What Does God Really Want?

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St. Teresa of Avila, the sixteenth-century mystic and Carmelite reformer, wrote many poignant passages on prayer, all of which still resound through modernity. One passage, however, stands out in this author's mind.

While writing the exposition on the fourth Mansions of prayer in Interior Castle, her mind, heart, and pen crafted a few sentences that readily and completely define what God wants from His children:
"The soul must just leave itself in the hands of God, and do what He wills it to do, completely disregarding its own advantage and resigning itself as much as it possibly can to the will of God. ...the most important and pleasing thing in God's eyes is our remembering His honour and glory and forgetting ourselves and our own profit and ease and pleasure."

Nothing could be closer to the centrality of our Christian life. Our primary goal should ALWAYS be to resign ourselves to God's will in EVERY situation. We must forget about our plans and our desires, specifically if God's plans and desires are to the contrary.

Let us seek out God's will for us; for our jobs; our time; our money; our families. Once we have that perspective, we will truly begin to live an abundant life!

God Bless.

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