How to Know If a Decision Is God's Will: I Will Guide You With My Eye

We’ll need your answer by Friday at 5.

It’s 11:20 on a Tuesday night, and the email is still open on your laptop, right under We’d love to have you.

There’s a yellow legal pad beside it with two columns. The left one is longer. You keep adding to the right one anyway. At the top of the page you wrote Pray and underlined it twice, and that was an hour ago.

You’ve asked Him for a sign three times since dinner. Your tea went cold somewhere around the second column, and you haven’t moved the mug.

What if I pick the wrong one and miss His will for the rest of my life?

The short answer: You find God’s will for a decision the way Scripture says guidance comes: from a Person, not a formula. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye” (Psalm 32:8). Bring Him the decision plainly, ask Him for wisdom (James 1:5), and stay close enough to be counseled. His will is not a hidden code you have to crack by Friday. The Hebrew word for “guide” in that verse is the word Isaiah turns into a name, Counselor (Isaiah 9:6), and His eye is on you.

The Man He Was Talking To

Before God makes that promise in Psalm 32, He lets you hear who it’s spoken to.

David had been hiding something from God, and he tells you what the hiding did to his body: “When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning all the day long” (Psalm 32:3). Picture a king pushing up from his own table with both palms flat, slow, the way a man twice his age gets up.

Then he stopped hiding. “I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ And You forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32:5).

And right there, three verses later, the voice in the psalm changes. Now God is the one talking: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye” (Psalm 32:8).

He’s speaking to a forgiven man. Not a man with a perfect record of decisions. A man who’d just set down the thing he was carrying and walked back into the room.

The Word Behind “Guide”

Most readers never see this in English. The word translated “guide” in Psalm 32:8 is yāʿaṣ, “to counsel, to advise.” The Hebrew line reads, word for word, “I will counsel, upon you My eye.”

It’s the word for what a king’s counselors did at his table. And when Isaiah names the Child who would come, he reaches for the same word: “And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). “Counselor” there is yôʿēṣ, “one who counsels,” the same verb for counseling, made into a name.

The God who promises to counsel you with His eye on you is the God who later shows up with Counselor written into His name. And Paul says where that Counselor lives now: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Here is more on what Christ in you means.

So here’s what you can stop doing. You can stop treating His will like a combination lock, as if one wrong number on Friday locks you out for good. Stop reading the billboard on the drive to work, the song in the grocery store, the way the recruiter said your name, as a code you have to break before the deadline. You were promised a Counselor, and counsel is what someone gives you while you’re sitting with Him. Bring Him the legal pad the way you’d bring it to the wisest person you know, and set it on the table between you.

Not With Bit and Bridle

The next verse shows you the other way to be guided.

“Do not be like the horse or like the mule, Which have no understanding, Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, Else they will not come near you” (Psalm 32:9).

You’ve seen it. A horse in a pasture that won’t come to the fence. Someone has to walk out with a halter, work the bit past its teeth, and pull its head around. A mule plants its feet at the trailer and leans back on the rope.

That’s guidance by force: something hard in the mouth, because the animal won’t come close.

The guidance in verse 8 is the opposite. My eye. You can only follow someone’s eye from near enough to see where he’s looking. A bit in the mouth is for the one who keeps its distance.

Maybe that’s what you’ve been asking for since dinner. Something hard enough in your mouth to turn your head and settle it. He’s offering you more than that. Come close.

When the Answer Is Due Sunday

If I get this wrong, it’s on me for good.

You think it in the van at 2:35 on a Thursday afternoon, parked outside your fourth call of the day. The clipboard’s on the passenger seat with the work order half filled out. Your sister’s text is still on the screen: I need to know by Sunday if Mom’s coming to you or going to the place on Hollis. You’re forty-four, an HVAC tech, and you’ve fixed other people’s heat for twenty-two years, and you can’t fix this.

You’ve asked God for a sign twice today. Once at a red light. Once in a customer’s basement with your flashlight in your teeth.

You close the text. You open the Bible app instead and type in Psalm 32:8.

“I will guide you with My eye.”

You read it out loud, low, the way you’d read a gauge to a man standing next to you. Then you say, “Mom. Our house or Hollis. Counsel me.”

The homeowner opens her front door and waves. You pick up the clipboard and the cart of tools, and you go in.

Bring Him the Decision, Then Stay Close

Here’s the one thing to do tonight. Take the legal pad. Under the two columns, write the decision as one plain sentence: Take the job, or stay. Under that, write Psalm 32:8.

Read the verse out loud. Then tell Him both sides in the words you’d use across a kitchen table, and ask Him plainly: “Counsel me.” James says you can: “let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach” (James 1:5).

Then put the pen down. Don’t add a third column. Don’t wait up for a sign to settle it. Go to sleep near the One who promised to teach you the way, and bring it to Him again in the morning. If you’re wondering how to tell His counsel from your own thinking, here is how to know if it is God’s voice or your own thoughts.

Scripture to Keep When You Have to Decide

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.” (Psalm 32:8)

“And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

“Nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with Your counsel, And afterward receive me to glory.” (Psalm 73:23–24)

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5)

A Prayer for When You Don’t Know Which Way to Go

Father, I have a decision in front of me, and I do not know which way to go. Here it is, plainly: [say it in one sentence]. You promised to instruct me and teach me in the way I should go. You are the Counselor. I am not asking You to force my head around. I am asking You to counsel me, and I am staying close. Give me wisdom, the way You said You would. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The Mystery of Christ is for learning the voice of the One who counsels you from the inside: Christ, who lives in you.

I saw you at the table tonight, child. I saw the two columns and the cold tea. I’m not hiding My will from you behind a deadline. I said I’d teach you the way, and I meant it. You don’t need a bit in your mouth. Just come close. My eye’s on you. It hasn’t moved.

You do not have to crack His will before the deadline. You have a Counselor, and His eye has not left you.