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

by Kevin DeYoung

Robert Wuthnow describes twenty-one to forty-five-year-olds as tinkerers.

We’re not consistent. We’re not stable. We don’t stick with anything. We aren’t sure we are making the right decisions. Most of the time, we can’t even make decisions. And we don’t follow through. All of this means that as Christian young people we are less fruitful and less faithful than we ought to be.

Consider this one statistic: In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men completed all the major transitions into adulthood by age thirty. These transitions include leaving home, finishing school, becoming financially independent, getting married, and having a child. By 2000, only 46 percent of woman completed these transitions by age thirty, and only 31 percent of men.2 It’s stunning for me to think that less than a third of men my age are done with school, out of the house, married with kids, and have a job that pays the bills. “Adultolescence” is the new normal.

Second, our search for the will of God has become an accomplice in the postponement of growing up, a convenient out for the young (or old) Christian floating through life without direction or purpose. Too many of us have passed off our instability, inconsistency, and endless self-exploration as “looking for God’s will,” as if not making up our minds and meandering through life were marks of spiritual sensitivity.

A lot of books have been written trying to answer this basic question, and my answer may not be what you expect from a will-of-God book. My answer is not original to me, but it is quite simple and, I hope, quite biblical. I’d like us to consider that 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.

To steal a line from Augustine, “The will of God is the necessity of all things.” In other words, what God wills, will happen, and what happens is according to God’s will.

The other side of the coin is God’s will of desire. This refers to what God has commanded—what He desires from His creatures. If the will of decree is how things are, the will of desire is how things ought to be.

Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” This is the closest we come to finding the will of decree and will of desire side by side in the same verse. God has secret things known only to Him (His inscrutable purposes and sovereign will), but He also has revealed things that we are meant to know and obey (His commands and His Word).

here’s the real heart of the matter: Does God have a secret will of direction that He expects us to figure out before we do anything? And the answer is no. Yes, God has a specific plan for our lives. And yes, we can be assured that He works things for our good in Christ Jesus. And yes, looking back we will often be able to trace God’s hand in bringing us to where we are. But while we are free to ask God for wisdom, He does not burden us with the task of divining His will of direction for our lives ahead of time.

Trusting in God’s will of decree is good. Following His will of desire is obedient. Waiting for God’s will of direction is a mess. It is bad for your life, harmful to your sanctification, and allows too many Christians to be passive tinkerers who strangely feel more spiritual the less they actually do.

The better way is the biblical way: Seek first the kingdom of God, and then trust that He will take care of our needs, even before we know what they are and where we’re going.

The second reason some of us seek God’s will of direction is because we are, by nature, quite timid.

The third reason we seek God’s will for direction is we are searching for perfect fulfillment in life. Many

It’s all a matter of perspective. If you think that God has promised this world will be a five-star hotel, you will be miserable as you live though the normal struggles of life. But if you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy.

As Bible commentator Bruce Waltke has pointed out, Abel had faith and he died; Enoch had faith and he did not die; Noah had faith and everyone else died!2 So just having faith doesn’t guarantee your life—or the lives of those around you—will be all candy canes and lollipops. Life isn’t always fun, and we shouldn’t expect it to be.

We’ve been stuffed full of praise for mediocrity and had our foibles diagnosed away with hyphenated jargon and pop psychology.

By and large, my grandparents’ generation expected much less out of family life, a career, recreation, and marriage. Granted, this sometimes made them unreflective and allowed for quietly dismal marriages. But my generation is on the opposite end of the spectrum. When we marry, we expect great sex, an amazing family life, recreational adventure, cultural experiences, and personal fulfillment at work. It would be a good exercise to ask your grandparents sometimes if they felt fulfilled in their careers. They’ll probably look at you as if you’re speaking a different language, because you are. Fulfillment was not their goal. Food was, and faithfulness too.

“You just … do things” seemed to be my grandpa’s sentiment,

I’m pretty sure most of us would be more fulfilled if we didn’t fixate on fulfillment quite so much.

Of the five reasons for our obsession with finding God’s will, this may be the most crucial: We have too many choices.

They worked for their uncle or dad or started helping with harvest or whatever work was available in town. Ironically, they got more done because they didn’t have as many things they could do.

knowing the will of God is due to the fact that we are overburdened with choice.

I’m sure that some people serve the Lord well as they buzz around the world for six months at a time. And I’m sure some young folks are making a difference for Christ as they float from job to job and place to place. But I’m equally certain that many of these same individuals are actually making self-centered decisions in the name of experience, cultural diversity, and sometimes, I hate to say it, under the guise of short-term missions.

With so many choices, it’s no surprise that we are always thinking about the greener grass on the other side of the fence. We are always pondering what could be better or what might be nicer about something or someone new. “Decide” comes from the Latin word decidere, meaning “to cut off,” which explains why decisions are so hard these days. We can’t stand the thought of cutting off any of our options. If

I’m arguing that our eagerness to know God’s will is probably less indicative of a heart desperately wanting to obey God and more about our heads spinning with all the choices to be made.

Sometimes when we pray to know the will of God, we are praying a coward’s prayer: “Lord, tell me what to do so nothing bad will happen to me and I won’t have to face danger or the unknown.”

Esther would learn that God’s plans can include risk—and an opportunity to show courage.

All she knew was that saving her people was a good thing. God did not tell her what would happen if she obeyed or exactly what she could do to ensure success. She had to take a risk for God. “If I perish, I perish” was her courageous cry.

But a lot of prayers boil down to, “God, don’t let anything unpleasant happen to anyone. Make everything in the world nice for everyone.” And when we aren’t praying this kind of prayer, we are praying for God to tell us that everything will turn out fine.

Are you feeling directionally challenged by this? Don’t despair. God promises to be your sun and your shield and to carry you and protect with His strong right arm. So we can stop pleading with God to show us the future, and start living and obeying like we are confident that He holds the future.

First, the conventional approach to discovering God’s will focuses almost all of our attention on nonmoral decisions.

The most important issues for God are moral purity, theological fidelity, compassion, joy, our witness, faithfulness, hospitality, love, worship, and faith.

My point is that we should spend more time trying to figure out how to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (as instructed in Micah 6:8) as a doctor or lawyer and less time worrying about whether

Second, the conventional approach implies that we have a sneaky God. In the usual understanding of God’s will, God knows what we should do. He has the perfect plan for our lives. And He’ll hold us accountable if we don’t follow His will. But He won’t show us what that will is. The traditional approach to God’s will makes God into a tricky little deity who plays hide and seek with us.

Third, the conventional approach encourages a preoccupation with the future.

We don’t have to say “If the Lord wills” after every sentence, but it must be in our heads and hearts.

Fourth, the conventional approach undermines personal responsibility, accountability, and initiative.

It would have been very easy to say to people (because I’ve heard lines like it before): “I love being in Iowa. If it were up to me, I would stay here. It doesn’t make a lot of human sense for me to go. But as I’ve prayed, it’s been very clear to me that this is what the Lord wants. I’m not sure I even like it. But I feel very strongly that it’s God will for me to go to East Lansing.” That could have gotten people off my case, but it would have been unfair. It wasn’t God’s fault I was leaving. 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 was responsible for leaving. I chose. I decided. Yes, in the ultimate sense God already had it decided; that’s always true. But it would have been wrong for me to use God’s will as a way to remove my personal responsibility in the decision.

Poor guy—he got rejected, not only by this sweet girl, but by the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity took a break from pointing people to Jesus to tell this girl not to date my roommate.

Does this mean that God’s Word has nothing to say about how we live our lives and make decisions? Of course not. But when it comes to most of our daily decisions, and even a lot of life’s “big” decisions, God expects and encourages us to make choices, confident that He’s already determined how to fit our choices into His sovereign will. Passivity is a plague among Christians. It’s not just that we don’t do anything; it’s that we feel spiritual for not doing anything.

Fifth, the conventional approach enslaves us in the chains of hopeless subjectivism.

Worry and anxiety are not merely bad habits or idiosyncrasies. They are sinful fruits that blossom from the root of unbelief. Jesus doesn’t treat obsession with the future as a personal quirk, but as evidence of little faith (v. 30).

First, God’s will is that we live holy, set-apart lives: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). There you have it in a nutshell—God’s will for your life. I love to stand in the pulpit and tell people, “I know exactly what God’s will is for your life.” They usually look a little perplexed. Then I take them to 1 Thessalonians 4:3. Most people are disappointed when they see my point.

Don’t spend all your time wondering to your friends about whom to marry, where to live, how many kids to have, where to go on vacation, and what job to take. Instead, make sure you are practicing 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18. Are you joyful always? Are you praying continually? Are you giving thanks in all circumstances? You ought to be. For this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

Simply put, God’s will is your growth in Christlikeness. God promises to work all things together for our good that we might be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28–29). And the degree to which this sounds like a lame promise is the degree to which we prefer the stones and scorpions of this world to the true bread from heaven (Matthew 7:9–11).

God’s will for your life is not very complicated. Obviously, living a Christlike life is hard work, and what following Jesus entails is not clear in every situation. But as an overarching principle, the will of God for your life is pretty straightforward: Be holy like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God.

Those are fair questions. They are questions about guidance. So let me be clear: I believe God guides us in decision making. But note the key word there: “God guides us in decision making.” I did not say, “God expects us to discover His plan for our lives.”

Hebrews operates under the assumption that the Son’s speaking takes place through the Spirit in the Scriptures.

Statement 5: 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.

Our imaginary questioner has a point. Just look at the book of Acts. We read of numerous visions—a vision to Ananias (9:10–16), a vision of unclean animals (10:10–17), a vision of a man of Macedonia (16:6–10), a vision in Corinth (18:9), and a vision on the road to Damascus (22:17–21). And we read of angels appearing to Philip (8:26), Peter (12:7–8), and Paul (27:23). There are examples of audible voices (9:3–6; 10:13, 15, 19–20; 23:11), and mysterious promptings to go somewhere (8:29; 20:22–23), and a prediction about the future from the prophet Agabus (21:10–11). It seems like God shows up and tells people where to go and guides them by means other than the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures. But there are a couple of considerations that make me think these examples in Acts are not meant to be the normal pattern for our lives. First, it’s important to realize that these events of special revelation weren’t normal even for the apostles. Take Paul, for example. On occasion, God directly told him to go somewhere, but most of the time Paul made decisions like the rest of us. He used rather tentative phrases like, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28–29). In almost every case, he simply decided where to go and how to get there (Acts 20:16). In 1 Corinthians 16 he laid out his plans very prosaically, basically saying, “When I arrive, I will make introductions. Then some people will accompany me, if that seems good. Once I’ve gone through Macedonia, I w...