For the first three years of college, I thought I had the greater part of the rest of my life figured out. I had plans, and I was going to do whatever it took to make them come to fruition. I knew early on in my time at college that once I received my bachelor’s degree in business, I would go on to law school and pursue a career as a legal counsel at a large corporation of some sort. My future was even further cemented during this period of time as I was in a serious relationship with a girl who was just a fantastic person. She too, had career goals, a nice family, and a love for God.

It would be an understatement to say that as time went on, my plans changed. As my senior year came to a close, I was torn between the decision to return back to school and get my MBA, which would enable me to finish my last year of track eligibility if my leg healed in time, or to move on to law school. At this same time, my girlfriend of three years and I broke up. Most of the plans I had made for the post college life were over. I no longer knew what I wanted to do with my career, with school, or with my life. I felt so susceptible to the poison of uncertainty. It felt like it was caving in on me. My walls of comfort were collapsing all around me.

I remember during that period of time, when I was most confused, I would walk down to the cliffs from my dorm room and look across the ocean. I would often sit there by myself and pray to God, sometimes, most of the time, really not knowing for what to pray. I honestly didn’t even know what I wanted with my future. It was one of the toughest times of my life, and yet, in a sense, almost refreshing. Refreshing in the sense that for the first time in my life I had prayed to God, asking for His will to be manifested through me. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t have my own agenda for which to pray. I wasn’t praying for the things that I wanted, because I didn’t even know what I wanted for myself. It was the first time in my life I truly wanted God’s will to happen in my life, because I knew that would be the best thing for me.

You see, we often pray for God’s will in our life out of reluctance, because we know the church tells us to pray for “God’s will”, but we don’t always want it. It’s one of those “church speak” phrases that we learned to say over time, when we’d really rather have it our way, when we’d really rather pray for the things we want in life. We’d rather have the hidden agenda in our hearts. For some reason, we think that our agenda, buried deep within our hearts, is what is best for our life. But at that unique point in my life, for the first time, I had no agenda for which to pray as I sat there on those cliffs with the rest of my life in front of me, moving forward into the open ocean, smothered in a fog of apathetic confusion.

Many times in life, we think we know what’s best for ourselves because of the many experiences we have in a certain category of our life. We think we’re the experts of our own life. We believe we know ourselves, and what’s best for us better than anyone else. In our careers, we don’t want to listen to our boss if we think we know more than this person. Professional athletes are often reluctant to listen to their coaches because the athletes believe, through their own experiences, that they know more than the coaches. Teenagers tend to refuse to listen to their parents because the parents “just don’t understand” because the times have changed from when they were young. When we begin to believe we are the lone expert of our own life, it’s a problem because alone, we can’t make it. We can’t make it without God.

I fell into this same trap until my walls were broken down, and it was only at this point where I began to truly pray for God’s will in my life, because I knew no other way. I didn’t know what I wanted, so the only thing I was left to pray for was God’s will. But I didn’t just pray for His will, and to hear some deep voice booming down on me out of the heavens. I began to pray that he would allow my life to honor Him in whatever I decided to pursue, and that His wisdom would be within me when I made some tough decisions. I also prayed that He would work in the lives of others in this world, that somehow, my life would be influenced in a positive way from these very people.

Over time, I was finally able to understand that being open to God’s will isn’t about being open to what we want to hear, but it is about being open to God’s will, regardless of what it might be and where it might take us. It encompasses the ability to admit when we’re wrong while at the same time giving us the power to move forward with what is right, with no regrets.

But truly desiring and praying for God’s will in life is such a difficult thing to do, because Satan often tries to get us to disregard God by telling us that we alone can succeed in a life separate from God—that we already know what we want, and all we have to do is chase our wants in life. Satan, in trying to get us to take on this world alone, will take two approaches here: He’ll either tell us that we know everything and that we are completely self-sufficient without God, or that we’re so messed up there’s no possibility to be forgiven and have a relationship with God.

The first approach is why the Bible warns us about the danger of being rich. We are warned of the difficulty being both rich and a follower of God, because when we have riches in this world, we tend to think we can take care of ourselves and that we don’t need God. When anything in life is going smoothly, we begin to believe that it’s because of what we did to make it happen, and that we can thrive in life on our own. But this is Satan telling us to move away from God and rely only on ourselves. This is Satan lying to us.

The second approach is why it is so difficult for people to learn to realize they are priceless in God’s eyes when they have been told they are worth nothing their whole life by their parents. This is why young men who have been called faggots by their dad’s often have little confidence in the men they are. This is why daughters who are molested at a young age no longer view their bodies as a pure and priceless commodity. This is Satan’s way of telling us we’re useless, too useless to even be noticed by God, let alone forgiven by Him. This is Satan lying to us.

Satan either wants us to rely on something other than God, usually ourselves or something we have created, or he wants us to feel that we will never be worthy enough to be a prized possession of God. Both are lies that Satan uses to separate us from God. Satan doesn’t want us to ever know truth, because God is truth, and wherever we find truth, in anything, it is God. Satan doesn’t ever want us to ever know God’s will for our life, and experience it. But we need to know that no matter whom we are, we can both find it and follow it. It’s just a matter of looking in the right places.

I think the main trouble with following the plans of God rather than our own is that they are set in a different time frame than ours. Our plans usually start now. We want results now for a plan right here, right now. Most of the time, we’d rather have what we want now rather than what God’ wants for us later, even if we do understand His will is better. Satan tells us that alone, we know best, and that waiting on God is pointless. We must understand that Satan specializes in the business of immediate pleasure. It’s his selling point on our soul. It’s how he gets us to trust only ourselves. It’s how he leads us into becoming selfish people. He thrives off of impatience.

But when we battle against our impatience and selfishness, and we are able to live only for God, He blesses us so much more than what we could have imagined in setting plans of our own.

To continue reading, please purchase Da Capo.