PRAYER II

 PRAYER II

I read somewhere this short thought on prayer: "Prayer empowers us, not just to do the will of God, but to will the will of God." We all, I trust, want to do the will of God. As Christians we want to do what God wants us to do with our lives. Sometimes we are not so sure just what God wants us to do, but we surely want to do whatever it is God has in God's mind/will for us.

Yet, often, I suspect, if you are like me, sometimes we really do not want to know what the will of God is for us. Because if we did, then we would not be ignorant; we would have no excuses why we did not do what we knew God wanted us to do.

On the other hand, there is also the danger that we think we know what God wants for us. As an aside, there is an even greater danger: believing we know what God wants for someone else. The greatest threat to a society are those who assert that they know what God wants for that society, that they somehow have a direct line to knowing the mind of God. No one does.

Yet, as the quote states, knowing the will of God is not what is important. Willing the will is what is. Sometimes in my own life I think I know what God wants me to do. In fact, I am certain of it. And sometimes during those sometimes I simply do not want to do what I believe I know God wants me to do. To do what God wants me to do takes strength, takes power, takes grace. I know that but sometimes I am not sure that I am up for it: it’s just too difficult right then.

That is where prayer comes in. Prayer gives me the power, it empowers me, to make God's will my will. Then, when I am doing what God wills, I am also doing what I will. God's will for Jesus was Jesus's death on the cross. The night before he died, Jesus spent as much time as he could in prayer making God's will his will as well. That is why he was empowered to die on that cross for us. He was empowered by his prayer. That did not make the task at hand any easier. It would be foolish to assume that it was. But Jesus was at peace with it.

We all probably need to spend more time in praying and less time in doing, more time in discerning through prayer God's will and less time in asserting that we know God's will (especially God's will for others); more time in prayer in order to make God's will our will and less time trying to make our will God's will. That is the only way to be at peace with ourselves when it comes time to doing God’s will. For if we are honest with ourselves, our prayer is more often "my will, O God, be done," rather "Thy will be done." When we go against what we really know is God’s will, we make a mess of everything.

We are all selfish people. We innately want our will to be done. The reason why the world is in the mess that it is in is that too many of us spend far too much time and energy seeing to it that our will is done – often in the name of God. If we want to change the world, if we want what God really wants for the world – peace, we must begin by praying to not only to know God’s will but to will God’s will as well – for us, for others, for our world.