Praying for God’s Will Instead of Ours
How can we surrender our will to God?
When we pray “your will be done” as Jesus teaches us to pray, that’s what we’re asking for. We’re asking God to make His will be done on earth instead of any other will, including our own.
If we’re convinced of God’s care for us, if we’re convinced of His Fatherly love for us, if we’re convinced of His holiness—His perfection beyond perfection and goodness beyond goodness—then we can say yes to His will being better than someone else’s will. His will is better than random chance. His will is better than what our boss has planned for us. His will is better than what our friends have planned for us. It’s certainly better than the chaos, death and destruction the enemy is trying to bring into our lives.
But it requires an entirely different level of belief to ask God to make His will be done instead of our own.
We have to become convinced of the love of God in order to allow ourselves to surrender to Him willingly the way God wants us to surrender to Him. God is not looking for unwilling subjects. He is looking for children who love Him and who are loved by Him (1 John 3:1). In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us first to pray “Our Father,” and then later to pray, “your will be done,” and this seems to be part of the reason. The fatherly love of God—in all its perfection—allows us to fully trust God’s plan for us and His will for us. We cannot give up our plans and ambitions or our lives to God without being absolutely convinced of His love for us.
Part of our relationship journey with God is to learn through experience to trust Him more. The more we know Him relationally, the more we become convinced of His absolute love and trustworthiness. The more we are convinced of His love and trustworthiness, the more willing we are to surrender our will so that His is done instead of ours, even in our own lives.
Jesus teaches that His people must turn from their sins and become like little children in order to be saved. In particular, he directs us to become humble like little children. (Matthew 18) The humility of children toward their parents is in part that they assume their parents will provide for them. Certainly children can be rebellious or disrespectful, but they also have a built-in trust in their parents. Children assume that their parents are going to take care of them and provide for them. On some level, they assume that their parents are going to lead them in the way that they are supposed to go. As children age, this humility fades and is replaced by a belief that the child’s own way is best—and so many of the struggles of parenting rise out of this transition. That’s a conversation for another time.
What Jesus is pointing us toward in Matthew 18 is this childlike humility—this attitude that instantly trusts that another’s way is better. To be clear, we are not to have that trust in anyone except for our Father God. He is the only One Who is worthy of it, and He is the only One Who can live up to it. He has shown us such great love in sending His Son Jesus that we can believe that He will lead us lovingly down the right path for our lives. He is also holy—perfect beyond perfect, pure beyond pure, and good beyond good—so we know that He has the knowledge and the power to lead us down the path of love that He wants for us.
To grow deeper in relationship with God is to trust Him more. As we trust Him more, we grow in our humility, because we see more and more of His holiness, love, and greatness. As these characteristics of God become clear to us, it becomes easier for us to give up our will in exchange for God’s will. His will is perfect. His will is pure. His will is right. His will is the path of righteousness and peace and wholeness.
A difficult thing about fallowing God is that so many things happen outside of our control, and, because the world is broken, so many of those things are bad. The world has been devastated by sin and it doesn’t work the way it is supposed to. Because of this, we experience suffering—sometimes devastating suffering. In those moments when it is most difficult to trust the will of our perfectly loving Father, it is in fact most important that we look to Him and say, “Your will be done.” We must remember that His Kingdom is certain, but it is not yet. It is coming, but it is not now here. One day there will be no more death or sorrow or pain. Until then, we can trust that God is in fact with us. He feels our pain. He knows exactly what it is like to suffer as we suffer. He has chosen a path for us that is best for us. It is best for us, no matter what happens, to absolutely surrender to His will.
Read More: What Does It Mean to Pray Your Kingdom Come?
Part of the experience of praying “Your will be done” is that we are leading our hearts to more fullly surrender to the will of God. When we pray for God to do His will and not ours, the Holy Spirit searches our hearts for the places where we are consciously or unconsciously unwilling to surrender our will to God. Each one of us has places in our emotions or our minds or our behavior that we are unwilling to surrender to God. We may be aware of these places, or we may not be, but until we see Jesus face to face and He makes us perfect, we will struggle with these areas of imperfection.
When we pray “Your will be done” we are asking the Holy Spirit to illuminate these dark places in our lives so that God can make us pure. We want to be more like Him. At the very least, we want to want to be more like Him. As we grow in relationship with God, God will reveal to us the areas of our live that must be given over to Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is our role to say yes. Some of these areas may come easy. We may readily say “Yes, Lord. I have seen my sin, and I lay it down in favor of Your way.” This is the humility of a child. Other areas of our lives will be more difficult. There are areas of our lives—thoughts, attitudes, patterns of behavior, habits, and other things—that we don’t want to let go of. We may try to rationalize this in any number of ways: surely God doesn’t want me to give this up; it’s fine for me to continue for these reasons; God isn’t the one leading me down this path. But growing in relationship with Him and growing in childlike humility is learning to listen to Him and to obey when He responds to our prayer when we ask, “Your will be done.”
We’re good at convincing ourselves that we have given God our whole will—that we are fully surrendered to Him. It is wise to be continually asking ourselves not “if” we are fully surrendered to Him, but that He would show us which areas of our lives are “not” fully surrendered to Him.
As we remind ourselves of God’s love for us and we commit ourselves to childlike humility, we position ourselves to say yes to God’s answer when we pray, “Your will be done.”