When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

I think these are the words of the great philosopher, Yogi Berra - "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." hhmmm...

I get a daily devotional newsletter (from James Denison). The last line of today's was: "All of God there is, is in this moment. Choose wisely." The point is that knowing the will of God is more about the next step than it is about charting a path for one's longer-term future. I can (sort-of) buy that. It makes sense. The problem is: while most of the time the next step is directly in line with the last many steps, occasionally the next step is the one that starts a turn. How do I determine the will of God when I am at a turning point (a fork in the road)? And I think that this is what people are really interested in when they ask how they are to determine what the will of God is. As an example, it is easy to know that I should finish my education, probably at the same school I am currently attending. But how do I choose which school to attend? Some next steps are more obvious than others.

Can I trust God to open the right doors and close the wrong ones, guiding my steps in the correct turns as I come to the forks in the road? Or does He (instead) inform my thinking processes to give me the wisdom to make the correct choices? The classic answer is that God will open and close doors to guide me. But my experience is that sometimes multiple doors will be open simultaneously and I get to choose which one to go through...or that all of the doors will appear to be closed until further inspection (rattling the doorknobs) shows that some are open-able while others are locked...and I don't have adequate time to rattle ALL the knobs - I have to choose some and disregard others. Is this my experience because my sinful nature is building up my hubris to the point where I am forcing the doors open? (Have I forced this door analogy too far?) Or is God using circumstances to develop wisdom in me? Come to think of it, this is a classic answer as well. (James 1 says that God will provide wisdom to men that seek it God's way.)

I suppose that God leads different people in different ways, based on the mental / emotional make-up that He gave them. It seems to me that He will lead me along paths that He has shown me are sensible and reasonable. I hope and pray that I have the humility to see sensibility and reason the way that God sees them, rather than through the lense of personal hubris.

(BTW - I am not in the throes of a major decision. The concept just hit me today is all.)