Collins, Travis. Directionally Challenged: How to Find and Follow God’s Course for Your Life. Birmingham, Alabama: New Hope Publishers, 2007, 214 pp.

There is often a question that lingers in the minds of many Christians: How can I know God’s will for my life? Many Christians desire to be obedient to the will of God in their lives, but often times struggle with how to determine what his will is. In this book, Travis Collins takes up the task of helping Christians discern the will of God in their lives. He begins by pointing out that there is no passage in Scripture one can always turn to, there is no formula for determining the will of God, and there is no checklist to making sure we are in the will of God.

A statement Travis made on page 21 really stuck out at me. He wrote, “The Bible doesn’t talk a lot about ‘God’s will for our lives.’ It does talk a lot about how people find great fulfillment and make great contributions by finding their place within God’s mission.”

Overall, I think Travis does an excellent job helping people to understand how to find the will of God in their lives. He explains this in terms of a “call.” In other words, finding the will of God for your life is almost synonymous with answering the unique call God has placed upon your life. To help locate both of these, Travis proposes a “COMPASS” to help navigate. This serves as the illustration to help readers understand the many aspects of finding and staying in the will of God, which he discusses in this book.

There are really only two critiques I could offer. A few times The Message is quoted in the book as though it is Scripture. I would have preferred this translation not have been used as a Scriptural source because it is a paraphrase translation. Aside from that, the only other thing is that I felt like there was no cohesiveness among chapters four and following. The first three chapters flowed beautifully together. Each successive chapter covers an important aspect of the journey to finding and following God’s course for our lives, but doesn’t flow as well as the first three chapters.

In short, this book is well worth reading for those who might be struggling with the question of determining God’s will or even the question if one is still following God’s will in their lives. You can click the image in this post to purchase this book from the WMU or you can purchase it from Amazon.com if you prefer.