Years of refusing to admit that my husband was an alcoholic, were followed by more years of stubbornly trying to fix him.  My goal was to get back to that “perfect life” I had planned for us. Instead I finally found myself at the end of my rope.  And that’s when I finally stumbled tearfully into an Al-Anon meeting.  Step Eleven of the Twelve Steps of AA and Al Anon states:

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

In Step Eleven, we seek a closer relationship to God through prayer (talking to God) and meditation (listening to God).  This much I began to understand in my morning readings in the Bible and in Al Anon literature, and by attending Al-Anon meetings and a Working Women’s Bible Study.  I learned to distinguish between what I could control (myself and my behavior) and what I could not (others, their behavior, and circumstances) by praying the short version of the “Serenity Prayer”.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr

I came to believe that God could restore me.  Only then, could I regain the sanity that I had lost to the disease of alcoholism, which had taken over my husband’s life and mine. But I had some hard lessons to learn.  God wasn’t satisfied with just comforting me.  He wanted to change me AND my husband!  That meant I needed to learn about tough love.

The value of consistent prayer is not that he will hear us, but that we will hear him.  –  William McGill

Thankfully I heard God, and He used my prayers to change us both. 

And I am still learning about what it means to “pray only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out”. In her book “Pursuing God’s Will Together”, Ruth Haley Barton talks about the prayer of indifference.  It’s not that we don’t care about the answer or the outcome, but that we are willing to surrender our will to God.  We yield to him and are willing to accept his answer, regardless of whether it is aligned with our immediate desires. 

This is the prayer Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing he would be crucified along with all word’s sin, as a sacrifice for each us:

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”  Luke 22:42

And this is the prayer Job prayed, after losing everything, hearing God and finally coming to the end of himself:

I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.  You asked, “Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?”  Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.  Job 42:1-3

• Are you clear on whether you are praying for your will to be done, or God’s will?
• Are you willing to accept God’s will even if it’s difficult?
• What is an area of your life where you need to pray only for knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that out?

PLAY IT BY PRAYER:

Lord, I know you love me and have good plans for me, so I will trust you.  Show me your will, and give me the courage to carry it out.