Thy Will Be Done

Thy Will Be Done... 4 little words that could change your life. Not when you say them. Not when you write them down. But when you pray them and you mean it.

When I hear these words, I think about more than just professing that God is in control over my life. Rather, I think about the call to surrender my life to God and let Him lead, even if He leads me to places I’m unsure about. Thy will be done is a statement about my trust in God and my faith in His genuine goodness. These 4 words mean that my faith outweighs my fear of not knowing where He will bring me.

But man, these words are scary. Honestly, I will say I am always so tentative about praying these words. Because if I truly mean, “Thy will be done,” then the rest of my life is totally in God’s hands. This means that when tragedy strikes, I have to believe that somehow that tragedy is a part of God’s plans. That in itself is scary.

Even so, God can only use me to the extent to which I surrender to Him. If I only surrender half-heartedly, I’m missing the point of what faith is about. If I only surrender half-heartedly, my relationship with Christ will reach a standstill and will remain on the teeter-totter scale of being lukewarm. If I want so desperately to be a light in God’s Kingdom, I have to be willing to pray, “Thy will be done,” being unaware of what God’s will may be.

I have learned this the hard way over the last couple of years. Ever since I first started playing volleyball, I loved the game more than anything. I will readily admit it took priority over many things in my life, even my relationship with Christ. Yet, I found ways to use the sport to bring glory to God and use it to share my faith with others. I knew from a young age that I wanted to play the sport as long as I could, and take my abilities as far as they would take me. But that was my own plan. Even as I prayed, “God, use me for your plan… Your will be done,” I never meant for Him to take the sport away from me…I always meant for Him to allow me to play the sport as part of that plan.

But it is beyond clear to me now that playing volleyball was not what God set out for my life. After my freshmen year in college, I was not in a good place. It was almost like I had this voice in the back of my head that told me to quit volleyball. I thought so many times about quitting and even transferring, but my passion for the game never let me quit. Ultimately, I decided that I couldn’t picture finishing college without playing volleyball, so I kept on playing. Not long after, I hurt my knee the first week of practice my sophomore year, and ever since then I have been on the sidelines, watching volleyball…but never playing. This was never a part of my plan when I prayed, “Thy will be done.”

Looking back now, sometimes it makes sense why God allowed this to happen, but many times it doesn’t. I’ve learned so much and have had many opportunities that I don’t think I would have had if I continued to play volleyball, but there’s always that human side of me that tells me my life would have been better if I could have played volleyball for just a few more years. Now, as I’m working on graduating early and won’t be able to be a part of my volleyball team in Arizona at all, I’m still struggling to see why God couldn’t let me be one of the athletes still on the court. I’m struggling because I’ve been on some kind of sport’s team for as long as I can remember, and now I’m not. There is even a part of me that thinks, “Ok God, you took volleyball away from me, then I won’t be a part of it all… I won’t watch, I won’t support, I won’t coach…I don’t even want to play for fun because you took my passion away.” But God didn’t take my passion away. He didn’t even take the sport away. His plan just has my passion for volleyball shaped in a different way.

 “Thy will be done,” turned out to be very, very different from “My will be done.”

I oftentimes wonder why it matters so much that I surrender to God’s will. God is God, and I’m only human, right? So, won’t God’s will happen anyways, regardless of whatever I think, say, or do?

The way God works is a mystery. Yes, His plan will prevail and my human heart can’t stop the hand of God. However, surrendering my heart still matters. It matters because if I don’t surrender to God’s plan, I’m missing out on opportunities to bring people to Him. It matters because if I don’t surrender, my relationship with Christ has no backbone. It matters because my heart is His, and if I don’t have faith in His will, then I don’t truly believe that God is who He says He is.

“It is a mystery because of the mysterious way in which God works, using sin to accomplish His good will, suffering to produce glory, death to bring about life. It is a mystery which fallen man cannot fathom apart from the illumination of the Holy Spirit.” –Bob Deffinbaugh

I love this statement by Deffinbaugh, in a Bible study he wrote about God’s plan. We are incapable of understanding the mysterious ways in which God works. But this doesn’t mean that His plans aren’t good. How could we ever understand terrorist attacks? How can we understand cancer breaking in and stealing joy among families? How can we understand poverty and children going to sleep at night without having eaten anything that day?

We can’t understand it…and sometimes I think the more I try to understand it, the more confused I become. But “Thy will be done” brings me to a place where my lack of understanding is defeated by my faith in God’s goodness. Even when I don’t understand these things, I know that God is good, and somehow a greater purpose for good is being accomplished in the midst of them.

“So then, this is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” –Matthew 6:9-10