R.C. Sproul

trusting that God will lead our steps principally and chiefly through the directions that He gives to us in His Word.

The chief way that we are to discern the will of God is by pouring over the Word of God, and I'll talk more about that later on.

But for now, just let me set the stage for this concern.

that it is a common concern among Christians to know, what is God's will for my life?

Does He want me to be a dentist?

Does He want me to be an astronomer?

Does He want me to be a housewife?

What is God's calling upon my life?

And we're going to be looking at those questions and see what kind of light we can derive from sacred Scripture of discerning our vocation

Again, I've said this before, and some of you may remember it, that the term vocation is one of those words that is rapidly disappearing from our vocabulary.

And it's almost completely vanished in terms of its original meaning.

Today it's used simply as a synonym, when it is used, for career or job or job opportunity.

when historically the idea of vocation comes from the Latin word to call, and the idea is that God does.

call us to particular tasks and to particular ministries and to particular endeavors and particular activities.

And the chief thing that we do with our lives in terms of career, marriage, and that sort of thing is related to the call of God.

And we should seek an understanding of the call of God upon our lives.

And let me just give you a practical example of why that is important.

Everybody in their career goes through down times, sterile times, times where the job gets frustrating, times where it's involving us in conflict.

And sometimes we wake up and say, why am I doing this?

I don't know how many times in periods of discouragement in my own life and in my own ministry,