GOD-WILL OF-DESIRED

I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize the Lord is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult, His grace is sufficient.

Hudson Taylor

Let Him therefore send and do what He will. By His grace, if we are His, we will face it, bow to it, accept it, and give thanks for it. God's Providence is always executed in the “wisest manner” possible. We are often unable to see and understand the reasons and causes for specific events in our lives, in the lives of others, or in the history of the world. But our lack of understanding does not prevent us from believing God.

Don Fortner

To choose to suffer means that there is something wrong; to choose God's will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God's will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.

Oswald Chambers

God will never allow any action against you that is not in accord with His will for you. And His will is always directed to our good.

Jerry Bridges

How is the will of God done in heaven? Sadly? Burdensomely? Begrudgingly? No! It is done gladly! If I then pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” how can I not be motivated by a desire to be glad? It is a contradiction to pray for the will of God to be done in my life the way it is done in heaven, and then to say I am indifferent to whether I am glad or not. When the earth rejoices to do His will and does it perfectly, His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.

John Piper

Desiring God, 1996, p. 140-41, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.

What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt.

John Newton

Prayers are the nerves that move the muscles of omnipotence. Prayer is not an exercise in futility because God's will, will be done in any case; prayer is the means by which God's will is carried out.

John MacArthur

You are to think of yourself as only existing in this world to do God’s will. To think that you are your own is as absurd as to think you are self-created. It is an obvious first principle that you belong completely to God.

William Law

If it were possible for me to alter any part of his plan, I could only spoil it.

John Newton,

The Works of John Newton, v. 5, p. 624.

In the first place, we must not expect God to reveal His will to us unless we desire to know that will and intend to do that will. Knowledge of God’s will and the performance of that will go together. We are apt to desire to know God's will so that we may decide whether we will obey or not. Such an attitude is disastrous. “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching” (John 7:17).

Author Unknown

The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 6.

The highest form of prayer is not, “Thy way, O God, not mine,” but “My way, O God, is Thine!” We are taught to pray, not “Thy will be changed,” but “Thy will be done."

Author Unknown

The Kneeling Christian, circa 1930, ch. 8.

The will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you.

Author Unknown

Prayer does not change God’s will it implements it.

Author Unknown

The will of God – nothing less, nothing more, nothing else.

F.E. Marsh

In the first garden “Not Your will but mine” [by Adam] changed Paradise to desert and brought man from Eden to Gethsemane. Now “Not My will but Yours” [by Jesus Christ] brings anguish to the Man who prays it but transforms the desert into the kingdom and brings man from Gethsemane to the gates of glory.

D.A. Carson
Matthew, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Zondervan, 1984, p. 545, www.zondervan.com.

Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt; send me where Thou wilt; work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.

Betty Stam

O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my will, so that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will.

Augustine

Where love is the compelling power, there is no sense of strain or conflict or bondage in doing what is right: the man or woman who is compelled by Jesus’ love and empowered by His Spirit does the will of God from the heart.

F.F. Bruce

Paul – Apostle of the Heart Set Free, Eerdmans, 1977, p. 21, www.eerdmans.com.