Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful
Mother says, “I will attempt day by day to break my will into pieces. I want to
do God's Holy Will, not my own.” Thanks Saint Gabriel for those awesome words
of wisdom. Hey, what’s up everybody?
Brandon Jaquish here. Cassidy has
trusted me to write for her blog this week.
I guess we’ll see if that was a good decision by the end of this lol. The will of God is definitely a SCARY topic
to talk about…it is for me…that’s for sure.
I find it kind of funny that we find following the will of God a scary
thing, yet we say it every Sunday (or every day if you go to daily Mass) when
we pray the ‘Our Father’ prayer. Jesus
teaches us this prayer in Matthew 6:9-13.
It’s beautiful! “…thy will be
done…” I once was someone who prayed the
‘Our Father’ as a routine prayer…something I grew up praying, so it didn’t mean
as much to me. It wasn’t until I was
older and I was breaking down the prayer and prayed with each part of it that I
realized just how important it is. Obviously,
as you’re reading this blog post, I want us to focus on God’s will.
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton says, “The first
end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in
the manner he wills it; and thirdly to do it because it is his will.” Well….dang lol such truth. As we all might know, God has an amazing and
perfect plan for each of us and He has his own way of guiding us to bring that
plan to fulfillment. God the Father even
had a plan for Jesus which obviously included the salvation of all of His
children. (That includes you!!!) Even Jesus stressed about following the Lord’s
will in the Agony in the garden. (Luke 22:42-“…Father, if you are willing, take
this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.”) Following the Lord’s will isn’t supposed to
be easy. Surrendering to anything isn’t
supposed to be easy. To some,
surrenderance is a sign of weakness. In
the case of surrendering our will to God’s will, it is a sign of strength for
in our weakness, we are made strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10)
Personally, when I am presented with 2 paths,
one being God’s will and the other one not being His will (but of course I
don’t know which one is which), it becomes the hardest decision for me. I tend to second guess myself a lot. I’ll end up asking a lot of “what if…?”
questions. I am extremely blessed to
have been able to serve 2 awesome years with NET ministries. I knew it was God’s will that I serve the
first year and I had a life changing experience. Towards the end of that year, I decided to
sign up and serve a second year. I didn’t necessarily know if it was God’s will
or not. I kind of made an impulsive
decision. Later on, I found out that my
youth minister at my home parish was planning on hiring me as essentially a
part- time youth minister for the next year….two different paths…which one is
God’s will??? My plan is to eventually become
a youth minister which made this decision that much harder lol Instead of
making a decision out of impulse, I decided to do what I should have done in
the first place…pray about it! I grabbed my bible, a monster energy drink, and
I went for a walk and prayed. As I was
praying with scripture, I was trying to see what God’s will was and what He was
saying to me. After a while, I read
Psalm 37:4, “Find your delight in the Lord who will give you your heart’s
desire.” My heart’s desire was to serve
a second year of NET and I knew that’s what God wanted for me. It was another life changing experience that
I needed. God’s plan and will for us, no
matter what it is, it’s good. It is very
good.
