[Evangelical]

To help us make choices about matters which are not clearly right/wrong or good/evil we have the indwelling and the anointing:

1. The indwelling (Romans 8:11)
2. The anointing (John 16:13, 1 John 2:27)

But a more practical answer as to how we can make choices is found in Romans 12:2 which says:

Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

So if we want to make the right choice according to God's will, we need only do two things:

1) be not conformed to the world
2) be transformed by the renewing of our mind

The right choices will flow naturally from that. Before we were Christians we lived according to what the world wanted, mainly because our minds were not transformed. But after becoming Christians, we can live according to what God wants, by the renewing of our mind.

I think many Christians see their life as being independent of God's, such that they worry too much about whether they have made the right decision, or having made a decision, worry too much about whether God is pleased with it.

But in reality becoming a Christian is about God's life and our life becoming one life. So that when we make a decision, it is not as if we are always making it independently of God, or that we must always seek Him for every little thing. When the Lord transforms our mind, it is not just so we think the right things, but also so that we make the right choices because our mind is transformed to make choices that are pleasing to Him.

The Christian life is a life of cooperation with God. God may have a preference, but at times leave the choice up to us, so that whatever "seems good to us" is also good to Him (Acts 15:28).

And in case we still worry, we can trust that God is sovereign, we can make a choice by faith, a choice that seems good to us, with all the information we have available, and knowing that if we have made the wrong choice, God is still in control.

For every day of our lives is numbered in His book, such that there is no choice we could make that is unsurprising to Him, or that He has not already accounted for in the plan for our lives (Psalm 139).

This way of thinking about God's leading is quite different to that I have heard in churches I used to attend. "lay out the fleece before the Lord", drawing lots, seeking the Lord for a dream or vision, these are all biblical, but more Old Testament - Old Testament people did not have the indwelling Christ. These methods may still work at times, but what if we don't have time to seek the Lord's leading? What if we have to make a decision on the spur of the moment? What if we are with loved ones or in public and cannot find a quiet space to pray or time to wait for God's answer?

We must still seek the Lord in prayer, of course, but do we realize that the end goal of our praying is not just to get an answer to the thing we are unsure about, but the transformation of our minds, so that the decisions we will make will be the ones God wants us to make?