Day Fifteen // March 13 // Stridence in Praying “We are trying not so much to make God listen to us as to make ourselves listen to Him; we are trying not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what He wants us to do. It so often happens that in prayer we are really saying, ‘Thy will be changed,’ when we ought to be saying, ‘Thy will be done.’ The first object of prayer is not so much to speak to God as to listen to him.” – William Barclay –
One of the great secrets of the spiritual life is to learn to pray gently. Conversely, strident praying (where we try to plead with God to give us what we want) has a way of leaving us empty and disappointed. We must learn to master the perfect prayer, the prayer that never fails: “Thy will be done.” When we do, we can rest in peace because, in that place, we recognize that we are not God. We don’t always know what is best; God sees that which we cannot. Someone once said that we are like a fly crawling
