“Your will be done.” Four words. Easy to pronounce, easy to say. Hardcore to live. 

“Your will be done on earth…As it is heaven.”  This is something we can only dream about. It’s something we cannot fully comprehend. Heaven? No pain? No crying? No stress? No anxiety, depression, exhaustion, restlessness, loneliness, or burden to bear?  Not comprehensible. Eternity; time that NEVER ends, with God. Again, not comprehensible for our human minds. Yet, God leads us to ask Him for things we do not fully understand. This requires a lot of trust.

Sometimes I get frustrated with this. Trusting in God can be hard. Trusting in Him for things I cannot see, do not understand, or even seem to be the opposite of what I think I need or want. My mom died 20 months ago from cancer. This was a time where I learned a new way of praying “your will be done” as I did not know if that would include healing. This was a scary place to be. His plan did not include healing. 

I have struggled with singleness for years. The desire in my heart, since I was 10, has been to be married and spend my life with a Godly man. I am about to turn 35 and I am still single. This was not the plan. My prayers about singleness have varied through the years. There are the phases where I want to be bold and ask for exactly what I want. Then there are phases where I know He has purpose in this, and knows my heart, and so I pray His will would be my heart desire for my life. 

There have been and will continue to be hundreds of times where I am praying for an answer that does not come or comes on God’s timeline, which might be way off of my timeline. We all experience this. We all can list dozens of examples of when praying God’s will was scary, when God gave us the clarity we needed to make a decision but waited, to what felt to us, to the very last minute. 

Yet, if I write down the list of dozens or hundreds of those times and then reflect on whether my plan or timeline would have been better, mine loses out every time. Every time. This history of God’s will being done on earth and in my life  always being better is such a great reminder to me of why I can trust in Him. God’s will is always best even if it’s not the easier route or I don’t fully understand. 

My mom passed from this life and it was, is, and will continue to be painful. But, there is a multitude of ways God has used her sickness and death to bring many to accept Jesus who did not know Him before. There will literally be more people in heaven and more who experience hope on earth because of how He used her life. This is a “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” example to me. I can only have a perspective to see how God’s will can be done through that kind of pain by thinking of heaven, by remembering He is much wiser than I. 

I am still single but I continue to see how God uses my vast freedom and capacity in this for His kingdom. I get to do so many things I never thought I’d get opportunities to do. God knows all parts of my heart and continues growing me and leveraging this chapter of life in great ways. There is purpose in this. 

At the end of the day, I know myself. I know my flaws, my shortcomings, where I struggle to find clarity, where I have a hard time sticking to disciplines. I know my own thoughts. I am grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice because I needed it and I need Him. All of this makes me grateful that a God who is perfect, loving and caring is in control. So, even when it’s hard, do I want His will to be done over mine? Absolutely. 

So, I will pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I will work to remember the ways He has shown himself in the past, the promises He has made, and who He is, even when I doubt. I will celebrate that I am not in control and that a perfect God who knows all has a will for my life that is better for me than anything I could dream up. 

God let your will be done.