photo credits : promarine finance.
For the umpteenth time, I asked God, “please, take away my will.” And for the first time, I got a clearer answer, amidst several unclear ones.
Were they unclear? I would rather say I chose not to believe they were answers at all. They simply did not align with what I desired as a response.
When what you are praying to be taken away turns out to be the very answer to your prayer, how do you reconcile that? Now you understand my stance when I said I did not believe it initially.
Over the past couple of years, I have prayed several weird prayers. When I say weird, I mean it like W E I R D! But God didn’t consider it as such. I imagined He must have chuckled many times ( lovingly and not mockingly), hearing those prayers from me. What a babe I was.
One of the examples of such prayers was “ Lord, make me a Robot and hold the remote control.” God didn’t chuckle this time. He must have laughed out loud.Thinking about it now has got me laughing as if N2O was sprayed on me.
However when I prayed back then, it was with all seriousness and sincerity. Tears flowed freely. Heart in anguish. Hands clasped tightly. Knees bent before the throne of grace. And sometimes, my body sprawled on the floor when kneeling won’t suffice to express the depths of my desires to God. The matter of my will mattered a lot. My Will was becoming a clog in the wheel of my progress. I desire to do everything God wanted but somehow, an ugly head rears up and the story takes thesame old route. This is similar to Paul’s experience in Romans 7. I resonated so deeply with it.
How can you explain praying for deliverance from a habit only for your next destination after “Amen” to be right in the middle of what you prayed against?
My will was not the problem. The lack of understanding on how to use it was the problem.
That’s quite a great deal of frustration! You will feel like God never answered your prayers. You might feel it’s impossible to overcome. All sorts of negative thoughts might overwhelm your frail mind and almost make it shatter, unless God’s grace was available to make your cobweb-spun mind as strong as steel to withstand mental defeat.
The concept of the Human will has remained a mystery to me. I find it littered all over the scriptures and most times, in situations that corroborate my negative perception of it. Why were the children of Israel so hard hearted? Well, I can relate to that. I was such a mini miss Israelite.
I longed to do God’s will but as long as I don’t wield the sword of my will in the direction of God’s choice, I end up in square 0. Always.
My wish was to do God’s will without having to battle resisting a million opposing forces. I wanted to wake with only the thoughts of doing God’s will, get so pumped up to get things done for God and hit the ground running immediately.
Alas. The opposite was the case. It was as if a battalion of forces were waiting to spray me with bullets of doubts, insecurities, laziness, weakness, fear etc. immediately I wake. Little did I know that they were part of my sources of bullet to fight the day’s battle.
God surely have a sense of humour, right? He makes our enemies provide us some weapons we can use against them!
However, they are weapons in the hands of those with the right understanding.
While my attention was focused on the negative, the positive rusted.
It was later I discovered by revelation that I had a wrong focus. If I, like Gehazi, kept my eyes fixed on the number of Syrian armies against me, instead of the gazillion of angels surrounding me, I will always end up defeated even when I was not supposed to be.
God answered my prayers, not by taking away those negative forces that have kept me in the lurch of wrong choices, but by redirecting my focus on the magnitude of the power resident in His Grace for me to overcome.
He painted the picture of the process of muscle building. For every opposition a muscle fiber overcomes, it hypertrophies. The negative forces aren’t there to corrupt my will. They are part of the plan for my victory.
He taught me to see the temptations as opportunities to obey him rather than sulk at the failure from past defeats
Without the wind, the yacht will not sail.So, for everytime I ask God to take away my will, I was asking him to take away the wind that can be harnessed to make my yacht sail smoothly and faster on the oceans of his will.
I was asking him to keep my muscle fiber smaller.
I was asking him to take away friction, when I desired to walk with him.
I was asking him to take away gravity, when I desired stability.
Such a counterintuitive prayer I prayed.
I was literally praying against my desires!
God, being merciful to me over these past years, gave me an understanding of how to pray right and see right. He taught me to see the temptations as opportunities to obey him rather than sulk at the failure from past defeat. He made me realize that every temptation I overcome, strengthens my obedience to Him.
So, when temptations come a million times a day, what a millionaire I would become by obeying God daily! Now sum that up in a year. My dear, that’s part of what it means to be rich towards God!
When God takes away the temptations or the challenges and trials, he takes away the opportunity you’ve got to prove your love for him. How else will he ascertain how much you love him? That’s why he won’t take it away.
Dear Friends, perhaps you have prayed weirdly like I did, I hope you have a better understanding of why the temptations got multiplied whenever you prayed to be a better child of God. He answered you by happily allowing a myriad of opportunities so you can be better.
My will was not the problem. The lack of understanding on how to use it was the problem.
God won’t make us to be Robots and punch the control button from above. Lol. He will rather help us build the muscles of our will to obey him better in the face of oppositions.
Now, like Paul the apostle, we will take delight in these trials and temptations, for through them, God’s power is made manifest in us.
God in his mercies, didn’t take away the wind. He trained me to harness it. And he is still training me.
How about you?
God bless you!