Most Christians aren’t living their faith. They’re waiting for it — waiting for a sign, a feeling, a door that’s clearly open, some unmistakable confirmation that the job or the relationship or the move is the right one. Then they’ll act.
Kevin DeYoung has a name for this approach: a mess.
DeYoung, senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, N.C., and author of Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will, has spent years diagnosing one of evangelical Christianity’s most persistent and debilitating habits — the belief that God has a secret, specific plan for every decision in your life and that your job is to figure it out before you move.
“Trusting in God’s will of decree is good,” DeYoung said. “Following his will of desire is obedient. Waiting for God’s will of direction is a mess.”
The will of decree is what God has ordained — unchangeable, sovereign, outside your ability to derail. The will of desire is how God wants you to live — the moral and ethical stuff, the commands, the way of righteousness Scripture actually spells out. The will of direction — that personalized divine roadmap for your specific decisions — is the one DeYoung says most Christians are obsessing over, and the one he argues the Bible never actually promises.
“Yes, God has a specific plan for our lives,” he said. “And yes, we can be assured that He works things for our good in Christ Jesus. 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.”
In other words: the burden you’re carrying might not be one God put on you.
The consequences of getting this wrong aren’t abstract. DeYoung describes Christians who “tinker around with churches, jobs and relationships,” paralyzed by the fear that they’ve missed their moment — that somewhere, God’s perfect plan is sitting unclaimed while they’re still waiting for clarity. It’s an anxiety loop dressed up in spiritual language, and it has very little to do with faith.
“God’s will is always your sanctification,” he said.
The conventional model turns the Christian life into a decoding exercise, a high-stakes guessing game where a wrong answer means blowing God’s plan for your life. DeYoung’s model puts the emphasis somewhere else entirely — on character, on faithfulness, on the kind of person you’re becoming rather than the specific path you take to get there.
“So go marry someone, provided you’re equally yoked and you actually like being with each other,” he said. “Go get a job, provided it’s not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God’s sake start making some decisions in your life. Don’t wait for the liver-shiver.”
The Holy Spirit gets no less credit in DeYoung’s framework — outsourcing your decisions to a feeling and calling it faith is just a different kind of problem.
“We can stop pleading with God to show us the future,” he said, “and start living and obeying like we are confident that He holds the future.”
The decision in front of you matters. DeYoung’s argument is about the framework most Christians are using to make it — one that turns an act of trust into an act of paralysis, and mistakes anxiety for discernment.
“The only chains God wants us to wear are the chains of righteousness,” DeYoung said, “not the chains of hopeless subjectivism, not the shackles of risk-free living, not the fetters of horoscope decision making. Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God’s glory.”
Which is either the most liberating thing you’ve read about God’s will, or the most unsettling. Probably both.
