Making Our Will Coincide With God's

One of the interesting learning opportunities over the past few months has been to see my prayer life evolve. A lot changes when the direction of your life takes a drastic, unplanned, and unpleasant turn. A couple of things I realized very quickly, the intensity of my prayer life increased, and I spent much more time praying for those people I love and care about, my family. In the busyness of a job and family life, sometimes it is easy to "skim over the important stuff" and only pray about the things you need. During the weeks where I had a lot more time, the combination of meditating on God's Word and praying that Word, resulted in learning some incredible truth about who God is, what He was saying to me, particularly through His Word, and the re-arranging of my prayer priorities.

For the past month, I have been settling into my new full time church pastoral position in Tucson, Arizona. We've been trying to return to normal. (I'm not sure that normal exists any longer) In this first month, however, one of our car engines was ruined, so we lost that car, and this week our house sale in Missouri fell apart when the buyer decided she really didn't want to buy a house after all. That means that for the time being, we are paying to maintain two households, and we eventually need to do something about replacing our second car. How do we pray about these major things that are financial roadblocks to returning to normalcy?

First, I have learned that prayer is not bending God to our will. In other words, our needs and priorities are not the important things here. Prayer is bringing our will to God's. Prayer does not pull God to us, it pulls us to God. Prayer aligns our will with His will, so that He can do things through us that He would not otherwise have been able to do. Prayer is not convincing God that He needs to act on our behalf, but it is resting in the knowledge that prayer is unlocking His ability to move on our behalf. God already knew that our car was going to overheat and the engine would be ruined. He knew before we did that our buyer would not follow through on her commitment to purchase our house. He also knows what our income is, what our expenses are, and how we are trying to make everything work out. So, while I might remind God from time to time what our needs are, I am much more interested in knowing His will for us, and watching how He will deal with our situation. If you are facing some insurmountable mountains of unpleasant circumstances, align your will with God's will. Even though it is hard to give up the desire to be a "fixer," give up your fixer will to God and rest in the knowledge that He already knew your situation, He already knows the solution, and He's waiting for you to surrender your independence to Him. I'm right with you, trying to do the same thing...