Take Your Own Advice

"Lord, if it's not Your will, let it slip through my grasp and give me the peace not to worry about it. Amen." 

Tonight, I repeat this prayer and rejoice in the quiet determination to listen to God's will. The lesson from yesterday left me convicted as I realized I hadn't honored my own advice. I am in a battle right now, a battle I have fought for nearly a year, and I have only prayed for my desired victory and not God's will for a victory. As much as I want our victories to be the same, I have to admit there is a possibility that they are not. I try to be attuned to God's will in my life, but I am also stubborn, wanting what I want. Today, I attempted to take my own advice and it was hard: I spent all day trying to pray.

My heart didn't want to pray that prayer and I fought all day to utter the words I needed to pray. Finally, I prayed and finally managed to ask God for His will in this battle: Do I continue to fight or do I give up? To give up would be to admit that I was fighting a battle God didn't want me in. It would also mean that I had wasted a year fighting when I could have been receiving His blessings instead. I also prayed in the context of parameters, something else I didn't want to do. Parameters meant the possibility of a much sooner disappointment if my intended victory was not God's will. My heart hated to do it, but I felt I needed the certainty and if God's will was different then I could end the battle a lot sooner than anticipated. My parameters were not the conclusion of the battle, but rather an indication of God's will. 

At the conclusion of my prayer, there resided in me the quiet determination to listen to God's will, whatever that might mean for my life. If we want to be successful in battle then we need to make sure the battle is actually God's will for us.