If God
wants what is best for me, then why do I have a hard time wanting it too? Our minds have definitely been damaged by the
fall. Even though I know better than to
want what I want, I can’t stop myself. I
find it difficult to transform my mind from wanting what I want into wanting
what God wants.
Wanting God
isn’t easy. It’s only the seasoned
saints who truly breaks through to fully wanting God more than their selfish
desires. They don’t want God on their own. They need help just like I do. To want God is to want His will. In the
Christmas story the Virgin Mary seemed so prepared to do God’s will, more than
Zachariah. Eventually they both wanted
God’s best; it just took a few months of speechlessness for Zachariah to come
around. This means there is hope for me.
The main
reason that it is so hard to want what God wants is because God’s wants are so
much higher than my wants. I want the easy way.
I want the instant way. God has
better plans than I do. St. Bernard of
Clairvaux explains it this way, Life is
in his will. That would be the way a
saint would see the will of God. How did
he come to see this? Life experiences
most likely taught him. I’m sure he had
a lot of opportunities to see that not doing God’s will brought the opposite of
life a time or two. Eventually he got
it. He fully submitted himself to God’s
will and found in doing so that real life was not denied him in any way.
That’s the
kind of life I want to live. I want to
want God. Paul described how God saw
David in Acts 13:22. God testified concerning him: I have found
David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him
to do. I wish those words could be
said of me one hundred percent of the time.
I think God could say that for the majority of the time, but God and I
do get in squabbles when I resist doing the seemingly impossible action or
thought He asks of me.
What
if I did everything God wanted? I would
be really living, according to St. Bernard.
God wants a lot better for me than I want for myself. For instance, He wants me to be more thoughtful
toward others than I am to myself.
Where’s the fun in that? I like
to be self-focused; it is fun for a season, but there is no life there. It eventually wears me out. However, when I want what God wants and
discover the joy of self-sacrifice, I realize that I am really living.
I
can share with you from my own experience that when I finally give up my wants
for God’s, then and only then do I find the utter joy of wanting what God
wants. There is truly a battle of the
wills until I turn mine over to do God’s will that is better even though it is uncomfortable.
What
keeps me from wanting what God wants?
It’s my fallen mind that doesn’t remember how empty my own wants leave
me.
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