Just Do Something Quotes

“Humble goals and loosely held plans are good. Expecting God to do tricks for us is bad.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Longtime Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke summarizes the biblical evidence well:

Any time you take the Bible out of context you destroy the intent of God’s Word. That’s why you cannot take instances of special revelation and make them normative for the Christian experience. . . . When he [Paul] did experience a special revelation, seeing a vision of a man calling him to Macedonia, he obeyed. But the special revelation of God was a rare and unique experience, even for Paul. . . . We cannot take special circumstances and make them the norm by which we live our lives. Special revelation for guidance was not the normal apostolic experience. And at the time it was received (by Paul, by Philip, by Peter as he lay on his roof) it was not being sought. . . . Special revelation came at a time when God wanted to lead them apart from the normal ways in which His people make choices.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“You don’t get the sense that the apostle got angelic visits every other day and waited for his dreams to tell him what to do. With few exceptions, Paul planned, strategized, and made his own decisions about the nonmoral matters of his life.
Second, when we look carefully at the instances of special revelation in the book of Acts—visions, angels, audible voices, promptings, etc.—we notice one very important and consistent fact. The extraordinary means of guidance were not sought. I don’t deny that God can still speak to us in direct, surprising ways. Of course, it must always be tested against Scripture, but I believe God can still give visions. The point is that these extraordinary means in the New Testament are just that—extra-ordinary.
God may guide is in these ways in rare instances, but we should not expect Him to.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Jesus does not want us to worry about the future. God knows what we need to live. When He wants us to die, we will die. And as long as He wants us to live, we will live. He will provide us with the food, drink, jobs, housing, with everything that we need to live and glorify Him in this life until He wants us to glorify Him by dying. Worrying and fretting and obsessing about the future, even if it is a pseudo-holy worry that attempts to discern the will of God, will not add one single hour to your life, and it will certainly not add any happiness or holiness either.
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). Worry and anxiety reflect our hearts’ distrust in the goodness and sovereignty of God. Worry is a spiritual issue and must be fought with faith. We must fight to believe that God has mercy for today’s troubles and, no matter what may come tomorrow, that God will have new mercies for tomorrow’s troubles (Lamentations 3:22-23). God’s way is not to show us what tomorrow looks like or even to tell us what decisions we should make tomorrow. That’s not His way because that’s not the way of faith. God’s way is to tell us that He knows tomorrow, He cares for us, and therefore, we should not worry.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Is there a better way to walk in the will of God? The answer is a resounding yes! There is most certainly a better way. It’s an old way. It’s a biblical way. It’s Jesus’ way.
Listen to Jesus’ explanation of the way of God in the Sermon on the Mount:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:25-34).”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding 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? Christ died to give us freedom from the law (Galatians 5:1), so why turn the will of God into another law leading to slavery? And, to make matters worse, this law is personalized, invisible, and indecipherable; whereas the Mosaic law (which was hard enough already), was at least objective, public, and understandable. What a burden. 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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“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?”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Fifth, the conventional approach enslaves us in the chains of hopeless subjectivism. Don’t misunderstand me. Our decisions are subjective sometimes. That’s not always bad. Sometimes we go on a hunch or an intuition or a feeling. It’s not necessarily bad to make nonmoral decisions based on our gut or feelings. What’s bad is when we are slaves to this kind of subjectivism. So we never take risks because we never feel peace about them. Or we second-guess our decisions because we feel uneasy about them. The fact is, most big decisions in life leave us feeling a little unsettled. They are, after all, big decisions. When you decide to get married or move or buy a house, it will be scary because it’s big and new and unknown and permanent (at least the marriage should be). But this doesn’t mean the Lord’s withholding peace about the decision in order to get you to back out.
I’m not saying subjective decisions are wrong. We make decisions based on a “feeling” all the time. But a subjective divining of God’s will should not be your decision-making process. It’s a dead-end street. How do you know when an open door’s 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 prayers or the Lord testing your steadfastness and resolve? These are the conundrums people get into when all their decisions come from subjective attempts to discern God’s will for their lives.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“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. We imagine that our inactivity is patience and sensitivity to God’s leading. At times it may be; but it’s also quite possible we are just lazy. When we hyper-spiritualize our decisions, we can veer off into impulsive and foolish decisions. But more likely as Christians we fall into endless patterns of vacillation, indecision, and regret. No doubt, selfish ambition is a danger for Christians, but so is complacency, listless wandering, and passivity that pawns itself off as spirituality. 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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“If we make it to the grocery store this afternoon, according to James, the Lord willed it. If we live to be a hundred, the Lord willed it. If we live to be only forty-five, the Lord willed it. We don’t have to say “If the Lord wills” after every sentence, but it must be in our heads and hearts. We must live our lives believing that all of our plans and strategies are subject to the immutable will of God. Therefore, we should be humble in looking to the future because we don’t control it; God does. And we should be hopeful in looking to the future because God controls it, not us.
This brings us back to anxiety, our tendency to live out the future before it arrives. We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control. We are not gods. We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk. We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that’s all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Our fascination with the will of God often betrays our lack of trust in God’s promises and provision.
We don’t just want His word that He will be with us; we want Him to show us the end from the beginning and prove to us that He can be trusted. We want to know what tomorrow will bring instead of being content with simple obedience on the journey.
And so we obsess about the future and we get anxious, because anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“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.
Just to be clear, God does not hide things from His people. There are lots of scenarios we don’t know, lots of mysteries we can’t figure out. There is a will of decree that is not usually known to the people of God (Deuteronomy 29:29). But He is not trying to confuse us or hide truth. In the conventional view of God’s will, however, we get the impression that He not only hides His will from us, but He then expects us to find it. So we obsess over God’s will of direction, eventually getting frustrated with God for not showing us what He wants. We end up disappointed with ourselves or angry with God because we can’t seem to figure out how to find God’s will for our lives.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“The bible simply does not address every decision we must make.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thoughtful in choosing a career, nor that we should ignore how God has wired us or the command to do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). 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 God wants us to be a doctor or lawyer.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“First, the conventional approach to discovering God’s will focuses almost all of our attention on nonmoral decisions. Scripture does not tell us whether we should live in Minnesota or Maine. It does not tell us whether we should go to Michigan State University or Wheaton College. It does not tell us whether we should buy a house or rent an apartment. It does not tell us whether we should marry a wonderful Christian named Tim or some other wonderful Christian guy. Scripture does not tell us what to do this summer or what job to take or where to go to grad school.
Once, while preaching on this topic, I said in a bold declarative statement, “God doesn’t care where you go to school or where you live or what job you take.” A thoughtful young woman talked to me afterward and was discouraged to hear that God didn’t care about the most important decisions in her life. I explained to her that I probably wasn’t very clear. God certainly cares about these decisions insofar as He cares for us and every detail of our lives. But in another sense, and this was the point I was trying to make, these are not the most important issues in God’s book. The most important issues for God are moral purity, theological fidelity, compassion, joy, our witness, faithfulness, hospitality, love, worship, and faith. These are His big concerns. The problem is that we tend to focus most of our attention on everything else. We obsess over the things God has not mentioned and may never mention, while, by contrast, we spend little time on all the things God has already revealed to us in the Bible.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“For all of us it means putting aside our insatiable desire to have every aspect of our lives, or even the most important aspects of our lives, nailed down before our eyes before we get there.
God has a wonderful plan for your life—a plan that will take you through trial and triumph as you are transformed into the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-29). Of this we can be absolutely confident. But God’s normal way of operation is not to show this plan ahead of time—in retrospect, maybe; in advance, rarely.
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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Notice what we don’t read in this story. We don’t read of Esther seeing any divine word from the Lord, though a discerning reader may see God at work in Mordecai’s advice to her. She had no promise as to what the future would look like. 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.
Esther didn’t wait for weeks or months trying to discern God’s will for her life before she acted. She simply did what was right and forged ahead without any special word from God. If the king extended to her the golden scepter, praise the Lord. If he did not, she died.
Esther was more man than most men I know, myself included. Many of us—men and women—are extremely passive and cowardly. We don’t take risks for God because we are obsessed with safety, security, and most of all, with the future. That’s why most of our prayers fall into one of two categories. Either we ask that everything would be fine or we ask to know that everything will be fine. We pray for health, travel, jobs—and we should pray for these things. 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.
That’s often what we are asking for when we pray to know the will of God. We aren’t asking for holiness, or righteousness, or an awareness of sin. We want God to tell us what to do so everything will turn out pleasant for us. “Tell me who to marry, where to live, what school to go to, what job to take. Show me the future so I won’t have to take any risks.” This doesn’t sound much like Esther.
Obsessing over the future is not how God wants us to live, because showing us the future is not God’s way. His way is to speak to us in the Scriptures and transform us by the renewing of our minds. His way is not a crystal ball. His way is wisdom. We should stop looking for God to reveal the future to us and remove all risk from our lives. We should start looking to God—His character and His promises—and thereby have confidence to take risks for His name’s sake.
God is all-knowing and all-powerful. He has planned out and works out every detail of our lives—the joyous days and the difficult—all for our good (Ecclesiastes 7:14). Because we have confidence in God’s will of decree, we can radically commit ourselves to His will of desire, without fretting over a hidden will of direction.
In other words, God doesn’t take risks, so we can.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“The final reason we want to know the will of God is because we are cowardly. It’s true. 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.” We want to know everything is going to be fine for us or for those we love. But that’s not how God spoke to Esther. As a Jewish woman who won an unusual beauty contest to become Xerxe’s queen (see Esther 2:2-17), Esther would learn that God’ plans can include risk—and an opportunity to show courage.
The king’s right-hand man, Haman, was the enemy of the Jews and devised a plot to kill all the Jewish people, and Xerxes, king of Persia, unwittingly signed this decree. When Mordecai, Esther’s older cousin and guardian, learned of this plot, he told Esther, knowing she was the only one in a position to save the Jewish people—her people. But she refused, telling him that if she visited King Xerxes without being summoned, she would, by Persian law, be killed—unless the king extended the golden scepter and spared her life. Entering the throne room on her own was very risky, which is why Esther sent people to Mordecai to say that she wouldn’t do it.
The Scriptures give us Mordecai’s response to the words of Esther’s emissaries:

Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14)

So what would you do at this point? Pray for some sign from heaven? Wait for God’s will to be revealed? Question why God would put you in such a predicament? Do nothing, figuring that anything involving suffering and possible death must not be His plan for your life? Look at what Esther did:

Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the Law, and if I perish, I perish.” (vv. 15-16).”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“But I am advocating floundering less, making a difference for God sooner, and—above all, not spiritualizing, year after year, our inability to make decisions in the elusive quest to discover God’s will. 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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“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 we choose A, we feel the sting of not having B and C and D. As a result, every choice feels worse than no choice at all. And when we do make an important choice, we end up with buyer’s remorse, wondering if we are settling for second best. 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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“We’ve assumed that we’ll experience heaven on earth, and then we get disappointed when earth seems so unheavenly. We have little longing left for our reward in the next life because we’ve come to expect such rewarding experiences in this life. And when every experience and situation must be rewarding and put us on the road to complete fulfillment, then suddenly the decisions about where we live, what house we buy, what dorm we’re in, and whether we go with tile or laminate take on weighty significance. There is just too much riding on every decision. I’m pretty sure most of us would be more fulfilled if we didn’t fixate on fulfillment quite so much.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“The third reason we seek God’s will for direction is we are searching for perfect fulfillment in life. Many of us have had it so good that we have started looking for heaven on earth. We have lost any sort of pilgrim attitude. 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 through 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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“This is the first reason we seek to know God’s specific will of direction for us: We want to please Him. We want to do what God wants. That’s good. But as I’ve already explained and will flesh out in the coming chapters, this is not how the will of God works. We may have the best of intentions in trying to discern God’s will, but we should really stop putting ourselves through the misery of overspiritualizing every decision. Our misdirected piety makes following God more mysterious than it was meant to be.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“In fact, expecting God to reveal some hidden will of direction is an invitation to disappointment and indecision. 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.
God is not a Magic 8-Ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for Him. We know God has a plan for our lives. That’s wonderful. The problem is we think He’s going to tell us the wonderful plan before it unfolds. We feel like we can know—and need to know—what God wants every step of the way. But such preoccupation with finding God’s will, as well-intentioned as the desire may be, is more folly than freedom.
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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“This brings us back to anxiety, our tendency to live out the future before it arrives. We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control. We are not gods. We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk. We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that’s all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15) This is one of the clearest texts on the sovereignty of God. If we make it to the grocery store this afternoon, according to James, the Lord willed it. If we live to be a hundred, the Lord willed it. If we live to be only forty-five, the Lord willed it. We don’t have to say “If the Lord wills” after every sentence, but it must be in our heads and hearts. We must live our lives believing that all of our plans and strategies are subject to the immutable will of God. Therefore, we should be humble in looking to the future because we don’t control it; God does. And we should be hopeful in looking to the future because God controls it, not us. This brings us back to anxiety, our tendency to live out the future before it arrives. We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control. We are not gods. We walk by faith, not by sight. We risk because God does not risk. We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that’s all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“Once, while preaching on this topic, I said in a bold declarative statement, “God doesn’t care where you go to school or where you live or what job you take.” A thoughtful young woman talked to me afterward and was discouraged to hear that God didn’t care about the most important decisions in her life. I explained to her that I probably wasn’t very clear. God certainly cares about these decisions insofar as He cares for us and every detail of our lives. But in another sense, and this was the point I was trying to make, these are not the most important issues in God’s book. The most important issues for God are moral purity, theological fidelity, compassion, joy, our witness, faithfulness, hospitality, love, worship, and faith. These are His big concerns. The problem is that we tend to focus most of our attention on everything else. We obsess over the things God has not mentioned and may never mention, while, by contrast, we spend little time on all the things God has already revealed to us in the Bible.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“God has a wonderful plan for your life—a plan that will take you through trial and triumph as you are transformed into the image of His Son (Romans 8:28–29). Of this we can be absolutely confident. But God’s normal way of operation is not to show this plan to us ahead of time—in retrospect, maybe; in advance, rarely.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“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. Most older folks would probably say something like, “I never thought about fulfillment. I had a job. I ate. I lived. I raised my family. I went to church. I was thankful.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

“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.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will