What is God's will for my life?

A TWO PART BLOG POST, YA'LL.  

A few years ago, David Platt (my pastor at the Church of Brook Hills) raised a few eyebrows by making this statement on the sinners prayer.  He said, "Should it not concern us that there is no such superstitious prayer in the New Testament?  Should it not concern us that the Bible never uses the phrase 'ask Jesus into your heart?' or 'invite Christ into your life?'"  I am not hear to rehash the whole debate, but I did want to draw attention to what, I think, was the crux of the argument that David was making.  Is it biblical?  Are these phrases that we use biblical?  Now, when I say, "biblical," I don't mean "is it literally in the Bible itself."  If that was my standard, then I would have to toss out the word Trinity and all of the glory that goes with it, and I'm not ready to do that.  No, when I say, "biblical," I mean is it a principle firmly grounded in the Word of God. If it is, let us live by it and die for it.  If it is not, then let us toss it out in the trash where it belongs.  
That brings me to a phrase that is currently popular in Christian circles:  "What is God's will for my life?"  Other permutations of this phrase include things like "I'm just trying to find God's will for my life," and "I'm not sure if this is God's will for me."  Are these phrases biblical?  Now, on the surface of it, this seems like an easy question.  Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."  Psalms 139:16 says "Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them."  So, let's just affirm from the beginning that the Sovereign God of the universe has a specific plan for each and every one of his creations.  That means a plan for you and a plan for me.  It also follows that God, having formed a plan for us, wants us to KNOW that plan.  God is a planner.  God laid out the universe with a degree of accuracy that is beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend.  I just saw an ant crawl across my window.  That ant has a better chance of understanding all of human history by his journey across my window than I do of understanding God by what I can see in my journey in this world.  God is Holy.  He is other.  His ways are not my ways.  God had a plan for creation, and, gloriously, God had a plan for redemption.  Acts 2:23 talks about God's "deliberate PLAN and FOREKNOWLEDGE."  Galatians 4:4 talks about how God sent Jesus when the fullness of time had come.  Now God, being the best planner, doesn't just leave us fumbling in the dark for the light switch.  He shines light into our eyes (2 Cor. 4:6) SO THAT we can know His plan.  A plan is not much of a plan if no one involved in it knows how to do it.
So, we have affirmed that God a.) has a plan for each and every one of us and b.) wants us to know that plan and what part we play in it.  This all seems well and good.  But wait.  If a and b are true (and scripture affirms that they are), then why are there so many who don't seem to know God's will for their lives?  When actual Bible-believing, Christ-following children of God seem to be unable to make a decision regarding their lives, what are they expressing?  Where is the communication break-down occurring and why?  Is the phrase, "What is God's will for my life?" biblical in the context that we often use it today?  That is what I want to explore in the rest of this post.  My strategy was simple:  Go to the Word.  I used a Greek lexicon and looked up all the instances where the Greek word for "desires" and "willing" appeared (37 times), all instances where the Greek word for "what one wishes or determines shall be done" (54 times).  I also looked up every time in the English translation where the phrases "God's will" (5 times), "will of God" (17 times), "plan" (76 times), "intend" (23 times), and "purpose" (74 times) appeared.  All together, that gave me a pool of 286 verses to read and study.  Lord willing, I will post the second part of this monstrosity on Sunday.  Thanks!