Of all the issues related to Christian living, few receive greater attention than knowing God’s will for our lives. Many believers, and especially younger ones, agonize over knowing what God means for them to do and how he means for them to live out their days. Many end up leaning toward a low-grade form of mysticism, longing to receive some kind of a sign from the skies or some kind of a word in their hearts. Many live with hesitation, wondering if they have missed their divine direction and are now experiencing God’s second best. Some end up doing nearly nothing for fear of doing the wrong thing.

But it’s my conviction that many people think wrongly about this matter of knowing God’s will. It’s not that God has no plan for you. It’s not that he means for you to go without any kind of confidence that you are living a life that honors and pleases him. Rather, it’s that God does not mean for you to pry back the curtain of his hidden will. Instead, God means for you to respond to the leading of his revealed will. Generally speaking, where Scripture, providence, and desire converge you can move forward confident that you are doing God’s will. If there are multiple options that exist at that point of convergence, you can confidently choose any of them and trust that God will bless you.
There is another key to knowing and doing the will of God and it’s this: your greatest focus should always be on whatever is plainly his will right now. Better than focusing on what God may have for you a year or a decade in the future is doing what God has provided for you today. For while God’s will for the future may be difficult or impossible to determine, his will for the present is usually not.
Though you may labor in prayer over whether God means for you to marry, what’s clear right now is that he means for you to take full advantage of the opportunities and responsibilities that come with singleness.
Though you may be praying earnestly to know what career God has in mind for you, what’s clear right now is that he means for you to apply yourself to your studies.
Though you may be grappling with whether you should go to seminary, what’s clear right now is that God means for you to grow in godly character and to express it within the local church.
We dishonor God when we focus on tomorrow’s faithfulness at the expense of today’s.
We can get more granular still. You’ve heard it said, I’m sure, that everybody wants to change the world but no one wants to wash the dishes. We tend to focus on the big matters to the neglect of the small. Yet life is lived in the moment and in the minutiae. God’s will is as granular as expressing love by telling your mother “Let me do the dishes tonight” or expressing humility by approaching a friend to say, “I need to apologize to you.” It’s in going the extra mile to serve a cranky customer, in approaching that person who is alone at the end of the church service, in sharing the gospel with a stranger in that moment when you absolutely know it’s the right thing to do. It’s as you learn to embrace God’s will in the small stuff that you are preparing yourself to do it in the big.
The fact is that life is a succession of days and days are a succession of moments. While you may not have utter clarity about what God means for you to do in a month, year, or decade, it’s rarely difficult to discern what God means for you to do right now. The man who is faithful to honor God in each moment cannot possibly be said to have wasted his life and the woman who seeks to do what God has made plain in a day will never be said to have lived without meaning. If you live each moment in obedience you will live each day in obedience, and if you live each day in obedience you will in time live your entire life in obedience. If you are faithful to do God’s will in each moment you’ll eventually do God’s will in a lifetime. And God will be well pleased.

This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Ligonier Ministries, who also sponsored the blog this week. They are giving away ten free copies of the new Student Edition of the Reformation Study Bible.

The most important relationship in life is your relationship with God. If you want to grow in your faith, you must turn to His Word. That’s where God has spoken. The Reformation Study Bible, Student Edition is built on the trusted teaching of Dr. R.C. Sproul to help you dig deeper into the Scriptures to find answers and direction for all of life. Grasp the Bible’s meaning with verse-by-verse notes from more than seventy-five pastors and Bible teachers, gain clarity with hundreds of questions and answers that address key subjects of the Christian faith, and apply the knowledge of God to daily living with many practical lessons from every book of the Bible.
With a wealth of specialized features, this resource makes an ideal Bible study companion to encourage teens and young adults to walk in the light of God’s truth and to serve Christ where they are. The Reformation Study Bible, Student Edition is available in a variety of colors and cover styles, including premium leather, leather-like, clothbound, and paperback. Ten Free Friday winners will receive a copy their choosing.
Enter Here
Again, there are ten packages to win. And all you need to do to enter the draw is to drop your name and email address in the form below.
Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at noon. If you are viewing this through email, click to visit my site and enter there.

God initiates his grace in our lives by his Holy Spirit and invites us to cooperate with it as we grow in our relationship with him. But what is that grace meant to accomplish in our lives? And how do we sustain a relationship with a Being we cannot see and with whom we cannot converse face to face?
The answer is this: God gives us what Christians have long referred to as “means of grace.” David Mathis says “It is the grace of God that gives us His ‘means of grace’ for our ongoing perseverance and growth and joy this side of the coming new creation.”
As we take hold of these means, we grow in knowledge and faith, we persevere in the Christian life, and we experience joy as we await the coming new creation. These means of grace are the disciplines or habits through which we can relate to God in ever-deeper ways.
By giving us these means, God shows that we really do have the privilege of relating to him, but he also shows that we cannot relate to him in whatever ways we may want or we may deem suitable. While we can genuinely be friends with God, he is the one who sets the terms and conditions of that friendship. To us falls the joyful privilege of cooperating with his grace according to his means.