Doing God’s Will by Becoming More Truly Myself
Sometimes, I’m afraid to pray. I’m not really afraid of God like a kid who thinks of Him as an adult that is going to punish him for his missteps. It’s more like being afraid of what He’ll ask me to do in my life’s work. He asks people to leave their homelands and fight battles, and sometimes I just struggle to make it to the end of the day. After all, when I’m on my phone looking at vacations, stuff people are buying, and exciting projects people are completing, they seem happy enough. Can I just be happy and skip this whole battle for the destiny of the world?
There’s some truth to my fears, I think. I do believe that God has big plans for us and that we are called to live lives of heroic virtue that change the world for the better. But I think what I’m afraid of is that I’ll be asked to do things that are beyond me and outside of myself. There have been plenty of times when I know I have done things that I’ve dreaded only to think to myself, “Wow, that wasn’t that bad.” In those moments, I responded to the challenge because I was the right person for the job. It’s almost like when your boss chooses the right person with the right skill set to complete a project and they knock it out of the park and do better than anyone else on the team could have and the whole group knows it and celebrates it. I think that’s what heaven will be like when we get there.
But as I wrote that last analogy, I realized how the thought of God as a boss has seeped into my mindset. Boss’ evaluate productivity, but God as a Father evaluates effort and the heart. Not only that, but as a Father, he is even more attentive to our abilities and the duties He assigns us, ensuring we are able to meet that which we are called to. God sees what is in us, and asks us to do things that make us more fully ourselves. Why would I be afraid of that? Why do I think that God is asking me to be someone I’m not?
Social media is filled with flashes of happiness but not the lasting peace and joy that comes from doing the will of God. Today, I’m going to try to take the tasks that I know God has destined for me due to my job (and the people he subsequently seats across the room from me) and my vocation as a husband and father, and I’m going to do them to the best of my ability, as a son. At the end of the day, I’m going to try to stand before Him and talk to Him about them, and be grateful for the tasks that I have been given, the moments where I excelled, and ask for Him to continue to guide me and shape me more and more into myself. Because that is my life’s work.
by Mark
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