What God Wants for Your Life: Finding Answers to the Deepest Questions

"God can and does speak to us -- even in times when things go terribly wrong. What often troubles and torments us are the assumptions that shape what we expect and how we listen ... Shaped by an open-ended, inner dialogue with God about the choices that you and I really do make, finding and doing the will of God is ... an adventure in which, hand in hand with God, we define what it means to live as people of faith." -- from the Introduction

How do we know God's will for our lives? This question lies at the heart of Christian life. And yet, attempting to understand our greater purpose can become a source of frustration as we look for help when making important life decisions. Everything that we hoped to avoid by looking to God -- the sense of isolation, the self-doubt, the fear of "getting it wrong" -- instead is often magnified. This confusion usually stems, however, not from our search for God's will, but from our misunderstanding of God's role in our day-to-day existence.

Spiritual retreat leader and Episcopal priest Fred Schmidt reveals how we are driven farther away from both God and true, lasting fulfillment by our dependence on interpreting "signs and wonders" from heaven, our desire for certainty instead of wisdom, and our anxious preoccupation with supposedly divine to-do lists. By contrast, the spiritual practices described by Schmidt show how we can better recognize the difference between God's will and our own, deepen our ability to hear God's voice, and sharpen our powers of discernment.

Frederick W. Schmidt, an Episcopal priest, is the director of Spiritual Life and Formation and associate professor of Christian spirituality at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the former canon educator for the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where he was the director of programs in religious education. He earned his Ph.D. from Oxford University and is a frequent lecturer at major Episcopal and United Methodist churches, national denominational clergy meetings, and spiritual retreat centers across the country.