A Battle of Wills

..."Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven..." -Matthew 6:9b-10

   For a Christian, I don't think there's much in life that can be harder than to earnestly pray for God's will in all things, and to really be prepared to actually yield to His will in all things. We have a tendency to want to take control, to tell God how we think things should be, to ask that things be done OUR way, according to OUR will and desires. And that's when we're talking to him at all about what our desires are! How hard it is to trust that His plan, His way, His will is the best of all possible plans and ways, even when it may not give us what we think we want, when we want it and how we want it.

    We think to ourselves, while we're very content with life, that it's a given that we want what God wants. After all, we're deep in the midst of blessings and joy, so faith is easy then! But let anything fall apart, we often find ourselves at odds with God, wanting to know why something bad has happened or why we don't have something we very much want, and wanting it to all be fixed to our satisfaction right NOW. While we're unchallenged, we may think we'll stand strong, but it's incredibly difficult to yield to God when our happiness and the things and people that we treasure most are threatened or have been lost. Personally, one of the hardest times for me to trust in Him was when we first found out our son had something really wrong with him. Twice, I feared for his life, and twice I found the strength to give my son back to God, placing him in God's hands, even if it meant that my time with him ended up being much shorter than I wanted... That was so incredibly scary, to yield to Him like that! But doing so was the best thing I could have done, for not only did it bring me an incredible dose of peace in a very trying time, but it built up my faith to watch what God did with such a difficult situation once I stopped trying to be the one in charge. I found it helpful in such scary situations to hang onto promises like the one in Jeremiah 29:11,' "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."'

   But when things turn scary isn't the only time we can find it difficult to yield to God's will. Sometimes we don't understand it when we pray for something and we hear "no" or "not yet", especially when what we're asking for seems like a good thing that ought to be in line with His will, according to our understanding. We cannot know His plans, or what good He is going to bring about as a result of denying our requests or waiting before fulfilling them. Sometimes hind sight is 20/20 and we can see at least some of the evidence of His working it for good. Sometimes we have to settle for not knowing in this lifetime, because we can't see His work. As a person who is chronically ill, my requests for healing falls under this category. It's been a "not yet" for a very long time, and I've rebelled a few times against that, but I can honestly say that I can see a lot of His work, the way He's using it for good. He's been drawing me ever closer to Him, shaping my character through adversity, and bringing me into contact with people I never would have had contact with otherwise. Some have had a positive effect on me, and I've had a positive effect on others, and many have become cherished friends. He's also used it to shape the characters and compassion within my family, and I've even seen some remarkable wisdom emerge about trusting God's timing in even the youngest members of our family. There have been lots of silver linings to this dark cloud of illness and pain. Looking for and finding such things helps in the wait, and makes it a little easier to bear. But even when we can't see those things, we can still trust that there is something good coming from having to yield our desires to His will and timing, for Romans 8:28 tells us, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." That's a promise.

   It can be difficult to yield to Him when we learn that He wants us to do something that we're not particularly inclined to do... studying scripture and learning what it tells us is His will can present all sorts of opportunities to grow beyond our comfort zone. But obviously, when we're wanting something that we KNOW isn't in line with God's will, it's going to be difficult to yield to Him. We want what we want, and we human beings are notorious for finding every justification imaginable for going ahead and doing what we know we ought not, giving in to temptation. It can be a real struggle for Christians, being torn between satisfying our own desires and following God. Even Paul found this difficult, saying, "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing." Romans 7:19 We're still sinners, even after we've accepted Christ's gift of salvation. But we have a secret weapon... a direct connection to God. "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." - Matthew 26:41 This verse comes from the passage telling about Jesus' time in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he asked three of his disciples, including Peter, to keep watch, but they kept falling asleep, and my NIV Life Application Study Bible has this to say about the verse: "Jesus used Peter's drowsiness to warn him about the kinds of temptation he would soon face. The way to overcome temptation is to keep watch and pray. Watching means being aware of the possibilities of temptation, sensitive to the subtleties, and spiritually equipped to fight it. Because temptation strikes where we are most vulnerable, we can't resist it alone. Prayer is essential because God's strength can shore up our defenses and defeat Satan's power." First we have to be honest with ourselves about our weaknesses, then we have to be willing to ask God to help us, even when we're not sure we really want that help, because the temptation is just so... well... tempting! That's hard. REALLY hard. But it's also very liberating, because who really wants to be controlled by sin? Who really wants to keep settling for less than God's very best blessings? How much better to be denied what we think we want, at least for now and in this wrong way, then to be rewarded in His timing with something so much more than what we could have ever asked? I've been faced with many temptations. Some I avoided pretty easily. Some I wavered. And with some, I fell. We all do. Nothing for it but to pick ourselves back up, repent, suffer the consequences, and move on, learning from our mistakes.

   But this I know beyond any shadow of doubt... While asserting my own will without regard to God's will has often led me to have regrets later,  I have never regretted yielding to God's will. His way has always led to more satisfaction, more blessings, more growth, more faith-building and amazing evidence of His active work in my life, more peace, more everything. I keep reminding myself of this every time I find myself wanting to resist His will.

Father, thank you for always answering our prayers when we sincerely ask that Your will be done! Help us to always trust in Your infinite wisdom and love, especially when it seems that we want something different from what You want for us. Thank you for rewarding our every effort to yield to You, blessing us with help, peace, understanding and more than we could ever ask. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Counting Blessings

*Author's Note- It's been a LONG time since I've written anything new for my blog! There's been so much going on, a lot of hardships endured in our family... We'd no sooner start to adjust to one, then another would hit. It's been a wild ride! But I'm hopeful that we're finally coming to enough stability to allow me to devote time to writing again. Your prayers for that would be appreciated.
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 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.- Philippians 4:8

  A few weeks ago, I encountered my 3rd-born child, a daughter with a very sensitive heart, looking sad and writing something on a piece of paper. I stopped to see what she was writing, and saw it was a list, and asked if I could see what she was listing. Turns out, she was making a list of the bad things that had happened that day to make her sad. "Oh Sweetie, I'm sorry you had such a bad day! I'm sure these things must have really hurt, especially all in one day like that!" With tears in her eyes, she confirmed that it had. So I hugged her for a while, then said, "I don't think you really want to make this list, though, because it'll just make you even more sad, I think. How about making a happy list instead, one in which you write down all the things you can think of that have made you happy? That sort of a list might do more to make you feel good on sad days like this one. What do you think?" She agreed, and proceeded to make a nice list of joyful things, one that was longer than her sad list. And pretty soon, I was watching my beloved daughter bounce around the house with a smile on her face again.
  It occurred to me, though, that even while I was teaching my daughter, that there was a lesson there for me, too. Like the old, much loved hymn, Count Your Blessings states, "Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your many blessings, see what God hath done." When we do this, we become aware that even when things are bad, we still have much to be thankful for, and that thankful heart helps put us in a state of mind in which we're better able to stand against the bad things in life. As a Christian, I already knew this, as it's played out in my life often enough. But my mind continued to nibble at this thought, not quite letting go of the concept, probably because there was something more for me to learn from it (isn't it funny how often that can happen?) It wasn't for a couple of more weeks, though, that I got an inkling of what I needed to figure out...
  First off, though I think there's plenty to commend about such a person, I am NOT a Pollyanna type, and am not likely to ever be one. I consider myself more of a 'realist', able to look at the whole picture and see both the good and bad and accept that this is just the way it is. I tend to think that this is important for changing things for the better, because if you refuse to acknowledge that anything is bad, what's the point of putting any effort into making things better? After all, why fix what isn't broken, or at least not broken enough to be worth mentioning? I see myself as quite practical about looking at the whole picture, of stating that something is both good and bad in various ways. I have no problem with accepting both the good news and the bad news in whichever order they are given, because I fully expect that regardless of which I hear first, there's going to be something on the other side of the equation to be heard as well. I just take it all as part of the big picture. I report things that way, too: "Yes, my joint pain is much better, but I've been so very tired," for instance. This drives my beloved husband (who I sometimes suspect is directly related to Pollyanna) crazy sometimes, because he equates this with negativity. (Never mind that Pollyanna is a fictional character... sometimes I suspect my hubby, with his obsessive focus on only the positive, is, too. He's even said he plans to donate his body to science fiction! So I rest my case!) My husband would always much rather focus only on the good, and leave the not-so-good unmentioned. He gets praised for his positive attitude all the time. Most of the time, we just don't see eye to eye on that. 
  But I'm thinking there's more merit to his way of seeing things, sometimes (And no, my dear husband, you may not record this on the calendar. That would be a negative thing to do. Just saying.)... If I'm being really honest with myself, I have to admit that sometimes the negative side of that "whole picture" equation seems much bigger than the positive side of it, especially when I'm feeling depressed and overwhelmed by the hardships with which I'm struggling. Those are the days when I may count my blessings but then immediately find fault with those blessings, "I'm thankful we own our own home, but this house is such a wreck and needs so much work to be a nice place to live!" or "I'm thankful for my four unique and generally awesome children, but they're driving me insane with tattling, petty bickering and making messes!" Hmm... doesn't really sound very thankful, does it? Let's try it again, "I'm thankful we own our own home, whose walls have enclosed much love and laughter," or "I'm thankful for my four unique and generally awesome children, who are always ready to give me hugs and share giggles over something goofy." Much better. Seems to me that when the equation has already been stacked towards the negative side by a sad sort of mood, perhaps that's when one ought to think only about the good side of the big picture, regardless of one's usual propensities and arguments in favor of such propensities. Then perhaps we can bounce back from those bad moods almost as fast as my daughter did on her sad day, after making her happy list.

"Father, thank you that there's always good news, something good to focus on, no matter how bad our temporary 'now' might be.  Thank you for showering us with so many blessings to sustain us through the hardships, and for always using those hardships to rain more blessings upon us, sometimes from unexpected sources. Help us to always keep our eye on those "whatevers" that are good to think about. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen."