3 Signs God Is Telling You to Start Right Now

Here are 3 common signs that mean God is telling you to start doing something you have been wondering if you should start doing.

1. If You Are Asking God About Starting Something He’s Already Told You to Do in His Word, God Is Telling You to Start Now

A lack of clarity is one of the most common reasons for a delay in our lives. When we don’t know if we should go left or right, if we should go back or forward, or if we should say yes or no, usually our confusion leads to inactivity and waiting. This is wise in some cases. If you don’t know what God wants you to do, sometimes all you can do is wait until God gives you clarity.

However, one issue arises when we are asking God a personal question that he already generally answered in the Bible. Of course we should ask God personal questions because our lives are all unique and different than one another and the Bible won’t address very specific and personal questions you have. So if you are asking a truly personal question like if you should move to a new state or take a new job or buy a different house, you may not find a direct Bible verse to tell you to do these things because the Bible is more general than that. It was written to you but it was also written to everyone else. God has included only that which applies to all Christians in his word.

But we don’t need to ask God about things he already told us to do in his word. For example, if you are wondering if you should pray, read your Bible, or fellowship with other Christians, God has already told us all to do that in his word (Ephesians 6:18, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Hebrews 10:24-25). You don’t need to ask God’s permission to share the gospel with someone because he has commanded us to do that (Matthew 28:19-20). If you are wondering if you should pursue marriage even though you have a strong desire for sex and want to glorify God in marriage, you don’t need to ask him if you are allowed to pursue marriage because he’s already told this type of person to pursue marriage in 1 Corinthians 7.

Of course life is not always so clear. Many times we do need more insight about how to rightly apply the word of God to the unique factors in our lives. But generally speaking, if you are wondering if you should do something God has already released you to do in the Bible, God is saying, “Start now and stop waiting.”

2. If You Are Feeling Regret Over Wasted Time in the Past, God Is Telling You to Focus on the Present and Start Doing What You Need to Do Now

One of the most common regrets people tell me they have is wasted time. For example, when it comes to relationships, people really struggle with wasting years with the wrong person. It’s common to live in sin with someone for years, maybe even decades, but then the relationship comes to an end and now you want to glorify God in a new relationship. But you then feel like this is impossible because you are older now or have done so many wrong things someone else won’t want you now.

Another common example about relationships would be inactivity and passivity. Many singles who grew up with the courting model now regret their years of extreme caution and passivity in relationships because they feel like they wasted their youth and now there is no one left for them. They feel like if they would have been more active when they were younger perhaps they would have found someone by now.

I’m not here to discount personal experiences like this. If you have regrets about wasted time in your life, it’s not healthy to try to dismiss those regrets and act like everything is fine when everything is not really fine. However, we need to be really careful we don’t just continue to do the same thing that we are now sad that we did in the past.

In other words, there’s nothing you can do about the regrets in the past. But you can create new regrets if you aren’t careful. Perhaps you are 35 now and you are sad about being passive in relationships. But how will you feel when you are 45 if you keep being passive for the next 10 years? And if you are 45 and you are sad about being passive up until now, how will you feel when you are 55 and you were passive for another 10 years? And if you are 55 now and you keep being passive, how will you feel at 65?

You can’t change the regrets you have, but you can create new regrets in the future if you keep wasting your life. If you are alive, you have more potential to make new regrets. If you want to avoid making new regrets, the only solution is to take advantage of the here and now because that’s all we ever really have in this life.

Ephesians 5:15-16 states, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” You may feel bad because you haven’t done what this verse says. But this verse doesn’t say, “Feel bad the rest of your life if you’ve wasted some of your life already.” No matter how much of your life you’ve already wasted, you can always waste more if you aren’t careful.

So if you are wasting your life because you are sitting around thinking about how you have wasted your life, stop wasting your life! Get moving! God is telling you to focus on the present and start living for him right now.

3. If Your Motives Are Pure and God Has Made a Path, He Is Oftentimes Telling You to Start Now and Do What You Are Thinking About Doing

Sometimes we are waiting for God’s permission to do something because we want him to guarantee us a particular future before we start the journey. But God rarely does this type of thing. He’s made you to make important choices in your life.

Of course God always has something to say about his will for us. And we need him to open certain doors to make certain paths available to us. But really, if you have pure motives to glorify God and he has given you an opportunity to try to do something for him, usually God is releasing you to try this.

He’s not going to guarantee that it works out the way you think it will work out. But whenever we do something for God’s glory and we are loving him, God can take our efforts and accomplish good, even if it’s not the good we set out to accomplish. As Romans 8:28-29 famously states:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”