“Thy Will Be Done”

A personal account.

By Anonymous 

Florida

T
his is a break from your usual program.  I am not writing this blog to teach virtue or condemn sin as we are all used to seeing.  This is a very personal account about discovering and, more importantly, living with God’s will in our lives.

I have had a personal attachment that has ailed me for years.  It doesn’t matter what “it” was.  In fact, to make this more practical, replace “it” with your own personal attachment, be it an idea, a goal, a person, or a thing, if you have one.  This attachment occupied my thoughts, affected my dreams, and modified my public behavior.  It reached a point where life wasn’t enjoyable unless it involved this attachment.  Unless this attachment was fully mine, I felt like my entire being was lacking, and there was a huge void that had to be filled.

For a period of my life, this attachment was close to being mine- so close, it was almost surreal.  My life revolved around it.

And then one day, just like that, it vanished before my very eyes.

I was devastated.  Depressed.  Angry.  Why did God do this to me?  He knew how much I loved it, was it too much for me to actually have?  Throughout this whole ordeal, the craziest things have happened, and I was ultimately wronged and treated unfairly, only to have to cope with it and accept it as the “will of God.”

What is the “will of God?” I asked for guidance and books on the topic.  The will of God completely changed for me.  It turned from being a usual youth meeting topic to something that personally affected me.  I cried in my prayer, and asked God to show me His will, even though I didn’t like it, I didn’t understand it, it conflicted with my own will.

Slowly but surely, I was comforted, for “I cried to the Lord, and He heard me” (Psalm 120:1).  I began to hear God’s answers to me in the most usual events- Sunday sermon, youth meeting, even in a novel.

Ultimately, I learned something important about the will of God.  It will never EVER harm me.  On the contrary, it will only benefit me in the long run.  God doesn’t take something from a person with the intent of leaving them empty-handed, but only to replace it with something even better.  I haven’t experienced this yet, but it is the hope that I am clinging to.  And all in all, I feel that I have benefited from this experience.  I grew closer to God, breaking boundaries in prayer that I have never explored before.  I still feel down at times, I still cry, but I have hope now that one day, God will make things clearer to me, and I will look back at laugh at it all.

If anyone has had a similar experience, I highly recommend a book called “The Joy of Full Surrender” by Jean-Pierre de Caussade.

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9).  May this coming year be filled with the joy of being surrendered to our Good Shepherd, Who knows our wants and needs before we even do.