our will and His

St Gregory the Great tells us about surrendering to God's will today in A Year with the Church Fathers.

He says that learning to submit to God's will, as Jesus did in Gethsemane, is very key to learning how to suffer patiently when things in life are difficult. And he's right, of course.

But one thing I would like to add is that it doesn't always have to be an adversarial relationship between our will and God's. One prayer that God has helped me learn to pray is that I will start WANTING to do the things that He wants me to do. That my will might conform to His will. That I might learn to desire to do the things in my life that He desires for me to do. And He does that. He changes my desires. He's done it multiple times. In fact, I've found this to be a good way to discern His will on a subject. If I'm not sure whether I should move to Denver or Albuquerque, I start praying that He will cause me to WANT to move to the right place. And after I pray that, over the course of the next few days, I find myself WANTING to move to Denver, and my desire to move to Albuquerque goes away. (This is just a hypothetical example. I'm not moving to either place at the moment.)

"Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." This profound prayer that Jesus gave us is another way of expressing the same sentiment. "God, I want Your will to be done on earth, and in my life, as it is done in heaven." This is a prayer that I promise you, you'll get a "yes" response to.

God, please help us to want the things that You want in our lives.