What's next? Do you wish you knew? Decisions should represent opportunities. But often they feel like weighty concerns. We may find ourselves wondering, not where will we find a job, but will we find a job? Will we find a decent place to live at a rent we can afford?

At least in part, doubt and worry over decisions come from the assumption that we can't control the next step in our lives because other factors, such as economic, political, and social conditions, are beyond our control. Things like job, cost-of-living, and "singles" statistics can seem to stand as threats to our hopes and expectations. Sometimes we're convinced not even to try to take the next step. However, all this reasoning has a fundamental flaw. It virtually leaves God—the supreme, wholly good, governing power—out of the picture! But once we begin to learn about God, we come to see His direction, His guidance, as the determining factor of our progress.

The Bible describes the basis for progress as sole dependence on God, not on material factors: "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. ... And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water." ^{Ex. 23:20, 25.}

The many changes in our lives will begin to break out of the precarious or the routine when the spiritual purpose behind progress is sought. For we are much more than we seem to be. Our individual talents and interests hint at God's nature as the one creator and originator. And God, divine Spirit, is our creator. He has made us, His spiritual sons and daughters, to reflect His being and action—to be wholly impelled by spiritual purpose. And not one of us is dispensable. God wouldn't be God—all Life, substance, and intelligence—without each of us to express Him.

While turning to God doesn't typically fit into standard career advice, nonetheless it's not the least bit remote or impractical. It may mean not pursuing a course of action that is considered popular or significant in the world's terms. If we want truly to progress, we have to listen for God's direction in making our decisions.

I saw this in action one morning when I was working in a Christian Science Reading Room. A young man flew through the door, pulled up a chair right next to me, and launched into a breathless insurance sales routine. He seemed so desperate that I began to pray silently to know what to do in order really to help him. Suddenly he sank back in the chair. His voice filled with despair, and he proceeded to tell me that much in his life was going wrong—not the least of which was that he was almost out of money because he had made no sales in weeks.

Then, in pleading tones, he asked me how to pray. The night before in his hotel room he had tried to pray, he said. He had actually got down on his knees and asked God to help him. He was deeply discouraged, though, because he felt God hadn't answered his prayer.

"What makes you think," I gently asked him, "that your coming in here today isn't an answer to your prayer?" As he stopped to think further, he realized that was why he must have come. From that point on we proceeded to talk about prayer as explained in the Christian Science textbooks: the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.

One chapter of Science and Health is devoted entirely to the subject of prayer, showing how we can follow Christ Jesus' remarkable demonstration of its power. From the Master's example it's possible to see that prayer is actually a discovery of how God has already made things to be—how creation truly is. Specifically Science and Health states, "Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it." ^{Science and Health, p. 2.} This puts an entirely different perspective on decisionmaking.

Man's spiritual individuality as God's child is perfectly and permanently established. The more we relinquish human will and allow ourselves to express this genuine individuality—which God is causing us to do—the more directly and consistently we'll progress. Doubt and concern will give way to confidence in the absolute truth of being, as expressed in this verse from the Bible: "Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." ^{Ps. 100:3.} This statement from Science and Health further indicates why it is imperative that we depend on Spirit, God, rather than simply look to college degrees, the "right connections," or even human know-how alone: "The human capacities are enlarged and perfected in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God." ^{Science and Health, p. 258.}

That's what happened next with the salesman. It began with a simple recognition that sincere prayer is answered and then an active willingness on his part to discover more of what God was telling him. He left that morning with copies of the Bible and Science and Health, as well as a copy of the monthly periodical, The Christian Science Journal. I had shown him the Journal because he had wanted to know where he could find a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in his hometown. (The Journal contains a worldwide branch church directory.) But the Journal— through its articles and testimonies of healing—was also a means of reinforcing his newfound hope that divine guidance is still the practical help Christ Jesus showed it to be centuries ago. Just before the salesman left, I invited him to come to our church's testimony meeting that night.

The service started that evening without my morning visitor. But halfway through, I heard a door open, and I smiled a greeting as he sat down in the back. After the meeting I went over to say how glad I was he had come. He apologized for being late but said it was because the extent of that day's appointments and new business had delayed him! It was an especially satisfying proof of God's care.

Prayer is always the next step in resolving the perpetual "what's next?" And prayer always reveals the right course of action, which cannot be blocked or delayed. We see new views of our immortal, spiritual selfhood, which impel the next step forward. And what we gain in the process is much more than simply human accomplishments.

And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

Isaiah 58:11