You don’t need to know God’s plan for the future. You only need to know what He’s asking of you today. If you’ve been anxiously waiting for a lightning bolt from heaven telling you what to do next, this podcast may change the way you discern God’s guidance forever.
In this inspiring podcast episode, Terry Modica (founder of Good News Ministries of GNM.org) talks with Connor Curley. He is a hog farmer turned philosopher, National Guard member, husband, adoptive father, and author of “Remembering Freedom.” Hear the surprising ways God led him through life’s twists and turns. His story is a powerful reminder that God doesn’t ask us to know what we’re supposed to be doing in the future. He asks us to faithfully do what He’s calling us to do today.
As Connor shares, if you do what God wants you to do today—and keep doing that every day—God will bring you exactly where He wants you to be.
Watch the podcast and ask yourself: What is God inviting me to do today?
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In this episode, you’ll discover:
- How God uses our passions, talents, and circumstances to guide us.
- Why community plays an important role in discerning God’s will.
- Why we shouldn’t shy away from good things just because they’re hard.
- How living in the present moment leads us into God’s larger plan.
- Why today’s “yes” to God is enough.
Are you wondering?
- How do I know what God wants me to do with my life?
- How can I discern God’s will when I don’t know what the future holds?
- How do I know if the opportunities in front of me are part of God’s plan?
- Why doesn’t God show me His whole plan for my life?
- How can I recognize God’s guidance in my everyday life?
- How do I make decisions when I’m afraid that following God’s will will be too difficult?
Key Takeaway: Stop trying to figure out God’s entire plan for your future. Ask Him what He is inviting you to do today—and faithfully say “yes” to that one act of obedience. If you follow God’s will in the present moment, day after day, He will lead you exactly where He wants you to be.
Excerpt:
Connor: It’s almost as if this is what I have been searching for this entire time, and I didn’t know. In a sense, that’s a sense of remembering, right? There was a desire for it already instilled in Adam’s heart that he didn’t know until he perceived it. Remembering Freedom is my attempt at articulating the difference between freedom and license.
We are free in as much as we are more free when we seek God. I have a particular way that I recognize God in life. And sometimes that changes. Now one of my primary ways that I recognize God is to live as a good husband to my wife, Jacqueline. Before we were married, that was not the case.
Before we were married, I recognized God most clearly in living out my vocation as a holy single man. But I am more free when I live in accordance with recognizing God, which makes me more myself, which is what I end up wanting to do anyhow, right?
Contrast that to a type of freedom that thinks freedom is license. I just want to do whatever I want, and I want to determine what makes me happy. That’s a falsehood. God has already determined what makes us happy, and ultimately, it’s life with him. There’s no getting around that.
There is literally nothing anybody can do to be happy outside of God. And so because of that, freedom — choosing what makes you happy — is really only a one-way street, and that’s to continue to choose God and to really recognize God.
Terry: We are happiest when we know what God wants us to be doing and we’re doing it. And it may take, you know, it’s a difficult journey to get there. It may take time or may happen overnight. I love it when things fall into place all of a sudden, you know. A lot of my journey has been waiting for a long time on God, but other times things just boom, boom, boom, fall into place.
And I thought, oh, I love that part of it. But, yeah, when we know, when we have that sense of, yes, I’m within God’s will and he’s empowering me to do what he’s called me to do, that’s when we have the most life. That’s when we have the most joy, even in the hardest parts of that.
Connor: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Terry: Okay, so in your parenting, have you officially adopted your son?
Connor: So we’re in the process. We’re nearing the end of the process. But, yes, yeah, he is.
Terry: That’s a difficult journey right there. Because, you know, it’s different than getting a newborn. He’s already had, when you got him, he had four years of, you know, imprinting, four years of formation. His brain was being formed by those first four years. And adopting a child who is not an infant is a big challenge.
What do you think, if someone were listening to this and they were thinking about adopting or even fostering, what would be your advice to them?
Connor: First of all, do it. It’s a lot more scary than it really is in real life. We, as humans, are sort of hardwired to catastrophize the abstract. So thinking about adoption and foster care is a lot more scary than actually doing it. You can respond to a disaster right in front of you. You can’t respond to a disaster that’s all the way over there.
Speaking of responding to abstracts, another piece of advice I would give is: You can never make decisions for abstract children that you do not have yet. Whoever might be listening, who might be considering foster care or adoption, again, 100%, do it. But be aware of the journey that has brought you to choose this.
And don’t make decisions for things that aren’t, that might come, that might not come yet. Be that you’re on the wait list for adoption. Be that you’re going through infertility treatments. Be that whatever it is. Don’t make decisions now for something that God might bless you with later. Because God is asking us to live today.
God is fully active. That is His nature. He lives in the now. Every moment to Him is happening now. So we mirror God most, and we can hear Him most clearly when we’re living now.
And whenever you do get placed, remember that same thing. Respond to right now. Don’t make decisions on who you might think the child might be in 10 years from now. Respond to your child today.
Terry: In anything that we’re considering doing and trying to discern if that’s God’s plan for us, we have the now. We can’t be in the future. We can’t return to the past. We can learn from the past, and we can pray for the future. But the now is where we are meeting God. He meets us in the now.
And in the now, there’s clues as to what God is calling us to do. In the now is when — because God doesn’t string us along and say, “Okay, I’m going to wait until they’re really getting desperate before I tell them what I want them to do for the Kingdom.” But in the now, the people who are watching this, I want you to think about: What is your passion?
We’ve heard from Connor what his passions were. What is your passion that right now gets you fired up? And that is something of what God’s plan for you is. So do you have any advice to add to that, Connor?
Connor: You know, I mentioned it at the beginning. It’s a philosophy that I’ve sort of lived by, but sort of in that vein. Don’t worry about what God wants you to do 10 years from now. If you do what he wants you to do today, every day for 10 years — this isn’t my advice, by the way. This is something that I think my father told me when I was trying to figure out, like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Do today what God wants you to do.
And if you do that every day for 10 years, he’ll be exactly where He wants you to be. And that’s really all we can do because, like you said, we have the now….
📚 Visit Connor Curley’s website: https://connorscurley.com
Connect with him on https://facebook.com/connor.curley.614299
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BTW, if you know someone who is struggling with an important decision or feeling uncertain about the future, please share this episode with them. It could be exactly the encouragement they need right now.
This episode is a companion to Terry Modica’s workbook “Knowing God’s Will and Doing It Well“.
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