One of my favourite books is Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a memoir he wrote about surviving the Holocaust in a concentration camp.

While Frankl goes into great detail of the abuse they received as Jews within the camp, he also expounds greatly on how he could keep his spirits up despite the depressing circumstances. His having a reason to live required a change of attitude towards life itself: “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”

I wonder how many of us have a why to live. And I wonder how many of us know why we live.

Our generation is big on extremes, we either live life to its fullest or we live to survive. We contend as activists or remain apathetic. Some strive to give their lives and actions some focus and meaning, others are content to drift through life without much effort because nothing gained means nothing lost.

Bearing Frankl’s earlier question in mind: do you know what life expects of you? Frankl distils life as “taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” Based on such a worldview, regardless of your attitude towards it, life still needs to be lived.

… do you know what God expects of you?

And as a Christian reading the book, I immediately see how Frankl’s definition for life can be taken as a metaphor for God’s will for our lives. This might not be Frankl’s original interpretation of life, but there must be Someone who has the sovereignty to allow the presence of “problems” and “tasks” in our lives.

So without delving into the arena of apologetics, let me push the thread of questioning even further: do you know what God expects of you?

Perhaps before we discover what God expects of us, let us delve into what we can expect of God.

Romans 12:2 puts it simply for us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.”

The Word assures us that everything in our life is ordained by God (Proverbs 16:33). With renewed minds, we are to test and approve what God’s will is in all the events of our lives.

Now, the only way for us to know these things is to live closely with Him daily. In the shadow of His wings, we will always see that at the end of the day, He is always good.

But before we can say “it is well” to everything that happens in our lives, we must learn how to live with Him. This is where His expectations come in.

And again, we can get this direction from looking at Romans 12:2. First, we are not to yield to the pressures of the world and conform to its pattern. Second, the spirit of our minds (Ephesians 4:23) must be renewed – bent away from the world and back towards God.

This only happens through disciplined devotion to God and genuine life change wrought by the Holy Spirit.

When we have these things in place, we will be able to exercise spiritual discernment. And in today’s combative and divisive society, we will be able to speak up and represent God in love.

Why does God have such expectations of us? Frankl also says that “the salvation of man is through love and in love.” Indeed, if not for the God who is love (1 John 4:16), we would have no chance at a life that is good, pleasing and acceptable in His eyes. We’d be dead without Him.

Because of love, God expects – commands – us to wholly love and fully obey Him. Because the Lord’s expectations of us are representative of a perfect (1 John 4:18) and unconditional love, we must live out the Romans 12:2.

There is a greater life just waiting to be lived.