[aron]

Originally Posted by alwayscurious

How can we find what God has called us to do on this Earth? What is God's plan for us on an individual level? Is it just to be part of his eternal plan? What about the goals I have in my life, whether professional or personal? Is it not good to fulfill them to the best of my abilities? To strive for the peak? What am I not seeing? Should I not strive to be the best human I can possibly be? At the same time, expressing the virtues of Christ and loving God more and more? does anyone else share my frustration??

Reading this question on another thread, and get the frustration - it is the quintessential post-LC angst - but wanted to answer here, in a particular context. We do not know God, truly, or ourselves, but God know us, and this knowledge is complete. And in His knowledge, not ours, we find peace.

Psalm 139 O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

This shows an appreciation and awareness of God’s knowledge. The writer can't encompass God’s knowledge in full (v6) but is aware that God's knowledge encompasses the writer in full (vv 1-4). We don't know God, but we know that God knows us. ~Gal 4:9; cf 1 Cor 8:3

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

God controls all matter and space. There is nothing beyond God. No footstep of ours is beyond God’s grasp. No move escapes His will.

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

Time is in God’s hand. It is all in the ledger. “It is written”, said Jesus – it is definitively settled, even before we see it appear. We have free will – we can fight the ledger, ignore it. But it still exists. Everything in the ledger is true.

7 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

Again, the scope of God’s thought is beyond our power to grasp. “Not a sparrow fall from the sky, but the Father knows it” said Jesus. “Every hair on your head is numbered.” Our job is not to know, as much as to appreciate that God knows. God knows all. Psalm 147:4 says, "He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name", and Isaiah 40:26 says "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing."

19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.

Three times the Psalms speak this phrase – “away from me!” (Psa 6, 119, 139) – and three times Jesus spoke it. One with the tempter, one with Peter, one with the sheep and the goats. Coincidence? People say, “In the NT we love, not hate” but Jesus brooked no compromise. He was obedient without fail.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

Again the writer/speaker is open to the God who knows all. Jesus fulfilled the first three lines of this section, and thus becomes our Way everlasting. The rest of us are “in the grievous way” of v 24, but Jesus was the Obedient Lamb who redeems humanity. Because Jesus was not "in the grievous way" he becomes our Way. Both the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews make this utterly plain to the attentive reader.