The secret to knowing God’s will… Abide.
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, they did so in an environment that was publicly saturated with prayer. That is, they knew what prayer was and had seen example after example by religious men far more pious than they were. But, in Jesus, they heard and experienced a prayer life that was so genuine, real, and vulnerable that they needed to know his secret. Famously, we know what Jesus teaches them as the Lord’s prayer. And in it, there is a curious line, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus asks for the Father’s will to be done, but what is the Father’s will? How can we know it so that we can know if it has been done on earth as it is in heaven?
Have you ever found yourself wondering about what God’s will was for a certain situation or over your life in general? Have you ever questioned whether you were walking in God’s will or apart from it? These are difficult moments and pose hard questions for our faith journey with Jesus.
The 14th-century Flemish theologian John Ruusbroec wrestled with these same questions and came to understand that three things must be present in our lives to be aware of God’s will. Those three things are:
- An increasing light that brings clarity to the motives of the heart by experiencing God’s grace.
- A cleansing of my heart through the decreasing of my desires and an increase of God’s desires.
- A turning and tuning of my will to be unified with God’s heart.
How do we do this? Ruusbroec points us to look at the person of Jesus as our model and example. He says, “It is for this reason that God created heaven and earth and all that is in them, and it is likewise for this reason that he became a human being, taught us, lived for us, and himself became the way to this Unity. He died in the bond of love, ascended into heaven, and has opened up for us the same Unity through which we might possess eternal bliss.”
Profoundly, Ruusbroec reveals to us an important truth, that God wants us to be unified with him and to know his will. So much so that he made a way for us to experience that unity through Jesus. That unity is exactly what the disciples saw and heard in Jesus’ prayer life.
So, what’s the secret? To abide.
It’s what Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (Jn. 15:9-11)