Kevin L. DeYoung - Just do something: a liberating approach to finding Gods will

It is Gods will for you to read this book. Yes, Im talking to you. What are the odds that you would just happen to pick up this book and flip open to this page and start reading? Obviously its a sign. Of all the millions of books in the world, you found this one. Wow. I have chills. Do not pass up this divinely orchestrated moment. If you miss this moment theres a good chance you will completely miss Gods will for the rest of your life and spend your days in misery and regret.

Now that Ive scared you, let me acknowledge that everything in the previous paragraph is total baloney. Its bunk. Not true at all. Actually, I dont know if its Gods will for you to read this book. But I do think that reading it could be a really good idea.

If youre prone to think of Gods will in the way I so threateningly described it, this book will help set you straight. Kevin DeYoung is a skilled pastor, theologically astute, and a clear communicator. He gives you serious content but makes it easy to absorb and understand.

In Just Do Something Kevin will show what trips us up from moving forward in making decisions. Hell talk about how God speaks to us and what it means be guided by wisdom. In a gentle and loving way he will challenge you.

Theres a good chance that youve picked up some faulty ways of thinking about this issue. I love the no-nonsense way Kevin pulls us back to truth: 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.

Im a pastor. And the highest praise I can give this book is that this is my new go-to book on decision making and finding Gods will. If you were in my church and you came to me and said, I have a big decision to make (marriage, job, house, etc), and I need to know what God wants me to do. I would put this book in your hands.

Its liberating and encouraging and even where it smacks you upside the head (which it does once in a while) youll be better for the smack. Youll think more clearly and more biblically.

So read this book. Youll be wiser because of it.

Joshua Harris
Senior pastor of Covenant Life Church and author of Stop Dating the Church!

I grew up playing with Tinkertoys. Like most Americans over the past one hundred years, our family had the classic long tube full of sticks, wooden wheels, and colored connectors. Hitting the market in 1913, Tinkertoy (now owned by Hasbro) has sold about 2.5 million construction sets per year for almost a hundred years. The impetus for Tinkertoy construction setswhich initially sold for sixty cents and were called by the less-than-catchy name Thousand Wonder Builderscame from Charles Pajeau and Robert Petit, who dreamed up the toy as they watched children tinkering around with pencils, sticks, and empty spools of thread.

With almost a century gone by, theres still nothing fancy about Tinkertoy sets, especially in a digital age where children seldom go anywhere without microchips of entertainment close at hand. Kids still like Tinkertoys because kids like to tinker.

And apparently, so do adults.

Our grandparents built. Our parents boomed. And my generation? We tinker. Of course, as Wuthnow points out, tinkering is not all bad. Those who tinker know how to improvise, specialize, pull things apart, and pull people together from a thousand different places. But tinkering also means indecision, contradiction, and instability. 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.

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

Granted, youth tends to come with a significant amount of youthfulness. And with youthfulness comes indecision and instability. Young adults who tinker are not confined to any one generation. Baby boomers, and probably even builders (the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II), tinkered around with God and life when they were young adults. The difference, however, with my generation is that young adulthood keeps getting longer and longer. It used to be that thirty seemed old and far removed from youth, but now it is not uncommon to hear of folks coming of age at forty.

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. Its 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.