Where will you go? is GFA’s new tagline, and I think it is great. I love the assumption it makes that you and I ought to be going somewhere. But the question is where? How can we know where God wants us to go? Let me give an odd answer: sometimes we don’t, but the Holy Spirit does. So, what should we do in a situation like that? Freeze in place until all options become clear? Press on heedlessly full steam ahead?

Acts 16:6-10 provides a helpful answer. Paul twice runs afoul of what the Spirit wants him to do. Not that Paul is disobeying the Spirit; he just does not know exactly what the Spirit wants. What he knows is that his calling is to plant the flag of the cross where Christ has not yet been made known (see Romans 15:20). Going to Asia and Bithynia—the two places where the Spirit stops him (see Acts 16:6-7)—fits that calling, but evidently not God’s timing. (Paul would later spend time in Asia.)

From this episode in Paul’s life, I draw four helpful principles.

First, even godly people do not always know exactly what God wants them to do. Paul is not running from God’s will; he is in earnest pursuit of it. Yet he bounces around a bit in determining exactly where God wants him to go. Amy Carmichael experienced something similar. Her work on behalf of India’s unfortunates is well known, but her first ventures in Japan and Ceylon were not as successful.

Second, work your plans based on what you believe God’s will to be. It was not wrong of Paul to attempt Bithynia and Asia: it fit his calling, and it fit the trajectory of his travels on his second missionary journey. Nathan’s advice to David in 2 Samuel is sound: Go, do all that is in thine heart; for the Lord is with thee (7:3). As it turned out, God did not want David to build the Temple; but the desire was laudable, his heart was God’s, and God’s blessing on his life was obvious.

This leads us to a third principle from Acts 16: Allow, even expect, the Spirit of God to redirect or reshape your plans. Seldom do we get all the details right the first time. (Even a short blog like this needs editing!) We may have the right idea but not the right timing. Or perhaps the right idea but the wrong place—like a colleague of mine who wanted to train nationals for ministry in Africa but ended up training nationals in Asia. He had the right idea of what God wanted him to do; the right place had just not yet come into clear focus. Similarly, as you work your plan allow—even expect!—the Holy Spirit to fine-tune those plans. This, of course, requires trust: trust that He knows best where we should be and what we should be doing.

How will you know God is redirecting you?

An unsatisfactory but essentially correct answer is “you’ll figure it out.” God will increasingly make it clear to you. He will use any number of things to communicate it to you: circumstances, Scripture, a sermon, a new health condition, advice, an unexpected opportunity, a burden or idea impressed upon your spirit, or—to make this more tangibly relevant—a pandemic. All of these and more become God’s instruments to make what He wants clear. You may not know everything in advance, but you will increasingly find yourself constrained in a certain direction. William Burns and Hudson Taylor had laid great plans to evangelize Swatow together when unforeseen, unavoidable circumstances brought their plans to a halt. God had something different in mind for these two godly missionaries to China.

And this is where Acts 16 takes us next: Fourth, when God closes a door or redirects, look for the open door. Two closed doors (Bithynia and Asia) landed Paul at Troas on the eastern banks of the Aegean Sea (v. 8). Now where? A vision made clear that God wanted Paul on the other side of the Aegean Sea (v. 9). All of a sudden, the Holy Spirit’s twofold “no” made sense: God wanted Paul to take the saving gospel of Christ even deeper into the heart of the Roman empire. (Remember, places like Antioch and Jerusalem were more toward the outer fringes of the Empire.) Paul’s response is commendable: “immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia” (v. 10).

Look for God's Open Door

So, when you lay good, gospel-focused plans as to how you will spend your life and those plans backfire, don’t panic, grow discouraged, or make them happen anyway. Look for God’s open door. Let God redirect you to His strategy for your ministry, knowing that He—like a master chess player—knows best where to place each of His “pieces.” He will assuredly help you answer the question, Where will you go? And when He does, obey!