WHOSE WILL IS IT ANYWAY?

I know that God hears me, anytime, every time, all the time. God hears every word that comes from my mouth, sees everything I do, knows all of my innermost thoughts. Of that I have not the slightest doubt. So I know God hears me whenever I pray and for whatever I ask. I also know that I have not obtained all the requests I have made of God. A lot of my prayers go unanswered.

Or do they? I have not obtained all my requests. But they were my requests, what I wanted in perhaps my selfishness, even when I asked for something good for someone else: like a cure for cancer. It was my request, my wish, my will. When it was only mine and not God’s, my request went unanswered, unless the answer was “No.” That is an answer even if it is not the one I wanted.

The difficulty for me is to discern my will, my wishes, from God’s. That does not mean that my wishes are in opposition to God’s. What it means is that I have to discern what the real motive behind my prayer really is. The motive can seem so good, so pure, so holy, so right, when, in fact, in may simply be very selfish. It is not always that easy to discern which is which. Seeming good sometimes looks awfully good, even Godly. It is so easy for me to fool myself.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that whenever I discover that a prayer I have addressed to God is not answered the way I had desired, I must remember that the “I had desired” was not what God intended, wanted, desired. That is not easy for me because I so often think I know what God should do, what God should want. It is easy for me to play God. I do it every day. Often I do it when I open my mouth in prayer.

I also know that it is a very, very good thing that God does not think as I think and act as I do in response to what I am thinking. If God did, I would be one sorry person. My instinct, for instance, when someone hurts me is to hurt in return, repay an eye for an eye, if not worse. God’s immediate and first instinct, God being God, God being good, is to forgive. That is not the way I think nor the way I immediately react, I, in all honesty, must admit. I wish I were as immediately and totally forgiving as God.

I, we, need to let God be God. Then miracles will really happen as our prayers are truly answered by God in God’s own way in God’s own time. That will be a struggle because it has always been. Letting go and allowing God to be the God of my life does not come easy for me. I suspect it does not come easy for any one of us, human nature being what it is. On the one hand we are selfish, often vindictive, and sometimes reluctant to forgive, while on the other we are just the opposite. Is it any wonder that life often seems so confusing especially when we want to play God all the while wanting God to be God?

Daily we want to play God, to fix something, to do something, to change something, even to redress a wrong, because we will think we know best. It is in those moments we need to realize that only God knows what is best and that our prayer is to do God’s will and not our own, to let God be in charge, working in our lives God’s will and not our own.