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How to Discern God’s Will When You Don’t Have All Answers

How to Discern God’s Will When You Don’t Have All Answers

Last updated on: August 28, 2026 at 2:13 pm by Jeff McLain

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How to Discern God’s Will When You Don’t Have All Answers 2026-08-28T14:13:27-04:00 Jeff McLain

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Discern. Photo by Sophia Kunkel on Unsplash.

This morning, as I was reading through Matthew, I was drawn to Joseph’s discernment in Matthew 2:22–23.

It is an interesting passage for anyone trying to discern God’s will.

Joseph has already experienced a remarkable series of encounters with God. An angel appeared to him in a dream and told him to take Mary as his wife. Then, after Jesus was born, another dream warned him to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.

That is the kind of guiding we want God to do. Sometimes he does that in our discernment. However, it is not the only form of discernment and guidance that appears in Joseph’s story.

The story is significantly dramatic up to this point.

The Magi have announced the birth of a king: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:2, NRSVUE). Herod cannot tolerate the threat. His position as king of Judea has become his sweet spot. It comes with power, prestige, and self-importance. He cannot imagine surrendering it.

So Herod tries to eliminate the threat.

God supernaturally leads Joseph to Egypt instead. However, I think Joseph identifies where to live while he is there.

After Herod dies, Joseph receives another visit from an angel in a dream. It is time to go home.

And Joseph gets up and goes, hoping all is well on the home front.

Joseph Knew How to Pay Attention

There is something striking about the simplicity of Joseph’s obedience.

Joseph doesn’t appear to calculate the cost. He doesn’t seem to need another sign. Joseph wakes up and does what God has told him to do. Perhaps this is why Joseph experiences so much intimacy in the way God shows up, leading and guiding him.

But then, on the journey home, Joseph discovers that Herod’s son Archelaus is now ruling Judea. The home front is not all quiet and well.

Suddenly, the road home doesn’t look quite as safe as it did a moment before. That is something many of us can identify with. Even in the moments we sense God is calling us towards something, often something gets in the way. Suddenly, things don’t look as hopeful as we thought they would.

I suspect this is where many of us would begin building the spreadsheet.

What are the risks?
What are the alternatives?
What if we go there?
What if we don’t?
What will this mean for our family?
Our income?
Our work?
Our future?

We are human. We naturally try to control outcomes and compensate for variables. That is exactly what I do in my discernment. Maybe I am alone, but I don’t think so.

When we are trying to discern God’s will, we can easily turn discernment into an attempt to eliminate uncertainty.

Joseph shows us something different.

Discernment Doesn’t Give Us the Whole Map

In none of his supernatural encounters does Joseph get the whole road map.

He didn’t know anything other than that he was to marry Mary.
He didn’t know anything other than that he needed to go to Egypt.
He didn’t know anything other than that he needed to go home.
He knew nothing except to avoid Herord’s son.

After he is on his way home, Joseph receives another warning in a dream.

This time, Matthew doesn’t explicitly tell us that an angel appeared. He simply tells us that Joseph was warned in a dream. I am going to say more about dreams later, but the difference here strikes me.

Joseph then makes a decision.

He withdraws to Galilee and settles in Nazareth.

What interests me is that the warning does not seem to give Joseph a complete roadmap.

Joseph is told where the danger is, but he isn’t given every detail about where to go next. Joseph still has to make a wise decision. So often, this is what faith looks like. Joseph considers the circumstances before him and chooses Nazareth. He had his tablet out running Excel sheets, but like in the dirt.

And Matthew tells us that this choice fits within God’s purposes all along: “There he will be called a Nazorean” (Matthew 2:23, NRSVUE).

Joseph wasn’t trying to make prophecy happen.

Joseph was trying to stay faithful to his task.

Joseph wasn’t thinking about where Jesus would do his ministry.

Joseph was trying to protect his family.

We don’t always get—and maybe we never do—the whole roadmap.

Joseph wasn’t manipulating circumstances to produce some predetermined spiritual outcome. He was responding faithfully to what he knew, paying attention to what was happening around him, and making the wisest decision he could. The marching orders he had were enough to move forward, until something changed. John Wimber used to say, “Old marching orders are still good marching orders, until there are new marching orders.” At the same time, the marching orders have some areas that we often have to discern for ourselves—utilizing the scriptures, the Spirit, wisdom, others, and so on.

Joseph had to make some discernments. This is the reality—and God was at work in all of it.

That matters when we are trying to figure out what God is doing in our own lives. Sometimes discerning God’s will means knowing what God has clearly said. Sometimes it means recognizing a warning. And sometimes it means making the wisest decision we can with the information we have.

We don’t always get the whole map—and we can trust that even when we don’t have it, God is at work.

There are No Detours in Discernments

There is something striking about Jesus’ early formative years. The one who was born king spent those years away from the people he had come to rescue—those he was born to be their king, whom he would rule like a shepherd. Before he would preach, heal, teach, gather disciples, and announce the kingdom of God, Jesus lived as a child in a foreign land and then grew up in an unexpected place called Nazareth.

From our perspective, this might look like an interruption to the mission. From God’s perspective, it was part of the mission.

Egypt was not a waste of time. Nazareth was not a detour. Even the circumstances that seemed to threaten Jesus’ future were being woven into the story God was already writing.

That is one of the harder truths about discernment: sometimes what feels like survival, delay, or simply making the best decision you can in difficult circumstances is still part of what God is doing. We may not recognize its significance until much later.

Joseph was trying to protect his family.

God was preparing a Savior.

Part of discernment is realizing that detours are still part of the plan.

Discernment in My Own Life

This thought is particularly meaningful to me in this season.

I’ve recently made a significant decision of my own, with several other decisions still ahead. There have been plenty of nights spent praying, calculating, comparing, building budgets, looking at costs of living, imagining different possibilities, and trying to understand what life might look like if one option or another worked out.

And now, as I write this, my wife is in the hospital facing serious health concerns. I am sitting here wondering what significant changes may be ahead for our family. My instinct is to immediately begin compensating for the variables:

How do I adjust the budget?
What do I need to change?
What should I prepare for?
How do I get ahead of this?

But Joseph reminds me that Christian discernment doesn’t necessarily give us a complete map.

Sometimes God says, “Go.”

Sometimes he warns us, “Don’t go there.”

And sometimes, after we have received what God has given us, we still have to make a wise decision about the road ahead.

That doesn’t mean God has abandoned us in the uncertainty.

How Do We Discern God’s Will?

Maybe faithful discernment isn’t primarily about eliminating uncertainty.

Maybe it is learning to pay attention.

Pay attention to what God has already said.
Pay attention to the warnings.
Pay attention to our own fears.
Pay attention to what is actually happening around us.
Pay attention to wise counsel.
Pay attention to prayer.
Pay attention to Scripture.

And then, having paid attention, take the next faithful step.

This is important because fear and discernment can look remarkably similar.

Fear asks, “What if everything goes wrong?”
Discernment asks, “What is actually happening here?”
Fear tries to control every possible outcome.
Discernment receives what we can know and entrusts what we cannot.
Fear demands certainty before moving.
Faithfulness is sometimes willing to move with enough light for the next step.

Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow. In doing so, Jesus points us toward the Father who knows what we need and cares for us more deeply than we can comprehend.

The Father who provides for the birds and clothes the flowers is not indifferent to his children.

We don’t have to know tomorrow in order to trust God today.

Maybe We Should Pay More Attention to Our Dreams

I said I would come back to the invitation from the amount of dreams at play in Joseph’s life. There is one other part of Joseph’s story that keeps catching my attention.

Joseph continues to receive guidance through dreams.

Again and again, a dream becomes the means through which he is warned, redirected, and reassured. Sometimes angels. Sometimes just impressions. That doesn’t mean every dream is a message from God. Whether Carl Jung was right that dreams can reveal something about our inner selves, or Morton Kelsey was right that God can use dreams to communicate with us, Scripture at least reminds us that Joseph was paying attention. That seems like a helpful posture for us, too.

We can easily give our dreams more significance than they deserve. Not every strange, vivid, or unsettling dream needs to be interpreted as divine guidance. Joseph’s story makes it difficult to dismiss dreams altogether. Matthew presents Joseph as someone who was willing to pay attention when God met him there.

We don’t need to become obsessed with interpreting every dream.

In fact, it would be careless to.

But perhaps we can become a little more attentive to the ways God may be getting our attention—in Scripture, in prayer, through wise people, through circumstances, through the quiet convictions of the Spirit, and perhaps sometimes even through our dreams.

Discernment begins, in part, with paying attention.

God Can Work Through Our Decisions

Joseph’s story gives me hope because even when he was making what seemed like an ordinary human decision based on the circumstances before him, God was still accomplishing something far bigger than Joseph could see.

Joseph chose Nazareth because it seemed the safest and wisest place for his family. God had purposes for Nazareth that Joseph could not have fully understood. The child Joseph, whom the king tried to destroy, would outlast him. Eventually, that child would change the world.

The one born a king would become the shepherd of his people. There is something deeply reassuring about that. Sometimes we are so concerned about making the perfect decision that we forget who God is.

We think everything depends upon getting the decision exactly right.

We pray.
We make lists.
We compare options.
We calculate costs.
We seek counsel.
We examine our motives.

And we should.

But eventually, we have to make a decision.

Joseph did.

And God was still able to work through it, depsite it.

We Don’t Have to Know What’s Around the Corner

This is where I find myself today.

I am trying to make significant decisions while also facing circumstances I could not have anticipated.

There are things I don’t know. For sure, there are many detours I cannot predict and variables that I cannot control. There are questions I cannot yet answer. I can feel the temptation to get ahead of all of it—to start rearranging everything now in an attempt to compensate for whatever might happen next.

Joseph’s story reminds me—and I hope it reminds you— that discernment isn’t the same thing as control.

We listen.
We pray.
We pay attention.
We take seriously what God has already said.
We notice the warnings.
We use wisdom.
We make the best decision we can with what we know.

And then we trust God with what we don’t know.

As Peter reminds us, I can cast my cares on him because he cares for me.
As the Psalms remind us, I can let his word be a lamp for my feet without demanding that it illuminate the entire road.

I can make wise decisions without pretending I can control every variable.

And I can step forward in faith, trusting that the God who began a good work is able to see it through.

I don’t have to know everything that is around the corner. I only have to be faithful with what God has put in front of me today. Joseph paid attention.

Then, when he knew what he needed to know, he got up and went.

Let’s Talk.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

What are you currently trying to discern? What decision or season are you asking God to give you clarity about?
What has helped you discern God’s will? How has a Scripture, prayer, wise counsel, circumstances, or something else helped you recognize your next step?
Have you ever looked back and seen God at work in a decision you weren’t sure about at the time? As you look back, what did you learn from that experience?

You may also enjoy reading: When Psalm 23 Began Reading Me, Taking Every Thought Captive, and Remembering the Nudge: Revisit the Place God First Spoke.

Subscribe to Lead a Quiet Life on Substack and join me there.

If this post resonated, subscribe for future reflections, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. You can learn more about his journey to recover a rooted Christian way of life through the Lord’s Prayer, ancient habits, leading a quiet life, and simple Jesus communities online at JeffMcLain.com, the Lead a Quiet Life blog on Patheos, or the Discovering God Podcast.

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About Jeff McLain

Jeff McLain is a Doctor of Ministry Student on the Lord’s Prayer at Kairos University, Director of Pastoral Ministries at Water Street Mission, and a pastor at River Corner Church. Mobilized by 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, Jeff blogs about recovering a rooted Christian way of life through the Lord’s Prayer, ancient habits, leading a quiet life, and simple Jesus communities. You can read more about the author here.

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