How do people know the difference between God's will and their own will?
I had an epiphany earlier about my epiphanies, and all I can think about now is how much of a slave or puppet I have been to my epiphanies! I have these powerful moments of clarity, and somehow whatever "truth" emerges takes on a higher level of meaning and purpose. And not only that, but they very often motivate me to realign with them because they somehow feel more like what I am "supposed" to be doing than whatever it is that I am actually doing!
Why do these epiphanies feel more important, more substantive, more clarifying of what I am "supposed" to be doing?
I don't know how other people determine what is their will and what is God's will, but in this moment I honestly have no clue how to discern this for myself. I think I have been interpretting my moments of clarity as somehow God (or the Universe) intervening in my life direction to make corrections and adjustments (because they feel so much "larger than life"). But after today's epiphany about my epiphanies. . . . the truth is that I just don't know.
There is a scene from Gray's Anatomy when one of the cheerleaders tells the head cheerleader (who has been injured in a bus accident that will take her out of cheerleading for a while) something to the effect of, "I asked God what to do, and God said I should be head cheerleader." How does a person argue with that? How does a person question God's will, especially when God's will is revealed to and through another person?
In the film, Kingdom of Heaven, if anyone questioned the proclamation of "God's wills it!" they were accused of blasphemy, so what is left if God's will is revealed to some, but not to others? The king tells Balien that "A king may move a man," but goes on to say essentially that the soul of the man still belongs to the man, and the man must account for his own actions before God, and cannot justify his actions by what he was told to do by someone else. Powerful stuff.
I'm not trying to define truth (or Truth) for anyone else but me, so I make no judgments about how anyone else builds thier relationship with God or determines how the will of God moves through their lives. But in this moment I honestly have no idea how I am supposed to "know" the will of God for my own life. So the bottom line is simply this: If I am going to have a personal relationship with God and live as a spiritual adult within the house that God has granted me the deed, then no one else can tell me what the will of God is in my life, especially if I can not even discern this truth for my self.