God's Will

“Not as I will, but as You will.”  ~ Matthew 26:39

My son, when he was interested in playing football, asked me to pray that he would get one of those coveted positions on the team.  

I at that time informed my son that I would pray about the selection of players. “I’ll ask that the right thing will happen for you,” I told him. 

Hakeem shot me a somewhat apprehensive glance. “Don’t do that, Mom,” he pleaded. “Just pray that I make the team!”

Pre-teen kind of sentiments? Amusing? Perhaps, but so often I don’t want the right thing to happen; I just want to make the team. I can remember praying “Hakeem prayers” when I was very young. “O God,” I would say, “I want a pretty day on Saturday,” or “Please help me to pass the examination without having to do any studying!”  As children we make these type of requests. 

But when we become adults, we are supposed to put away childish things (see 1 Cor. 13:11). God intends us to learn how to praise Him for Saturday’s rain, and to ask Him for help as we do our homework.

Hakeem became disinterested in football and took to music and I have watched his gift soar. Hakeem’s calling we have discovered through praying in God’s will was not for him to be a superstar on the football field but for him to bring music to this earth in such a meaningful way.  

The last time I talked to him about prayer, he said. “Pray for me, Mom.”

“What for, Hak?” I asked.

“Pray I will make the best music I can,” he said quietly. Hakeem has come a long way.  Have you; have I?  Prayer after all is the means by which we sense God’s desires, and they become our own. And while we begin to pray that God’s will be done, we might even begin to line our prayers up with God. 

Blessings on the journey

Pr. Imani N. Dodley