Yesterday marked the halfway point to Easter Sunday! If you have been making a Lenten fast in an effort to become more hungry, I hope you’ve been able to see and feel a spiritual growth over the last few weeks.

For this post, I wanted to share a small prayer that I found while going back through my journal. I originally copied it from my devotional, but it’s come to mind regularly since Ash Wednesday and has helped keep me in the right mindset while praying. It simply states…

“Father, do what you must in me to do what you will through me.”

It’s so simple, isn’t it? But so difficult to accept!

To me, this is a crux (and crutch) of discipline in my spiritual life – to be able to discern what God is trying to do inside of me (with thoughts, feelings, etc.) in order to follow his will for me here on Earth.

The Trap
For me, it becomes easy to use just two types of prayer:
1. thanksgiving
2. asking for something that I want (my default)

The prayer that’s missing, though, is the one that says “…thy will be done…”

The humility to realize I’m in a situation for a reason isn’t easy to accept. But if I give it time to play out, God has a pretty good track record of bringing things full circle.

What I’ve come to realize is that, sometimes, to get the things I want, God has to change my perspective on what I really need.

Sure, I want the guy that cut me off in traffic to get stuck behind a semi.

But maybe what I really need is to learn patience.

When I get annoyed by another driver, it changes the mood in the car for a minute. It’s not fair to my wife. And it’s not fair to other drivers around me because my attention is now slightly less focused on my surroundings in thinking about that car.

If I can learn patience in that situation, though, it can eventually carry over to other areas of my life.

The Release
By becoming more patient, I become a better husband, co-worker and friend. Heck, I even become a better stranger by holding doors for people and not hurrying past the sweet old couple scooting down the grocery store aisle.

Who knows? My new-found patience could ultimately have the potential to put me in a situation where someone else’s prayer is answered because of my patience. If that doesn’t create a sense of personal fulfillment…I don’t know what ever will.

It’s a roundabout way of getting there, but I believe that by being open to Him moving inside of me, I’m more susceptible to finding true freedom in Him moving through me.

So try the prayer out for yourself. Really sit on it. And see if you learn a deeper lesson from something you’re going through.