?Life Lessons: Your Will or God's Will

Hey family,

So as of recent, I feel like I've been learning a lot of little lessons about life. I'm not sure whether I've had more lessons to learn, or I'm just paying more attention to them, but I feel like it's been quite beneficial, and decided I'd share some in a series called Life Lessons.

This first one actually relates to why I've experienced so many lessons.

I am a Christian, and recently, more so than ever before, I have been praying two significant prayers to God:

-Let your Will be done in my life.

-Make me the woman you want me to be.

The underlying key of both of these prayers is submission. It is so crucial in order to move forward mentally and spiritually. Here's why. When you are not surrendering to God's will, your prayers, thoughts and actions become focused around yours.

This means you are now exerting energy into doing things that are not in God's plan for you, praying that

these things will succeed, and then potentially experiencing spiritual frustration when these things do not play out. This is a cycle, a very exhausting one at that.

The key thing to realise then, is that when you surrender to God's will, you need to ask for the grace to accept it, and that it may not be exactly what you want. It may not be pleasurable and it certainly might not be easy. The thing is, by asking God to make you the person He wants you to be, you're asking Him to alter certain traits. If that trait is emotional strength, you will not wake up one day 10 times stronger. In order to become stronger, you will go through things you probably would prefer not to go through. But the growth will be worth it. I'm just joyfully warning you all that you shouldn't expect an easy ride.

-

Psalm 37:4- Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.

To delight in the Lord is to make Him the priority. To make Him the priority is to surrender. And to surrender brings you joy and freedom.

The freedom it brings is in a sense inexplicable. You stop contemplating past and future actions to manipulate situations and you relax, knowing that the will of your Creator will be done. Our minds are always running, trying to calculate how to 'twang' a situation in our favour, how to make someone like us, critisising our past behaviours... when the answer is simple.

Deny yourself; follow Him

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it".

Matthew 16:25

Love and light,

Young B

(I know, I'm unserious)

Psalm 37: