Your Will Be Done?

‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done…’

But wait,

I say the words but I don’t echo them in my heart.

 

You see,

Its easy to say ‘your will be done’ when God’s will is exactly the same as ours,

But what if his will is to close every door we try to open and to lead us to the one we would rather stayed closed?

What if his will is to move you away from our church family?

What if his will is for you, after four years at university, to become a kitchen porter?

What if his will is that you lose your job?

Or that after years of what looks like success, it feels like there is only failure now?

What if his will is that you must walk a road marked with grief and broken relionships?

Or a road marked with darkness, as mental illness closes in?

 

It is hard to keep trusting his plan,

When rejection after rejection streams in,

When motivation runs completely dry,

When eighty job applications down the line,

I am still no closer to getting a job that isn’t zero hours.

When my heart turns bitter,

And resentment seeps its way in.

 

It is hard to keep trusting his plan,

When death snatches someone you love,

When friendships fall apart,

When distance breaks the bonds,

that you once though were so very strong.

When in a matter of days,

Your year is turned upside down,

And a virus who’s name, six months ago,

Meant nothing to you,

Transforms each and every part of your life.

 

It is hard for me to keep trusting his plan,

When it seems to be the complete opposite of my own,

Which leaves me to wonder, do I really want God’s will to be done?

If the essence of prayer is ‘thy will be done’ then…

Then how do I pray at all?

 

The fact is,

That really, in the end, it doesn’t matter what I want,

God is sovereign and his will will be done.

And though it might seem a cause for despair,

There is beauty in this and freedom,

My fragile, idealistic, unrealistic plans,

Are nothing compared to the glorious, unfathomable,

immovable will of God.

 

And as we come to our knees,

And echo this prayer,

He is ready to transform us,

To work in our heart that we might trust in his plan,

That little by little,

Those words might ring true:

‘Your will be done.’

 

Faith is letting go of what we think should happen,

And trusting that God’s understanding is so much greater than our own.

Will we try to fight for what we want or will we yield to God?

As we confess, as we let go, we cry:

‘This is not what I would have planned but I submit to you.’

Guide me along the path that you will me to go.

Not the path that seems right and easy,

but the path that you call me to walk.

 

As I whisper in the darkest moment of the night, ‘your will be done’,

I can trust in a saviour who’s struggle was the same,

No, it was greater,

As he looked to the what lay before him and fell with his face to the ground and called out ‘yet not my will but yours be done’.