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God, I’d Rather Not, But If You Insist . . .

ELM You may have definite ideas about how God ought to answer some of your prayers. You hope He sees it your way, because who knows better than you do about your situation? So, can you say, “Thy will be done," and really mean it? Stay tuned.

I hope you’re learning to make God your best friend and that you feel comfortable talking with Him, whether it’s telling Him about the problems in your life or thanking Him for your blessings. God will always take the most unpromising situations and turn them into good for you, even if you don’t get the answer you hoped for.

Often there is a tension and sometimes even disagreements between your desires and God’s will. I have the same problem. This is because we don’t think the way He thinks and we don’t do things the way He does them. In fact, He says to us, “Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8, 9 NCV).

In plain language, we’re not on God’s wave length. Or to put it another way, we don’t understand where He’s coming from. But God isn’t the problem--we are. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it” (Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV)? We change our needs and wants from day to day. God never changes.

Have you found in your spiritual life that often you run hot one day and cold the next? One day you may enjoy talking with God and accepting His will in your life. Then the next day it’s as though there were a wall between you. You pray, but you feel God doesn’t hear you, or maybe He doesn’t even care about you anymore. Has God’s love toward you changed? Or might there be something in your life that’s cutting off that communication you used to enjoy?

God knows there will be some days when we feel far away from Him. That’s why He sent Jesus to this world to be part of the human family, so He could be the bridge between heaven and earth. Now we can freely talk with a holy God in Jesus’ name. Through prayer, the wall has not only been breached, it’s been taken completely away. What a marvelous solution to our problem!

During the programs this week we have been studying some important aspects about one of my favorite subjects--prayer.

Over the years, my study of prayer has always brought me back to the same conclusion, and that is that the purpose of prayer is to discover and to do the will of God.

Jesus said that we ought to pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10 NKJV). I’ll have to admit, however, that there are times when I hope that God’s will is the same as mine and that He’ll do what I want Him to do, instead of the other way around.

You might be thinking, “Don’t worry about me, Lonnie, I’ve submitted my life to His will. I always pray that God’s will be done in my life whether I want it or not.

Well, that’s good to hear. I’m glad you have. You’ve taken a step in the right direction. But today let’s consider going even a step further.

To submit is to succumb, to capitulate. Therefore, to merely submit to the will of God doesn’t mean that we’re in agreement with Him. Submission may not be rebellion, but neither is it acceptance. We’re talking about some subtle but important differences between the words submission and agreement. You see, although God accepts our surrender to His will, He wishes we would not only submit to His will but be in agreement with it, to take pleasure in doing it.

There you have it then. Submission has the feeling of force. Agreement has the feeling of pleasure. Submitting to God’s will is passive, agreeing to His will is active. Remember the old saying that a man persuaded against his will is of the same opinion still? It’s possible that I may submit to the will of God but not be in agreement with what God is trying to do in my life. When I am in agreement with the will of God, I happily carry out His wishes.

My goal as a child of God is to press on to the point where I can say with the Psalmist David, “My God, I want to do what you want, your teachings are in my heart” (Psalm 40:8 NCV).

There will be times, especially when your way is dark or when you don’t understand what’s going on, when you have to fall back and stand only on your submission to God. Jesus Himself came to this point when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Suddenly it seemed to Him like the plug connecting Him with His Father had been pulled out. In agony and desperation He prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, do not give me this cup of suffering. But do what you want, not what I want" (Matthew 26:39 NCV).

The first part of that prayer was a prayer of submission. But then He added the word, “But”. Father, I don’t want to go through with this. But I’ll do whatever You want me to do.

How many times in your life have you prayed, “O Lord, get me out of this.” Often our trials and sufferings seem more than we can bear. But, as you grow in grace and learn to trust your heavenly Friend, you’ll want to go on from submitting to His will to delighting to do His will.

Then you’ll be able to say with the Bible heroes, “My brothers and sisters, when you have many kinds of troubles, you should be full of joy, because you know that these troubles test your faith, and this will give you patience. Let your patience show itself perfectly in what you do. Then you will be perfect and complete and will have everything you need” (James 1:2-4 NCV).

And again: “Pray continually, and give thanks whatever happens. That is what God wants for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18 NCV).

The Apostle Paul had some hair-raising experiences in his travels. He wrote about weariness and painfulness, watchings, hunger and thirst, fastings, cold and nakedness. Besides all those things, he carried the responsibility of all the churches. He admitted to being weak. He admitted to being offended. Yet he said he could brag about his infirmities (2 Corinthians 11:27-30 NKJV).

Isn’t it unfortunate that, when there’s a natural disaster, it’s called “an act of God”? I want to grow in my prayer life until I see the will of God not as defeat but as victory. How about you? Maybe we need to be like the woman who was actually pleased when God didn’t answer her prayers the way she wanted, because, she said, then she knew that God’s will was being done and not hers!

Maybe I wouldn’t carry it that far, but I do want to get beyond resignation to rejoicing. I want to take pleasure in doing God’s will rather than my own.

There was once a woman who earned a modest living peddling her wares along the roads. Whenever she came to an intersection, she would toss a stick into the air to determine which way to go.

On one occasion she was seen tossing the stick into the air not once but three times. When asked why she did that, she replied, “Because the first two times it pointed a way I didn’t want to go!”

Are your prayers ever like that? Do you ask God for guidance, but when He occasionally directs you down a dull or difficult road, you resist and complain?

There are two stories in the Bible that can help us when we’re going through difficult and disappointing times. One story is recorded in Luke, chapter 5.

The disciples had fished all night and hadn’t caught anything. In the morning Jesus came to the water’s edge and asked how things were going. Peter shouted back that they hadn’t caught anything. “Throw your nets on the other side,” Jesus called out from the shore. When Peter heard what Jesus said, he must have thought, “Didn’t He hear what I said? There are no fish.”

Peter probably mumbled something about having already tried that, but went ahead and followed the Lord’s suggestion. Well, if you’ve heard the story, you know that it has a happy ending. They caught so many fish that it took two boats to bring the catch to shore. True, Peter obeyed Jesus in the end, but think how much better it would have been if he had not just surrendered but had been conformed to the will of Jesus from the first and had said to the other fishermen, “Hey, boys, our troubles are over. Jesus is going to get us some fish.”

Another story, recorded in John, chapter 2, is an example of the right thing to do when problems don’t seem to have a solution.

Jesus’ family, along with the disciples, was invited to a wedding reception. When the grape juice unexpectedly ran out, Jesus’ mother went immediately to Jesus--the One who could solve the problem. Then she went to the servants and simply said, “Whatever he says to you do it.” (John 2:5 NKJV). The result was that the guests commented that the juice Jesus provided was the best that they had ever tasted.

So then, it’s possible that when you pray, Thy will be done, you really hope it will be your will and not His. But here’s the good news. Your perspective on life will improve, and the burdens you bear will seem lighter when you are able to go beyond saying, “O Lord, do I have to?” to “Lord, I delight to do Your will, no matter what it may be." . You may not think so at the time, but you’ll discover in the end that His ways are much better!