Simple Yet Difficult

“Teach me to do thy will; for thou [art] my God: thy spirit [is] good; lead me into the land of uprightness.” (Ps 143:10 AV)

If prayed sincerely, the first six words above are life-changing.  It takes a humble and broken spirit to pray this prayer with perfectly pure motives.  We may seek the will of God because experience tells us the opposite can be painful.  We are tired of the circumstances of our sin and wish to learn to do God’s will because it is easier on the conscience and life.  Seeking to do God’s will can be motivated by desiring a better outcome.  Or perhaps we seek to do God’s will because we want the liberty that comes with it.  Seeking to learn and do God’s will solely for His pleasure is the greatest of all motives.  The other motives are not a bad thing.  They are good reasons for the desire of God’s will.  They are often sufficient.  The greatest of all motives is for the pleasure and glory of God.  The motive of the writer is seen in the phrase following the request.  He has surrendered to the sovereignty of God.  He accepts God as his God, not merely out of mental assent.  It goes deeper than that.  He accepts God as his God that he might worship and honor Him as his God.  This is not a creator who us conquered against his will by the Creator.  This is a creator who knows he is created by the Creator and that the Creator is worthy to be worshiped and honored.

When we pray the above prayer, how well thought out is it?  To do the will of God is not limited to a desire.  There are many components to the will of God.  My father commanded that our room is to be picked up.  We did the best we could do, but when inspection time comes, we find where we failed.  Not necessarily where we succeeded.  Why?  Because we cleaned it to our standard and not his.  We would make our beds and put away our clothes.  Yet, our desk was still unorganized, or the floor needed sweeping.  Then, he would inspect it again.  Dust was still visible on horizontal surfaces, our closets were unorganized, etc.  What was he doing?  He was teaching us his will regarding a clean and organized room.

Many pray for obedience.  We want to please the LORD.  Yet the pragmatic manner in which we go about remains idle.  There are no planned steps to obedience.  There is a general desire.  But the steps are not implemented.  Action requires smaller actions.  Learning God’s will is like learning to write.  Remember those worksheets?  Page after page of single letters.  Then we graduated to combinations of letters.  Soon after, there were words.  The same is true with the learning of God’s will.  We want to jump to the big decisions, yet we haven’t learned the smaller steps to simple obedience.  The writer’s desire is simple.  All he wants to do is learn how to walk in complete and perfect obedience to his God because He is God.  That’s it.  Existence is no more complicated that this.  As Solomon says, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this [is] the whole [duty] of man.” (Ec 12:13 AV)