What is God-willing Anyway?

“God-willing.” I hear it all the time. Sometimes I hear it from me.

• “God-willing, the tests will come back clear.”
• “He’ll be back in action, God-willing, by the first game of the season.”
• “If, God-willing, I get the job, I’ll…”
• “I’ll finish this article, God-willing, before the deadline.”

What is God-willing? And what have I got to do with it?

Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done…” But somehow we have adapted this as an in-case-it-doesn’t-happen strategy. I’m asking for this, specifically, but if it doesn’t come out the way I hope, it’s not my fault. God didn’t want it that way. Which begs the question: Is God wanting and God willing the same?

I imagine that what God wants is for me to listen and look. God’s will, then, is what I do with what He shows and tells me. At least that’s God’s will for me, and that is all I really have a front row seat for. I believe His plans for me are very specific. That His perfect will actually maps out exactly what God would do if God were me.

It doesn’t make sense that God would make this a secret. We treat it that way. As if it were hovering over the universe, a predetermined series of events that we fear we may disrupt with our actions, so we tiptoe around hoping for the best. I imagine that all of God’s will we couldn’t handle, at least not all at once or all of a sudden, but I think God wants me to know my part. He’s written my script and wants me to deliver my lines. He’s made a way for this. A place for this. A plan for this.

So, when God wills … something is activated in every creature who has the power to effect that Will-ingness. Perhaps the Holy Spirit it dispatched with our script. We can choose to read and enact it or we can set it aside for a more convenient time or a safer moment. Imagine receiving God’s dispatch and setting it aside.

Or imagine, a continual flow-through of the Spirit, a dispatch read aloud the moment we received it, enacted the moment we became aware of it. A continuous practice never interrupted by our hesitations, masquerading as “God-willing” apologies. All of it set in motion by the Great Almighty: we were the motion.

Every now and then I sense a few fleeting moments of that. Where I am not really thinking, just doing, and everything clicks like the cylinders in a well-oiled machine. All is right and good and perfect — until I notice. Until I look at all I’m doing and imagine it was my idea. When it was really God’s idea.

Then I fall away.. How dare I think I am wielding God’s will. Lobbing it like a hand grenade on my enemies, sprinkling it like fairy dust on my loved ones, rubbing it across my keyboard expecting a genie to emerge. No, God’s will is not for me to maneuver or manage. Just access and act.

Imagine being in God’s will all day long. What a broad expanse that would be. A vast field where every path was the way to harvest. A deep ocean where every dive was the way to beauty. Where every way was the way to Him. There would be no loneliness there. No doubt or worry or regret. Even hope would seem unnecessary in such a place. No need. All is.

Imagine that God wills this very existence for each of us, for every single one of us. Not a future-willing but a present-tense willing. Not a ‘will be’ but a ‘here now.’

How petty are our “God-willing” disclaimers. Ours is simply to look and to listen, to test and to try. And then to say yes.