(Luke 14: 28-32 Luke 18:9-14 Acts 9) 

We are faced with a very real and worrying problem: if God speaks in the privacy of my heart, and if a vocation is such an intensely personal thing, how can I tell if what I feel is not just my feverish imagination, my oversensitivity at work, making me think it is God? 

There are a few pieces of the New Testament that we can look at together and which might help: Luke 18:9-14, Acts 9, Luke 14:28-32. 

figments of our imagination 

Christ was anxious for his followers not to be led astray by the common errors to which our human nature is exposed. He noticed how some people lived in their own world, so to say, when it came to religious things. They lived in a dream world, thinking they were righteous when in fact they were not; and because they thought so, they looked down on others that they thought were not, calling them sinners and treating them with contempt.  

When he saw this he told them a parable, the one we call The Pharisee and the Publican. You are familiar with it, but to refresh your memory, take St. Luke's gospel and read chapter 18:9-14.  

The story is quite vivid and extremely easy to imagine, it is a perfect vignette of human nature as we know it from experience.  

Two men go up to the temple to pray. One of them is full of himself, and as he stands there proudly his prayer consists in telling God how great he (the man who is praying) is. Just to prove it, he not only reams off his great and wonderful fastings and fulfillment of the various intricacies of the law, but also in the process he compares himself with others that in his opinion are not nearly as good, the sinners, the dregs of humanity, worthy only of contempt. But he is holy. God would do well to realize what a prize he has in him.  

Meanwhile the other man almost hides himself, he does not dare to come very close or even look up to heaven. All he does is beat his breast and ask God for mercy, for he knows he is a sinner.  

According to Christ this second man went down to his house justified while the first did not. Here we have food for thought: the "expert" was wrong. 

the Pharisee  

The pharisees were the experts in Israel as regards fulfillment of the law. They were the holy ones, and their name means "the separated ones." In other words, their striving for justice and holiness separated them from the run-of-the-mill Jew.  

It was not easy to be a pharisee, it entailed fasting and prayer and a scrupulous fidelity to countless laws and their application. It was involved and arduous.  

It was quite understandable that any man doing all those things would think himself superior to others. It is quite to be expected that a man making such sustained effort and going to such extremes would want some recognition and respect. He would want to feel it was worthwhile and that all of this bother he was undertaking was really making him a better, holier, more perfect man. So he would make sure that people saw him pray, that they saw him give alms, that they noticed on his face that he was fasting, that they saw and admired and gazed in awe at his meticulous religiosity. And it seemed that he began to think that it was somehow only right that God too should gaze in awe and gratitude at such a wonderful servant, the pride of Israel. 

Now it is sobering to realize that what he thought was bringing him close to God, justifying him, was in reality taking him in the opposite direction. It was separating him not from sinners as he thought, but from the God he thought he was honoring.  

In other words, he was mistaken. He was mixing up his subjective ideas and feelings, for which he had much supporting evidence, with God's view. He thought God must see things exactly as he did, he must surely know what a just and righteous man he was. 

This is a fundamental error and we can all make it. No, we all do make it. Over and over again.  

We get some idea into our heads, and we figure God must see things exactly as we do. It does not follow. Our hang-ups and obsessions can make us focus on the wrong things. Just as Christ said about the pharisees in a colorful exaggeration, we strain out the gnats and then go ahead and swallow entire camels instead. The pharisees went to great lengths to define what was work so as not to do it on the Sabbath (they wondered if carrying the extra weight on their feet when wearing sandals constituted work, so as to know if they could wear sandals or not on the Sabbath) and thus avoid breaking the law, yet, as Christ said, in the process they forgot about the essence of the law which was mercy (I want mercy and not sacrifice, he quoted back to them from the Old Testament). 

consequences 

Does this have much to do with vocation? Well, yes, it has a lot to do with the thought process that goes into a vocation, and with any time we try to figure out what God is really saying.  

The lesson from this piece of gospel is that we are always in danger of thinking about things in a very subjective way, of fabricating our own remedies and truths which can at times be very mistaken. Just the fact that we think something, and are very sincere about it, does not make it correct. The pharisee was thoroughly convinced that he was right, that he was better than the publican, yet he was not. The pharisee thought he left the Temple justified, holy, in contrast with the publican - yet Christ tells us that things were very different. It really was the publican who was justified. 

The whole point of the story is that we can easily be led astray by our pride, thinking we have everything figured out for ourselves, while in reality the only way we can be free of the dangers involved is humility, to recognize that we do not have the answer in ourselves, to go to God and ask him, and to accept what he says.  

Somebody else, with experience of God's ways, has to help us discern if it is he who is calling. It is something we cannot figure out just on our own. 

outside help 

Let us take a look at what happened to St. Paul and how he found the meaning of it. (Acts, chapter 9) 

Saul (Paul's name at the time all of this happened) was a persecutor of the Church. Mind you, not any mild critic or your regular two-bit harasser. Saul of Tarsus breathed fire. He breathed threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. People trembled at his name. But he did everything legally, he got the warrants, and then came down heavy. He put men, and women too, in chains and brought them to Jerusalem. Here was no enemy of the death penalty. There was no way anyone could escape his zeal.  

It was on one of these missions as Saul, still breathing threats and murder, headed out to Damascus to take Christians prisoner, that God's time came. As he rode, a great flash of light enveloped him, he was thrown to the ground, and he heard a voice. It was Jesus who asked him why he was persecuting him. 

Now this would seem to be the perfect moment for Christ to explain everything to Saul. He certainly had his attention. But Christ's words seem strange to us under the circumstances. Instead of pressing his advantage he says to Saul: "Get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." Saul doesn't object. He gets up and does as he has been told. He has the added bitter surprise that he has now become blind. What a humiliation for this fiery self-starter, to have to be led around by the hand. As a soldier who knew he was feared he must have felt very vulnerable.  

Saul does not know what lies ahead. He is at a loss, so he obeys. He waits. He fasts. We can be sure he prays. But he does not expect any other answer to his prayers than to be told by someone what he was to do.  

That someone - his name was Ananias - was being approached by Christ in a vision, and was having a problem with what he was being asked to do, for the Lord was telling him to go and visit Saul. Ananias knew only of the ill-gotten fame of Saul as a persecutor, and it made going to see him a most dangerous and undesirable task, so, quite naturally, he objects by reminding Christ who the man is they are dealing with. But Christ insists. Ananias goes, perhaps thinking his own time has come.  

When Ananias goes in and delivers a simple message to Saul - The Lord Jesus who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit - the New Testament says that immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. 

Saul regained his physical sight. But some spiritual "scales" fell from the eyes of his soul as well. He got up and was baptized, and now by faith he saw that Jesus was the Son of God. His soul acquired a new spiritual sight. 

This is significant for us. What gave Paul the gift of faith was not the vision on the roadside, although God could have given it to him there. The gift came through the man sent by Christ, who explained the meaning of what had happened on the roadside and who gave him the sacrament of baptism.  

Even Paul needed someone to help him understand his experience. 

using our own heads too 

There is a further piece of the gospel we should keep in mind when we are trying to figure if what we are feeling and thinking is from our imagination or from God, and it is some advice Christ gave his disciples after he had spoken to them about the sacrifices they would have to make to be his followers.  

He tells them to think seriously and realistically about it. He tells them to give at least as serious and practical thought to it as they would to a construction job or to a military undertaking... for which of you, intending to build a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him saying, "This fellow began to build and was not able to finish." Or what king, going out to wage war against another, will not sit down first and calculate whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty? If he cannot, when the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. (Luke 14:28-32) 

But to understand this passage well, we have to add the other that says, With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26) With Christ it is never a question of mere human numbers and calculations, for the realism of the gospel is a realism that does not function independently of our faith. We should think ahead, make our calculations, figure out if what we propose is feasible - but all the while we should never think as man thinks but as God thinks. God's grace should be an essential element we take into account in our discernment. 

conclusion 

From all the above it is clear that you have to seek the help of a spiritual director at some stage of your search. He must be someone you can trust, and very often the sign of this is that he is not afraid to tell you things you sometimes do not want to hear.  

Principally he has to tell you if you are losing touch, either with reality or, on the contrary, with your faith, as you search for God's will in your life.