Seeking Clarity in God’s Will

All of us have times when God shows us red flags yet we view them like invitations. We try to make things work because it’s what we want. We can be narcissistic and try to manipulate situations. We do things our way instead of God’s.

So, how do we identify something that is not the will of God? Let me give you five ways.

• Uneasiness or the lack of peace

The biggest red flag God can ever give us is the lack of His peace. You may be looking for God to tell you whether something is His will when He’s already answered you by the lack of peace in your heart. Something is off inside you. You know something is not right. You have a sense of unease in your soul. You feel it in your gut, but you’re deliberately choosing not to face those feelings. Those of us who are believers have the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us, and He will give us those feelings.

• Blocks or a lack of fruit 

Another way God reveals that something is not His will is by blocking us or not yielding fruit. We read about a blockage from God in Acts 16 when the Holy Spirit diverted Paul and Timothy’s route. If we encounter resistance and restraint, that may be God saying, This is not me. We need to understand that we can’t go that way.

A lack of fruit happens when you’re trying to push for something but it is simply not growing. God controls the rain, but a lot of times we create sprinklers. Even though there is no fruit to be seen, we’re trying to grow it ourselves! If we haven’t identified that this is not something God wants us to do, we attempt to do it on our own, but it still produces no fruit. Fruit is the evidence we need that God’s hand is on our efforts.

We shouldn’t simply hope for the fruit—we need to see the fruit. So, make sure to recognize when God is blocking your path or when there is no fruit.

• Vessels

The third way God lets us know that something is not His will is through vessels, or people. God can choose to speak to you through lots of different people—your spouse, a friend, a therapist. How did God communicate to His people in the Old Testament? Through His prophets.

Jeremiah 3:15 says, “I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (KJV). You won’t be fed to make you shout like you’ve lost your mind. No, you will be fed with knowledge and understanding.

One thing I pride myself on is wanting all of us to be learned people, knowledgeable people, so that nobody can talk us out of our faith. But I can’t feed somebody with knowledge unless they listen. I also need somebody to instruct me, because wisdom is the best teacher.

Sometimes God wants you to just learn through the situation or season you are facing. And we learn through vessels.

• Close calls

We can know that something is not God’s will when we experience those close calls—the “almosts”—in life. Maybe you almost fell into something but caught yourself in time. It was a close call. You almost made the mistake of doing that thing, and it ended up being a close call. Many times, that is God saying, I’m blocking this route. We experience a small indicator of what’s behind a closed door so we avoid opening it.

• Third-party observations

The fifth way we can know whether something is not God’s will is through third-party observations. In other words, we see what happens to someone else and decide we don’t want to reap the same results they did. We can see it happen right in front of us. It’s a script we read too many times.

Proverbs 27:12 says, “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” (NIV). Don’t pay for something with your peace because you want God to bless what He is not offering.

It Lights All Mysterious Paths

One last gentle reminder. So often, we fail to hear God’s voice or understand His will because we are not reading the Bible. Or as I like to say, the lamp of our Bible reading isn’t lit. Staying in God’s Word will reveal false doctrine or people to look out for. The psalmist says in Psalm 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (KJV).

Don’t fall into the trap of using your lamp only when you’re trying to recover from a breakup or when you want God to give you something. If you live with the lamp of the Word lit as you walk through life, you can see God’s will.

There’s an acronym for lamp that I want to leave with you: It lights all mysterious paths. Isn’t that good? So, when we have intimacy with Jesus and when we stay in the Bible, the Word lights all our mysterious paths.

Tune in to hear Jerry Flowers Jr. this Tuesday, March 17, on LIFE TODAY. Adapted from Heart Rehab by Jerry Flowers Jr. Copyright © 2025 by Jerry Flowers Jr. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of the Penguin Random House Christian Publishing Group. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.