Will Of God 10 – I have no idea where I am going
I believe; help my unbelief (Mark 9:24).
On the first page of their enormously popular Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God, Henry Blackaby and Claude King pledge that with their material “you will be able to hear when God is speaking to you, clearly identify the activity of God in your life, clearly know what you need to do in response to His activity in your life and to do it.” Much is clear. But if “clearly” is the dominant mood, then I am lost, for God’s will isn’t always so clear to me, and my ability to do God’s will is compromised. We have to be humble, and merciful with ourselves and others.
One grave difficulty is that, like a juvenile testing limits, I prefer my will to God’s will. A rebel inside jerks me around, and away from God. My intention to do God’s will feels impotent. One of the greatest Christians in history moaned, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). Or worse, I do what I want and pretend it is what God would want. “Woe to my rebellious children who carry out a plan that is not mine” (Isaiah 30:1). What did Anne Lamott say? “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans.”
To get into God’s will, I need to be converted – not in the sense of responding to an altar call and getting saved, but in the ongoing, daily, hourly prayer for God to bend my desire away from me and back toward God: “Not my will, but your will” (Matthew 26:39). At some point you stop ruminating over God’s will and you do something, you launch out in hope, humble, a bit uncertain, but with a dogged determination to please God: no holding back! “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice… Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God” (Romans 12:1). Prayer, again, is the key – and I am constantly grateful for this prayer from Thomas Merton:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I will do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”