Johnnie Moore: Knowing God's will isn't so hard

Though he’s barely in his 30s, Johnnie Moore has already had a robust career as a vice president and campus pastor at Liberty University. Students confronted him everyday with the question, what do I do when I leave school and embark on a career? They wanted to know God’s will for their lives, or, more simply put, what they should be when they grew up. Helping thousands of students over the years led Moore to write a new book called What Am I Supposed To Do With My Life? Little did he know that, as he was writing the book, television producer Mark Burnett would ask him to change careers. Burnett had been working on various projects with Liberty University and became friends with Moore. That relationship led Burnett to ask Moore to be his chief of staff. After 13 years at Liberty University in Virginia, Moore last year packed up his family and moved to California, where we had this conversation. I begin by asking Johnnie Moore about a lie he says many Christians believe to be true about God’s will. Now he is helping prepare the release of the television series A.D. about the birth of the church in the book of Acts. The story that will air on NBC beginning Easter week.

You write that understanding God’s plan for your life begins with understanding God’s character. Why is that so important? You can trust God. It all begins there. God’s going to take care of you. God hasn’t left the steering wheel. He’s got the whole world under control. That’s one thing you can bank on. God’s looking out for you. God has a plan for your life even if your life is spinning out of control. That’s the foundational part of the book, that we’ve got to establish from the beginning here: God’s character is pure and He’s trustworthy.

You also say God’s will comes into focus through doing the basics: Studying God’s character, studying God’s Word, and praying. There are really only two major points of this book. The first point about God’s will is that God’s will is more about who you are than where you are or what you’re doing. … That presupposes that you care about who you are. Because you’re going to take you with you wherever you go in life. I think many, many times we focus more on the “where” and the “what” before focusing on the “who.” The “who” has a lot to do with your spiritual health.

In your book, you talk about the wisdom of ceiling fans. What do you mean by that? We are insane the way we deal with these massive questions of our life. We get decision paralysis. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do, whether it’s the job we’re supposed to take, the place we’re supposed to live, the major we’re supposed to have in college, or the person we’re supposed to date. We don’t know the answers to the questions, and so we get desperate.

I have this whole chapter in the book on these crazy signs that we ask God to show us. A friend of mine had this thing where he’d plop the Bible on the bed and turn the ceiling fan on high. Wherever the Bible landed, that’s the verse that would be the answer to his biggest question. … We mess all this stuff up by making it too complicated. In my book, What Am I Supposed To Do With My Life? there are basically two very simple points about this. Point No. 1: God’s will is more about who you are than where you are or what you’re doing. Point No. 2: God’s will is more about going until He stops you than waiting for Him to tell you to go. When we get in that place, where we’re waiting for God to tell us anything to do, we start asking God for crazy signs, and that’s no way to live.

Your advice is, there are a lot of things that we know God is calling us to do right now. Be about those things, whether it’s prayer, Bible study, or being in fellowship with other believers. Do those things wholeheartedly and diligently. The other stuff will follow. Is that what you’re saying? That’s right. Bloom where you’re planted. Take the opportunity you have. Focus on who God made you to be. By the way, sometimes God’s will is exactly what you want to do with your life. … The beautiful thing about Christianity is it’s basically the only religious system in the world that has the idea that God has this vested interest in your success. To use bland, regular language, God involves himself in your life.

I cannot tell you how many times in the lives of people listening to this or reading this that God has interrupted their lives in amazing ways. A lot of people think that they are pursuing the miraculous things of God when they beg and plead for God to show them where to go. The point in the book is that the miracles are more often along the way you’re going, as opposed to at the beginning of the journey. …

One of the things that I also write about in the book is the role of other people in making these decisions. The way of wisdom, which I write about in the book, is a way of wise advisors. By God’s grace, in my own life, I had older mentors that gave me the opportunities that I’ve had in my life. To this day, I can say I have more friends in their 70s then I do that are my age. I’m 31 years old. Those guys are never afraid to put me in my place. We’ve got to be honest with ourselves. Then, we’ve got have people in our lives that are honest with us.

Listen to Warren Cole Smith’s full conversation with Johnnie Moore on Listening In.