God’s will…. The following is how I think about God’s Will. He lives in VA [Joke]. I welcome disagreement.
A key idea in my recovery is the idea of learning and doing God’s will. A number of times when a asked for a knowledge of God’s will and I did not think I had found God’s will only to find out later from subsequent experience that the decision I had made worked well. As time passed that I came to the conclusion that I actually had found God’s will because of how well things worked out.
As an example of this when I moved to Boston for a year. Before I went I asked over and over for a knowledge of what God wanted and never felt confident I knew what to do. The time came when I had to make a decision I prayed “Mother God, I am not sure I should go but I am not going to ask any more. I am going. If this is a mistake please stop me.”
That year was a banner year in my life. I met some of the dearest people in my life I met while I was there. I had countless things happened there that were memories I treasure. Not that there were no trials but life was good. I felt I had found God’s will. However lately, I have begun to wonder if I had a great time in Boston less because I had found God’s will but rather that God is willing to bless anything I do.
Most of the time I am not conscience of doing her/his will. It is a more a case that if I am intent on being forgiving and not judgmental, trying to have good manners and being tender hearted I do My Higher Power’s will w/o knowing I was doing her/his will.
There is something else I have learned more recently I think that most of the time when I do God’s will I do it because my thinking has becoming more and more like God’s thinking.
With my daughters their goodness of heart means they do the right thing. The same goes for my sons-in-law.s They do the right thing because their thinking is very loving, generous, considerate and kind. The same goes for you and most of the people I know.
There must be times where a right turn is critical to my well being. At those times My Higher Power finds some way to get me to turn right. Maybe My Higher will say “Turn here” but she /he most of the time she/he will help me make the right decision because it is just the next logical step. I have had a kind of “Damascus Road” experience but mostly things work out well.
When things don’t turn out well I can turn things over to God and my mistakes work to my benefit or I can learn from someone’s unkindness when I am able to forgive and turn it over to my Higher Power. In that way both my mistakes and your mistakes toward me can work for me.
As I lived my life everything seemed to happen in a random way. However, as I look back on my life things seem a well organized and written novel. It seems like a well crafted novel with things happening as they were meant to. I can’t reduce this idea to a logical sequence but then I can’t reduce God ionto concepts that fit inside my brain. I could not trust any God I could completely figure out. That is way to limited for me.
Maybe the most important way for me to know I am doing God’s will is if I am doing my duty. Duty has been misused by dominating people to coerce me to do unhealthy things. Nevertheless. Most of the time I do God’s will w/o knowing specifically I am doing Her/his will. I am simply doing easy and hard things just because they are just the next indicated thing.
George Caywood 