When the Problem with Prayer is Me

"There are two kinds of people:
those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says,
'All right, then, have it your way.'"
~ C.S. Lewis ~

Doing God’s will has always been important to me. It was important to King David. He desired to do God’s will (Ps. 40:8) and even asked God to teach him how to do his will (Ps. 143:10). It was certainly important to Jesus. He constantly reminded believers to seek and to choose God’s will.

In an effort to do this, I have, for most of my life, modeled my requests the way Jesus prayed in Matthew 26:39, firmly believing that by tagging each prayer with, “Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done” I was putting God’s will first in my life. There are still times when I am compelled to pray this way. In particular, if a loved one is seriously ill or injured, or out of work, or dealing with some type of tragedy, I will pray that God heal, repair, or provide what that person needs.

However, the prayers I prayed for myself were filled with, “Bless me. Help me. Keep me. Give me.” All too often, I was really asking God, “Please bless what I am going to do anyway” or, “Here’s something I want, please make it happen.” Then if I did it and it went well, or I got the thing I wanted, I determined that it must have been God’s will, but how could I really know?

In such instances, maybe he was saying to me, “All right, then, have it your way.”

Struggling with this over the years, I have found myself drawn to people with more spiritual depth than I. One common thread is their reliance on God, a deep faith that he has a plan for their lives, and a strong desire to discover what that plan is and to be an instrument of his will.

Realizing that I did not know this type of faith, I decided to change the way I pray about my needs and wants. What if, instead of asking God to bless my plans, I ask him to make his will for my life known to me? What if I offer myself to be his hands and his feet? What if I ask him to put me in situations that are uncomfortable so that I can grow? What if I ask him to make it known to me how I can serve him more? What if, instead of wanting God to be intimately involved in what is going on in my life, my focus is on being intimately involved in God’s will: wanting it, seeking it, finding it, doing it. What if the focus of my life is to know God and to be more like him, not just be known by him?

What if this small change in the way I pray changes my life?

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him” I John 5:14-15.