“Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out.” – Exodus 40:36

There was once a time when it was quite easy to literally follow God. When His visible cloud presence moved, the people of Israel got up and followed it. When it didn’t move, they didn’t move. Things are somewhat less obvious these days. However, following God doesn’t have to be as hard or mysterious as we sometimes make it! So how do we follow God in 2021?

To understand God’s will for your life, the path you should take, or a decision you should make, begin with God’s Word. God always wants you to do what He already said to do and to not do the things that He already said not to do. God is not random or chaotic – His revealed will doesn’t change. So know your Bible well. Read it daily to refresh yourself on what God has already told you. What does God’s Word say about your decision?

In your reading, pray for God’s Spirit to speak to you, to make particular passages stand out anew. Then do what He says. Don’t do what He says not to do. This addresses a surprisingly large percentage of our so-called dilemmas. Nonetheless, we do sometimes encounter decisions where two or more options are biblical, godly, moral, ethical, and legal. So, what then?

Invest significant time in prayer. Consider fasting to accompany your prayer. Ask God to lay verses on your heart for guidance. Ask Him which path will likely glorify Him more. Ask Him to speak to you. That’s seldom an audible voice. Instead, you’re asking Him to give you a prompting or impression of where He would have you go. Ask for clarity and discernment to make sure that impression isn’t coming from your own heart or the Adversary.

Ask God to speak to you through His people, then seek the advice of mature Christians you trust. Ask them to pray with you for a period of time and to share whatever God lays on their heart.

If you’re still unclear after searching God’s Word, seeking God’s will, and consulting God’s people, then perhaps it’s truly a matter of choice. In that case, make your decision, pray for God to be glorified in that choice, for Him to walk with you down that path, and for Him to give you the wisdom to realize if becomes the wrong choice.

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” – Mark 8:36

You may have all the billions of the wealthiest entrepreneurs, all the trophies of the greatest athletes, and all the fame of those famous for being famous, but you’ll lose it all (from your perspective) within a few years regardless. When you die, none of those things will go with you into eternity. Whether your life be long or short by human standards, even a hundred years of wealth, success, and fame is nothing compared to forever.

Jesus regularly invites us to re-think what’s important in our lives. The things our culture and instincts say are important have little lasting significance. What matters is where we will spend the untold billions of years after we die. What matters is the treasure, rewards, and commendations of God we send ahead of us into eternity through faithfulness here on earth.

Our relationship with God through Jesus Christ is the only thing that determines where we’ll spend eternity. The only thing. The things we’ll enjoy in heaven as followers of Christ have nothing to do with our earthly fame, success, or bank balance. What matters for all eternity are the lives we influence for Christ, our faithfulness in serving and humbly following Jesus day after day, and how well we manage the resources, time, and talents God blesses us with.

Never trade your faith, your faithfulness, your Christian integrity, or your Gospel witness for the sake of earthly rewards! They simply won’t last. What will? “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21)

“And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work.” – Exodus 36:2

Every follower of Jesus receives one or more gifts from the Holy Spirit in addition to their existing skills, talents, and expertise. All these are given by God to do the work of His Kingdom and His church. Just as Moses called gifted and skilled workers to build the Tabernacle, God is calling each of us to serve Him through a local church.

What is God stirring up in your heart? How has He gifted you through the Holy Spirit, the experiences of your life, and the talents you were born with or developed? How can you use those to make a difference in the lives of others, in the service of God’s Kingdom, and in strengthening of Christ’s bride, the church?

It’s easy to assume that calling and gifting are someone else’s department, but Scripture makes plain that every Christian has work to do. Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

This past year, many have had far more time to reflect than usual. As the world gradually begins to emerge from crisis, what good works has God prepared for you? What service or skill do you have that your local church needs? What work of God lies in your future?

“Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’” – Exodus 33:18

We would do well to spend more time thinking about God’s glory. God’s glory is the radiant outshining of all His wondrous attributes, the vast accumulated weight of Who He Is. All-powerful. All-knowing. Ever-present. Infinitely wise, good, kind, merciful, gracious, just, holy, righteous, patient, faithful, loving, and so much more. Sovereignly in control and meticulously concerned for His creation. Try to imagine all that, made visible.

The experience of God’s glory is so overwhelming that few have been able to see it. The day-to-day experience of God’s glory was lost because of mankind’s fall into sin. Nonetheless, a few have caught a glimpse. Moses could see God’s back, but not His face. Peter, James, and John briefly saw the glory of Christ as He was changed before their eyes and it changed them forever.

We catch glimpses of God’s glory in the beauty of a sunrise, the vastness of space, and the extraordinary process leading from conception to the birth of a child. What we see should make us hungry for more! Let us desire to see more of God’s glory and to be increasingly aware of His majesty as we enjoy our Christian privilege of worshiping, praying, and relating to our glorious God in Heaven.

The greater experience of God’s glory is what lies before every follower of Christ. One day, we will live forever in God’s glorious presence. The experience of that will be so vastly beyond our greatest earthly pleasures, delights, and satisfactions that it defies imagination. May the contemplation of God’s glory stir a hunger within you to pursue Him more and more, as you look ahead to your future in Christ!

“Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.”
– Psalm 25:4

God has made His ways known to us through His Son (the Word made flesh) and His Word, the Bible. Jesus Christ is the exact image of our invisible God and the Bible is God’s inspired Word revealed through the prophets, apostles, and evangelists of old writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Between them, we have what we need to find salvation through faith in Christ and to pursue a life of Christ-like obedience to the ways of God as we walk His paths.

However, we have terribly short memories! We quickly forget God’s ways and stray from His paths. The chaos and noise all around us help foster this amnesia. The passions and preferences of our bodies and minds tempt us away from following Christ and pursuing personal holiness. This is why we must encounter God’s Son and His Word daily! A once-a-week fill up on Sunday won’t suffice to keep us growing in Christ-likeness. Nor will merely reading about the Jesus or about the Bible. We must read it for ourselves!

We must make a daily encounter with Jesus and the Bible an unshakably high priority. We must set our time with God and His Son in prayer, and His Word in study and meditation apart as the most important appointment of our day, one which is never canceled except in the most extreme of emergencies. Every follower of Christ is gifted with the Holy Spirit to teach us the meaning of the Bible. Every follower of Christ has with what we need to read, study, meditate, and pray daily. But we must make the effort to do so, for it’s only then that we’ll consistently grow in our knowledge and remembrance of God’s ways and walk in His paths.