How to Know Exactly what God Wants You to Do Today

#008 - Ever wondered how you can navigate life’s challenges with unwavering confidence? This episode is your guide to understanding and embracing God's will in your daily life.

We'll unpack the power of living with conviction and how aligning with God's plan can diminish fear and uncertainty.

Drawing inspiration from the lives of Jesus and Mary, we see that even when faced with hardships, fulfilling God's will fortifies you with the strength to persevere.

I share practical wisdom from saints like St. Therese and insights from Bishop Barron, offering clear methods to discern His will through your vocation and life’s circumstances.

You'll learn about the demands of your vocation, the circumstances of your day, and how to create a rule of life that aligns with God's will.

Plan out your own Rule of Life with this free resource: https://www.athrivingcatholic.com/planner 

Are you ready to build high-impact habits of body, mind, and soul that actually stick? Check out the Catholic Path to Excellence today to find out how you can be more consistent in your habits and excel in every aspect of your life.

Feeling "stuck" in your life? Coaching could be the solution you need to break through whatever is holding you back. Book a FREE Call with me today to find out how I can help you.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What would it feel like to know with certainty that you were doing exactly what God wanted you to do today? How would it feel to live each and every day with such conviction? In this episode, we'll explore how you can do just that. You're listening to the Catholic Pursuit of Excellence, the show that helps you accomplish more, stress less and become the saint God created you to be. I'm your host life and health coach, jessica Castillo, and this is episode eight. In today's episode, we'll talk about why it's so critically important to know that you're doing what God wants you to be doing, both in your life as a whole and in the nitty-gritty details of each day. Then I'm going to share two basic ways that you can effectively discern God's will for you right now. And finally, I'll share a tool that I've created that's going to make all of this so much easier to put into practice. So a few weeks ago, I sent out a survey to my audience asking for feedback on my high performance group coaching program, the Catholic Path to Excellence. I was trying to find out what motivated my ideal client, what they most wanted to achieve in their lives, and one thing really stood out to me in the responses Not only did almost every person who took the survey share their desire to become saints and to get their families to heaven too, but they also wanted to know for sure that they were doing God's will in their lives. They wanted to live with conviction. And this is so critically important for each and every one of us, because the whole point, the reason that we're here, is to imitate Christ and do what he did on this earth, and we know that. He told us that he came to do the Father's will. So the Father's will, finding it, accepting it, carrying it out with love if that was the rule for Jesus's life, then that should also be the rule for the life of every Christian. So this is not an unimportant question. What does God want you to do is so important. Finding that out and doing it is basically the work of your life, and if you know that you're doing what God wants you to be doing, then you can live with that kind of conviction, and conviction is so powerful. If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were doing exactly what God wanted you to do, think about how differently you would show up. Not only would you be doing your best at whatever you were doing, but it would also eliminate so much fear and uncertainty, which I think is what really saps our energy in the day-to-day grind of our lives. Because things are hard, you're going to face things that are really disappointing and frustrating or just annoying and mundane, and sometimes we can be really tempted to think that everything should be smooth sailing if we were really in God's will. But obviously that's not the case Because, again, just look at Jesus's life as an example.

Speaker 1: 3:38

His life was full of suffering and hardship and trial. Look at even his passion in death. That was perfectly fulfilling the will of the Father and it was hard and awful and painful and excruciating, but that was God's will and you know. Just as another example, think about Mary, who also perfectly fulfilled God's will for her life. Her life was also full of hardship and suffering. It was not easy for her to watch her son be ridiculed, to be tortured and to watch him die. And that wasn't the only hard thing in Mary's life. Her life was probably full of just as many hardships as any of our lives.

Speaker 1: 4:23

The thing is, knowing that you're doing God's will can help you to live boldly and confidently and to keep pressing forward on the path that God has set for you, even when that path is scary and hard. Because, looking at the examples of the lives of the saints and Jesus's own life, we know that oftentimes our lives are going to be scary and hard. But this is really important, because if you thought that it wasn't God's will for you, for these hard, scary, bad things to be happening to you, then you would be completely tempted to quit and to give up. Then you would be completely tempted to quit and to give up. And I think one of the many common lies of the devil is that God's will is something obscure and mysterious and so hard to figure out that you have to waste all your time and energy spinning your wheels and ricocheting like a pinball from one thing to the next, because you can never be really sure that you're doing it. But that just really doesn't jive with the God that we know and we believe in, because God loves us so much and he wants us to know and understand his plan for us so much that he sent Jesus into the world to tell it to us in human words that we could understand. He left us the church and the magisterium, and not only that, he wrote his own law on the human heart. Those are not the actions of a God who's trying to hide his will from you.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Now you might be thinking okay, sure, I know that God's will for me is to know him, love him, serve him in this world and be happy with him forever in the next. But that still doesn't tell me if I should launch a new program in my business or where I should send my kids to school. In other words, how do I know what I should be doing today to be doing God's will? And, fortunately for all of us, there are two basic ways to find out what God's will is for you right now. And it's going to sound really simple. But, honestly, all of the profound truths of our faith are like that. They sound too simple, but they're really really so true, okay, here are the two basic ways. So true, okay, here are the two basic ways. One, the demands of your vocation and two, the circumstances you're in. And I'll explain what I mean by both. So, first, how you know God's will for you today and every day are the demands of your vocation. So, back in episode three, is your business taking over your life?

Speaker 1: 7:17

I talked about the three levels of your vocation. So if you haven't heard that episode, I do recommend you check it out. But I'm going to give you just a quick summary here. The three levels of your vocation are first, the universal pursuit of holiness. Are first the universal pursuit of holiness, you're called to be a saint. That's your relationship with God. Second is your state in life, which is your relationship with others that's meant to make you holy. So this could be either whether you're married or a consecrated virgin or religious or a priest. That is your state life.

Speaker 1: 7:56

And then the third level of your vocation is all of the daily stuff of your vocation. So this is the level of your work, your business, your volunteer roles, your community support, all of these things. This is also where laundry and housework and all of this that all fits in here with all of the daily stuff of your life. So I like to think about these levels of your vocation as a triangle with holiness at the very top right. So becoming a saint, the universal call to holiness, is the tippy top of that triangle and then everything else is kind of like a rung supporting that. So your state in life is the next rung and then underneath of that is all of the daily work, the daily stuff that makes up your life, and this is really important because it has to be in balance. This has to be in the proper order and when it is, it'll just feel right, even if it's hard. It's not going to be easy, it's just going to be, it's going to have a feeling of like it fits and this is right. So, if you think about the rungs or the levels of your vocation, all of those things are your vocation and I like to think of it too as all of the stuff on the bottom rungs tend upwards and towards that universal call to holiness. In other words, every part of your vocation can be geared toward and leading toward that universal call to holiness, toward that universal call to holiness.

Speaker 1: 9:40

Now, even when this is hard, this is going to feel like it fits, that you're doing the right thing. You'll feel that. So, for instance, if you are trying to finish a big work project and that's what you have to be working on today and then one of your kids gets sick and is throwing up everywhere and you're cleaning up, puke and comforting a sick child, you've dropped your work project and now you're focusing on your kid. Well, even though that's not going to be fun, it's not going to feel delightful. You are going to feel like that was the right thing to be doing. That was the right order of that activity. And the same thing will happen when you wake up and maybe you prioritize your prayer time first thing in the morning, before you open your Facebook or check your phone or scroll your feed. That's going to have a certain feeling of rightness about it, because you're keeping things in the proper order.

Speaker 1: 10:37

And I really like to think about the demands of your vocation as kind of a filter for your choices and activities and you can think about whenever you're considering doing something where does it fit within your vocation and does it cause you to prioritize something out of order, in an order that it shouldn't go? And I just want to make a caveat here that this doesn't necessarily mean that you spend the vast majority of your time in this order, because most of us are not going to be spending eight hours a day on our knees praying, while we should be praying always in our hearts, according to St Paul but it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be constantly in the church or attending religious services or praying vocally, but that is the primary goal of our life is that relationship with God, which means everything flows into that. Now it could be that you are spending eight hours working in your job. Technically, that's the bottom rung of your vocation, but this is a way that you're supporting your family and by the attitude and the disposition that you bring to your work, it can also be tending towards your holiness. So I just wanna make that distinction that it doesn't mean this is how you must be spending your time, in this order, but it's really a disposition of your heart, and you know what that feels like when you start to let something else take over or have more pride of place. Like I said in episode three, if you've ever been calculating sales conversions at mass, or if you've ever been constantly thinking about your business when you're trying to play with your kids, then you recognize the imbalance. It's not in the right order because your heart is not in the right order. So the demands of your vocation, that's God's will for you. Your vocation is God's will for you. This is your path to sanctity, this is your path to holiness. This is God's plan for you to become the saint version of yourself. So if, for whatever reason you're not living your vocation in the proper order and with the right balance. That's going to be that filter, that just like a sieve right, you're going to sieve all of your activities through this and decide is this God's will for me? The next basic way that you can know what God's will is for you is to just look at the circumstances of your day.

Speaker 1: 13:15

When I was a new convert to Catholicism, I used to love watching Mother Angelica reruns on EWTN and one day a caller called in and asked Mother, how do I know if a certain situation is God's will for me? And Mother Angelica, without missing a beat, said Is it happening to you? Then it's God's will for you. And that really struck me because I had never considered just that if something was happening to me, that it must be God's will for me. And I think that this can be really hard to wrap our heads around, because sometimes awful things happen and we think there's no way that this is God's will for me.

Speaker 1: 13:58

And that's where it's really important to understand the difference between God's indicative will and his permissive will. So his indicative will is whatever he wants us to do. That's for our greatest good, and God can indicate that he wants us to do certain things. So in this category of God's indicative will we're going to find things like the 10 commandments, the commandments of the New Testament, the commandments and teachings of the church, the responsibilities of your state in life, again, your vocation and, if you get specific inspirations from the Holy Spirit. So if we want to know God's will for our lives, these are the places we need to start and that's why I mentioned your vocation first.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Now the field of God's indicative will is really vast, because it's going to touch all of those normal activities and relationships of every day, because all of this stuff that's happening to you every single day. This is the arena where, through your choices, you're going to be either growing in virtue or vice, so you're going to be either deepening your relationship with God or damaging your relationship with God in those circumstances of your daily life. This also includes the endless possibilities of the works of mercy, the things that you could be doing. The works of mercy are feeding the hungry, instructing the ignorant, comforting the sorrowful. All of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, all of the ways that we can carry out the Lord's commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. All of that would be God's indicative will. So when we ask ourselves, what is God's will for me? Most of the time God's indicative will is going to be really clear actually Lovingly follow the commandments, lovingly carry out your daily responsibilities and look for the practical ways that you can love your neighbor the way God's loved you. So it's to seek to accept, to embrace, to fulfill his will for your life. That's the surest way that you know that you're doing what God wants you to do, right. So that's God's indicative will.

Speaker 1: 16:20

Now, the permissive will of God refers to that which God allows to happen. So, for example, god allows sinful behavior even though he doesn't desire it. And why does God allow sin? Well, that's because God wants us to love him freely. So he allows us to freely choose or reject his will. And we know that whenever we reject God's will, or whenever anyone rejects God's will, there's a consequence for that, and it hurts the world and it hurts other people, it hurts everyone.

Speaker 1: 16:58

So the catechism addresses the issue of God's permissive will really well. It says Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and mysteriously knows how to derive good from it. For Almighty God, because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself. Okay, so at each and every moment, you're either experiencing God's indicative will or his permissive will for you. So if you want to know what God's will is for you in any given moment, it's to fully accept whatever is happening to you in that moment. So that's the people, the places, the circumstances accept all of that as coming directly from the hands of God himself, and this is exactly what it means when we pray thy will be done in the hour of father.

Speaker 1: 18:37

I've also heard Bishop Barron summarize it really simple as love, god's will for you, is always the path of greatest love. But I know sometimes that doesn't sound very clear For many people. We're still thinking well, I need to make a decision, I need to do this or do that. How do. I know what God's will for me is in those circumstances. Well, I do want to console you with the thought that, like St Therese says, all God really wants from you is your goodwill. Like St Therese says, all God really wants from you is your goodwill. So if your desire is to love and serve God, like I can't remember which saint said to love and do as you will, just love and do. Just make a choice, go with something loving God and loving neighbor, and if you do that, then God's going to work good from it, whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 19:36

I taught the first Holy Communion class this year and last year, but I told my kids you can think about this as God's plan A and God's plan B. You can't miss God's will for you, because if plan A was his original indicative will for you and you chose differently or did something else, well he's just going to reroute you because he has a plan B, and if you miss that, he has a plan C, and if you miss that he has a plan D. In fact, he's not limited by the alphabet. God can infinitely reroute you back to his plan for you. So you don't need to be afraid, you don't need to worry that you're going to somehow miss it, you're somehow going to get it wrong.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Because if you live in that fear of I'm going to mess this up, I'm going to miss God's plan for me or not do what he wants me to do, then you're living in fear and we have not been given a spirit of fear. We've been given a spirit of adoption. So we can say with confidence Abba, father right, your father loves you, he wants you to be with him. He's not trying to hide the path to get back to him. He's trying to make it really, really clear. Looking at your vocation, knowing that you're fulfilling the duties of your state in life, your vocation, knowing that you're fulfilling the duties of your state in life, and then embracing in every circumstance as it comes as coming from the hands of God, that is really all you need to be able to do. That is all you need to be able to do to know that you're doing what God wants you to do today.

Speaker 1: 21:10

Now, in order to make this even simpler, I have created a tool that will help you. So, since so much of God's will is tied to your daily circumstances and your responsibilities in life, it can be really helpful to craft your own rule of life to keep everything in its proper place. A rule of life is basically just a plan for how you're going to live, your daily and weekly routines and what you'll focus on when. Now, if you think about people who live in religious communities, they tend to have a rule of life where they have set times of prayer, work, recreation. You can make a rule of life for yourself even if you're living in the world, if you're in a family or if you're single and living in the world. You can think about your rule of life as kind of like a block schedule, but the emphasis is, of course, on using your time, energy and focus to serve God.

Speaker 1: 22:12

Well, now, this is something that I work with my clients to develop in the Catholic Path to Excellence, but you can get a free copy of the tool we use to create this rule of life at thrivingcatholiccom forward slash planner. So the tool is called a habits planner, but it's really so much more than that. So this is an editable Google sheet where you're going to find different tabs. One tab you'll see instructions on exactly how to use this planning tool for maximum benefit. You're going to see a tab with customizable routine builder templates that are going to allow you to efficiently and effectively plan when you're going to do everything like how does all of this stuff fit in an ordered way? And then, finally, you'll see another tab that has an ideal week template and that's where you can structure your routines and this is basically what's going to be your rule of life. There's further tabs where you'll see interactive monthly habit trackers so you can actually set implementation intentions and try to build some of these habits that you might be wanting to build into your rule of life.

Speaker 1: 23:25

But when you've created your ideal weekly schedule and your rule of life, well, what should you do today? Kind of comes down to what's on your schedule, what's on your calendar, what have you already decided using your intellect and will doing this in a prayerful way what should you be doing right now? Now, a lot of times people will wake up and they'll start a day and they'll say what shall I do today? But really the question is, what should I do today? What is already outlined for me? That is also the path of greatest love and that's fulfilling, as well as I am able, my duties in my state in life. And so, when we have this plan, when we have this rule of life, it becomes really simple to know. Well, I know that I spend this part of my day praying, or I spend this part of my day with my kids and my family, or this part of my day is for work.

Speaker 1: 24:28

Now, when it gets into the actual what, should you be working on things? Again, that's prayer and discernment. But don't think you can get it wrong. God doesn't want you to be afraid of missing his plan for you. So if you want that free resource to help you plan out your own rule of life because then you'll know if you're in this block of time you should be doing this thing you can get this free resource at athrivingcatholiccom forward slash planner or you can just follow the link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 25:04

So here's what we just covered in this episode.

Speaker 1: 25:07

We talked about why it's so critically important to know that you're doing what God wants you to be doing, both in your life as a whole and in the nitty gritty details of each day. And again, this is the imitation of Christ. This is the point of your whole life is to be doing God's will. Then I shared with you the two basic ways that you can effectively discern God's will for you right now, which are filtering through the levels of your vocation and accepting and embracing each circumstance as God's will and choosing the path of greatest love. And finally, I told you how you can get the free habits planner that will help you to create your own rule of life so that you have a pretty clear sense, day in and day out, that you're doing basically what God wants you to be doing.

Speaker 1: 26:02

That's it for me this week. If you enjoyed this episode and got something out of it, I would love if you could leave a rating or review on your podcast app. It really helps me to get the word out about the show, so go ahead and leave a rating and review if you like this content. Until next time, remember that it is Jesus who inspires you to do something great with your life, so don't let yourself be ground down by mediocrity. Bye for now.