God’s will or mine?

Many times when waves of uncertainty and troubles hit our lives, we often turn to God and pray. We pray for him to guide us through the hard times, we pray for His strength to be able to work out the problems and if you are like me, we pray above all for His will to be done.

Now, there is no problem in praying for these things, but sometimes the prayers we pray may become, well sort of mechanical and not truly from the heart.  I recently went for the young adults retreat at Fraser’s and wow, it was amazing how God showed me that I have been saying the words but not meaning them.

As some of you may or may not know, that quite recently I’ve been trying to deal with a big wave being tossed my way. The story is that my parents want me to pursue my studies overseas, and I didn’t want to. So I turned to God and started praying for the things mentioned above. Little did I know I was just saying the words and not meaning them in my heart. I’ve been asking for God’s will to be done when in reality I only wanted my will to be done.

God showed me this during the meditation session at Fraser’s. The verse given to meditate on was

Philippians 4:6-7: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So I started off by asking myself what does being anxious mean? The definition of anxious is the experience of worry or concern. Then I asked myself two more questions, what am I anxious about and why am I anxious about it? The answers to those two questions were easy, firstly I was anxious about going overseas to study and I didn’t want to go because I would be leaving behind so much here, my friends, family, all the times that I could spend and the memories that I could create here would be gone.

Then moving onto the next part of the verse I questioned myself again, have I really really been praying about this matter? Am I actually thankful for the opportunity to study overseas? Have I even been letting my request to stay here in Malaysia to study be made known to God? Then I felt it, that sinking feeling we often feel when we realize something not so nice to realize. The answer to the questions above was a simple two letter word: NO.

I continued to question myself and I imagined a situation where it was clear that God’s will for me was to study abroad. Would I actually go wholeheartedly? If God said to me I am sending you to Australia because I have a plan for you there, will I really trust in God and leave the people I hold dear here and go? I wanted to say yes I would go, but deep down I felt as if I was reluctant to go even if God said so.

By this time, I was actually walking all over the place trying to work things out in my head. And then something clicked, it hit me that I’ve not been sincere in my prayers to God. I’ve always prayed, saying “Lord whatever it is your will be done” when actually deep down in my heart I would say “Ok hopefully his will is for me to stay here and not go anywhere”. I realized that I’ve been trying to superimpose my will over God’s.

Then God brought a couple of verses to me, which were Matthew 10:38-39: “And if anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” and also Matthew 16:24: "If anyone would come after me he MUST DENY HIMSELF and take up his cross and FOLLOW ME”. These two verses really hit me hard. It became so clear that I needed to really lay everything down at His feet and trust in Him. It also struck me that I have been acting like the rich young man mentioned in Mark 10:17, how my “riches” have actually been my comfortable lifestyle here in Malaysia along with my friends and family.

I soon started to pray and ask God for forgiveness for the way I’ve been acting. I also asked for strength to truly want His will to be done for my life and to be able to trust in Him completely even while laying down my “riches”. Comfortingly God showed me Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding , in all your ways acknowledge him , and he will make your paths straight”

Soon I felt God’s peace calm my heart and I can honestly say that my worries about this matter just evaporated. So with that in mind, are you willing to trust in God? Can you deny yourself pick up your cross and follow Him if he has called you to something? It’s not going to be easy, far from that, but when you start to trust in God, He will guide you through it all!

- Matthew How

Images taken from:
http://dmariepowell.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/be-faithful-in-prayer/
http://ronorenstein.blogspot.com/2010/05/west-malaysia-frasers-hill-setting.html
http://matt-lifeinthespirit.blogspot.com/2011/02/21811-deny-yourself-pick-up-cross-and.html