God’s ultimate will is that everyone should be saved and come to know Him. To be in union with Him. To do this we must become Christian and be baptized into Christ, pray, read the Bible, go to Mass (not just on Sunday), that is participate in the Sacraments to get the grace we need to live for God and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We should plan to make spiritual goals a priority. For instance plan to pray the rosary every day is a concrete goal we can do. Read some scripture everyday is another. Go to a Bible study at your parish for instance. Go to Confession once a month or more is a good spiritual practice. These things will help us to develop our relationship with our Lord.
Jesus said many will come to him and say Lord, Lord and they will say look at all these works we did like casting out demons in your name, healing the sick, and Jesus will say I do not know you. And elsewhere he says you did not do the will of the Father. They were off doing their own thing, seemingly good works, but they did not have an authentic relationship with Christ. They failed to abide in him.
How do we abide in Christ? Jesus said if you keep his commandments you will abide in him. This is why the Sacraments offer us hope to help us to abide in Christ. Jesus said if you eat his flesh and drink his blood you will abide in him. This sounds strange to hear. I mean where else are you going to hear something like that? In fact many of Christ’s disciples left him when he said that. But Christ hinted that the flesh or the natural mind can not understand these things, but they are spiritually discerned. (“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Jn 6:63, see also 1 Cor 2:14-16)
And, if you sin mortally but repent and go to Confession you will be forgiven and reconciled to God. This sacrament also helps us abide in Christ.
Finally, God wants us to help others to come to know him and He equips us with spiritual gifts to help us do this. But we must be careful not to love his gifts more than Him and make an idol out of spiritual gifts.
I am still not perfect in all these things. I am still learning to do God’s will and I still go to Confession. But this is my 2c for what it’s worth. And I think in my own life the Sacraments and prayer have helped me to overcome sinful habits and develop some good ones too. But I am not perfect yet. I still have a long ways to go. I still stumble and fail. But the Sacraments and prayer help keep me on the straight and narrow. God bless.
One thing also to consider is that we can’t rely on subjective feelings to tell us whether one is doing God’s will or not. Participating in the Sacraments are really the only way for us to have any kind of objective assurance of being in a state of grace and thus pleasing to God, because they are based on the promises of Christ. And if we endure until the end we will be saved.
"John 6:28–29 (RSV2CE): Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
