God’s Plan for Your Life is Surprisingly Simple

Every wanted to know God’s plan for your life? I know I have! Mike Donehey’s new book show’s how simple it is.

Finding God’s Will for Your Life

Mike Donehey, WaterBrook Press, August 6, 2019, 240 pages

I picked this book because of the quirky title—after all, we’re always agonizing about what ‘God’s will for our life is,’ not what God’s life for our will is. We all want to know God’s plan and spend endless hours agonizing over the choices we make. Whether you’re fifteen or 53, you’ll find inspiration in Donehey’s words.

Donehey, singer and songwriter with the contemporary Christian group Tenth Avenue North, shares his struggle with coming to understand the difference between living the life God wants for us and paralyzing ourselves wishing we knew what God’s exact will for us might be.

“Sometimes the only thing keeping us from God’s dream for our lives is our unwillingness to let go of how we thought our own dreams should go.”

Mike Donehey

I’ve suffered from analysis paralysis on more than one occasion. God has clearly shown me what to do in a given situation only a few times in my life.

Once, he woke me and told me to pray for someone—Anglican envoy Terry Waite—during the Lebanon hostage crisis in the 80s. The second time I’ve heard God tell me what to do involved another audible call to prayer. This time, to pray for a friend who had rolled her car late at night.

While some people may hear God speak to them on a regular basis, not everyone does. God gives us guidelines to know his plan, all found in Micah 6:8: Walk with God, advance justice, love mercy, and walk in humility.

Can We Even Know God’s Plan?

“God doesn’t so much tell us what to do with our lives as tell us how to live them.”

Mike Donehey

For Donehey, that means learning to surrender every moment of distrust—and learning to trust that God is who He says he is. We also need to accept that God loves us—flawed, quirky, broken, unique, crazy, dirty, sinful human beings that we are. According to Donehey, when we let these two truths percolate into our lives, we will start to live God’s life for our will. And when we live God’s life, we’re really following God’s plan.

This book isn’t a how-to manual to hear God speak, nor will it give you pat formulas for figuring out how to choose a career, a mate, or even your next date. But it will help you see that an infinitely creative God has provided millions of possibilities for us. And that he delights in seeing what we do with the possibilities.

We need to focus on snuggling up next to our infinitely loving Father. Once we get to know his preferences for how we love ourselves and our fellow humans, we can use what we learn as the plumb line for our lives.

Who Should Read this Book

You don’t have to love Tenth Avenue North, or even contemporary Christian music to receive a blessing from this book. Donehey writes from a deep place of understanding—he lives his own advice through success, failure, heartbreak, and adventure.

Young adults and teens will especially enjoy this book (a bonus if they love Donehey’s music) because they struggle with knowing what to do with their lives. Donehey will point to the Way.

I receive free electronic advanced reader copies of these books through an arrangement between the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion on NetGalley’s website. I only review books on my blog that I really love.