Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

by Kevin DeYoung

We are seeing a generation of young people grow up (sort of) who tinker with doctrines, tinker with churches, tinker with girlfriends and boyfriends, tinker with college majors, tinker living in and out of their parents’ basement, and tinker with spiritual practices no matter how irreconcilable or divergent.

The difference, however, with my generation is that young adulthood keeps getting longer and longer.

As a result, we are full of passivity and empty on follow-through. We’re tinkering around with everyone and everything. Instead, when it comes to our future, we should take some responsibility, make a decision, and just do something.

maybe we have difficulty discovering God’s wonderful plan for our lives because, if the truth be told, He doesn’t really intend to tell us what it is. And maybe we’re wrong to expect Him to.

“You just … do things” seemed to be my grandpa’s sentiment, and as you’re doing them and walking with the Lord, you don’t spend oodles of time trying to figure out if you like what you are doing.

Or, worse yet, we end up living in our parents’ basement indefinitely as we try to find ourselves and hear God’s voice.

Our freedom to do anything and go anywhere ends up feeling like bondage more than liberty, because decision making feels like pain, not pleasure.

Our fascination with the will of God often betrays our lack of trust in God’s promises and provision.

anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here.

My wife and I prayed to God a lot about the decision, and I think it was a decision that pleased Him, just like He would have been pleased if we had stayed. But it was my decision.

I’ll never forget my poor beleaguered roommate talking with me after he took a risk and told a nice young lady that he liked her. They went on a long walk. He was pretty sure she would reciprocate his declaration of affection. But it turned out she wasn’t interested. She was a sweet girl, a good Christian. She didn’t mean to have bad theology. But instead of just saying “I’m not interested” or “I don’t like you” or “Quit stalking me” or something, she went all spiritual on him. “I’ve been praying a lot about you,” she demurred, “and the Holy Spirit told me no.” “No?” my confused roommate asked. “No … never,” she replied.

When we hyper-spiritualize our decisions, we can veer off into impulsive and foolish decisions.

Perhaps our inactivity is not so much waiting on God as it is an expression of the fear of man, the love of the praise of man, and disbelief in God’s providence.

But this doesn’t mean the Lord’s withholding peace about the decision in order to get you to back out.

How do you know when an open door is the Lord’s open door or the Devil tempting you?

How do you know when a closed door is the Lord’s answer to your prayer or the Lord testing your steadfastness and resolve?

These are the conundrums people get into when all their decisions come from subjective attempts to disce...

But why did the Lord give us brains and say so much about gaining wisdom if all we are really supposed to do is call on the Lord to tell us what to do in a thousand different nonmoral decisions?

It’s a great idea to pray for safety before saddling up the horse, but that doesn’t mean we need to wait for the “all clear” feeling in our bones before we head out.

If something goes bad in our lives, do we really need the added burden of feeling like it all could have been prevented if we had just better discerned God’s will?

If there really is a perfect will of God we are meant to discover, in which we will find tremendous freedom and fulfillment, why does it seem that everyone looking for God’s will is in such bondage and confusion?

Expecting God, through our subjective sense of things, to point the way for every decision we face, no matter how trivial, is not only impractical and unrealistic, it is a recipe for disappointment and false guilt. And that’s hardly what intimacy with Jesus should be all about.

It’s about who we are, not where we are.

If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God’s will, so just go out and do something.

Apart from the Spirit working through Scripture, God does not promise to use any other means to guide us, nor should we expect him to.

God can use extraordinary means, but they are, by definition, out of the ordinary and not to be expected.

If a thought or impulse pops into your head, even if it happens while reading Scripture, don’t assume it is a voice from heaven.

Church boards or denominational committees are often guilty of putting their decisions out of reach because “the matter was bathed in prayer.”

But impressions of the Lord’s leading after prayer are still impressions. We cannot infallibly judge the rightness or wrongness of our plans based on the feelings we have about them after prayer.

We have more information than ever before, and yet our wisdom has not kept pace with our knowledge.

I prayed that I would be following God’s will of desire rather than praying to figure out His will of direction.

Don’t over-spiritualize. You can serve the Lord in a thousand different jobs.

You can be just about anything you want as long as you aren’t lazy

God can be pleased with your work so long as you are taking pleasure in Him as you do it.

So the end of the matter is this: Live for God. Obey the Scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.