There was one line that I read this evening on the subway that jumped out and bit me on the nose. It crystallised a lot of thoughts that have been coagulating in my head for the last couple of years. 

I think that the very last bit describes many Christians. I know it has described me. They/I want a God who tells them/me exactly what to do. 

   "Do this job." 

   "Marry this man." 

   "Go there."

   "Don't do that."

But totalitarianism is not God's style. He believes in free will and freedom of choice. Something I have found very frustrating in the last two years. Suddenly I had too many options and it felt like God had stopped talking to me. He wasn't giving me any clues about what to do. While I just wanted to know the one 'right' thing to do. 

It resulted in eight months of unemployment while I waited for God to tell me what to do and He didn't tell me anything. Until eventually I rather guiltily accepted a job out of desperation, and I had no idea if that was the job God wanted me to be in or not. 

Now I think their never was just one 'right' thing to do. Their were many options and I could choose the one that I fancied the most. 

My thinking is that in the Garden of Eden God could have given Adam and Eve a very long list of things that were permissible/advisable/expected to do. But He didn't, instead he told them one thing not to do and said in effect "Anything else you can do or not do as you choose/prefer/fancy, just don't eat the fruit."

Or at Mount Sinai God could have given the Isrealites many long lists of things they should do, things that were permissible/advisable/expected to do. But He didn't, instead He simple gave them a short list - ten things - and said "Anything else you can do or not do as you choose/prefer/fancy, just keep my commandments."

Or apply that to my life today.

At the end of December I was looking for another new job, I felt kind if evil because I didn't wait for a sign, but I was in a position where I couldn't wait and I felt like God wasn't talking to me again. So I choose the one I have now by myself. It meet all my conditions; no Friday night or Sabbath work, in Seoul, good money, provides a new challenge, and gives me a week off to go back to Oz to work on my Masters. 

But the funny thing is, now that I have this job, I honestly believe that this is where God intended me to be all along. Everything is too perfect to have come about by chance. And there have been confirmations since I started working that this is the job God planned for me all along. And I chose it myself. 

I made sure I followed God's commands about keeping the Sabbath and I held on to the other priorities that were important to me personally and God honoured that by setting things up in advance so that I could get exactly the job I chose. 

Now project that into the future with another of life's big choices. To marry or not to marry, and/or who to marry. 

My thinking has changed quite a lot recently. Instead of waiting for God to send a bolt of lightening and say "Marry him," I am now thinking that I will make my own choice. 

God had given us ample directions in His Bible of the kind of spouse we should look for. I can take those directions, add to them my own personal preferences - I'll publish that list another day - and then weed through the potential victims and eventually make my own choice. 

If I do this prayerfully, and with a heart that is willing to back away from a potential candidate if they turn out not to meet God's standards, then I believe that God will honour my choice and will be active in revealing the true character of any man I am interested in. 

And in the end it will turn out that the man I choose is the same man God was planning for me all along. 

So thinking some big thoughts. And I'm really happy that God is into freedom and choice and is not into totalitarianism.