Take Care of God’s Will for You for Today and Let God Do His Job of Taking Care of Everyone Else.

I have found when my prayers stop being for God’s will for me for today, my prayers and energy morph from trying to do God’s will to trying to do God’s job. I’m not up to that. It’s too exhausting and frustrating. Above all, it keeps my focus off of me.

It’s good to be back and writing to each of you – and especially writing to me. After all the person who needs my messages, most of the time, is myself.

I learned something on this trip I want to share with you. It’s about a definition of the word LOVE and it reminded me of some early lessons I learned in AA’s suggested program for recovery.

The Eleventh Step of AA’s Twelve Step Program states: [We] Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

In my AA program (primarily in Eleventh Step meetings) old-timers would admonish me to keep in mind two things about the Eleventh Step. Always remember:

• 1.     That I am praying for knowledge of God’s will for me – not for knowledge of God’s will for each and every one of all of human kind.
• 2.     That I am praying for the will of God for me today – not for forever and ever under all and every circumstance.

Those have proven to be very valuable suggestions for me.

I have found when my prayers stop being for God’s will for me or for God’s will for today, my prayers and energy morph from trying to do God’s will for me to trying to do God’s job.

A big difference!

No wonder I feel stressed and exhausted. I’m not up to doing God’s job. It’s too demanding and frustrating. Above all, it keeps my focus off of me, which can be deadly.

Simply trying to control my thoughts (by remembering I am an already-loved eternal spirit currently having a human experience) is enough of a full time job for me. Simply trying to forgive the perceptions I have projected on people and events, trying to forgive me for creating those perceptions, and listening for the whispers of the Holy Spirit in order to begin perceiving things differently is enough of a full time job for me. I don’t have the time, energy or knowledge to understand what my family or you (or the Syrians!) need. I don’t have the time, energy or knowledge to ask God to grant my prayer so all of you will be better. Just keeping my focus on me is enough of a job.

Doing God’s job is too exhausting and frustrating. In terms of my alcoholism, it will destroy my sense of serenity, which may lead to me falling off the wagon. It will lead to me trying to infuse my ideas onto someone else’s life, which will do nothing but make both of us miserable and destroy our relationship. It will lead to me comparing my insides to your outsides – a very precarious place for me to be – and then having the audacity to ask God to concur with my observations/conclusions. How absurd is that!

But somehow it makes sense to my warped little Ego. It makes sense for my Ego precisely because it keeps my focus off of me.

While we were on this most recent trip, a friend we were visiting shared the following definition of LOVE, which I had not heard before. “L-O-V-E,” she said, “Stands for Letting Others Voluntarily Evolve.” Quite simple. Quite true for me.

Accept others. Support them. Encourage them. Listen to them. But – others are not my responsibility. I do not have to figure out what God needs to do for them or to them or with them. I do not need to figure out what went wrong when God – imagine that! – failed to follow my advice and direction.

And that is precisely how I know I have been trying to do God’s job. Something went wrong! I feel frustrated, anxious, angry, irritated, exhausted. Why? Because things aren’t working out the way I thought they should. My unconscious expectations have not been met. So, I try to tell myself I had no expectations, but my frustration and anger betray me. I try to convince God that my intentions were as pure as fresh-fallen snow, but my irritation and continued fear betray me.

Our friend went on to say, “Expectations are merely future disappointments currently under construction.” So, when my anger, fear, and frustration from unmet expectations rear their ugly heads, I know (as the Course in Miracles aptly states) that I am not upset for the reason I think. Behind the irritation (or fear or frustration or anger) are an unmet expectation and an unfulfilled prayer.

Then I know I have not been L-O-V-E-ing and it shows.

I have confused doing God’s will for me today with trying to do His job – and it shows.

And it’s not pretty.

So, I always try to remember the miracle encapsulated in that anonymous saying: “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.”

Thanks for listening, and – as always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family and those accompanying you on your spiritual path.

Don

#1 August, 2012

Copyright, 2012