God has visions for us yet never imposes decisions on us; God honors who we are. God creates us to be free, evolving, growing beings, learning as much or more from our mistakes as we do from our successes.
God's vision for us is that we grow into mature, loving, self-giving human beings, living in a community of love, using and rejoicing in the gifts He has given us, fulfilling the deepest desires of our hearts about our destinies, because those are the great, good desires that will bring us closest to God!
God's desires, dreams, visions for us can only happen if we acknowledge that we live within God and God lives within us. God asks us to surrender our limited mental understandings of things, our biased memories of our lives, our fractured emotions, and our vulnerable will to God. Then, if we humbly ask, God can enlighten our understanding with wisdom, strengthen our wills to choose more freely, and energize our emotions to love more unselfishly and with commitment.
God's wisdom will always instruct us if we humbly ask God to enlighten our self-understanding and give us wisdom about ourselves - in God's way and time. Step 7 of AA, "Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings," applies to all of us. Fr. Richard Rohr comments on Step 7 "Let God reveal your real faults to you, usually by (your) falling many times, and by other people's opinions of you. You must allow God to remove those faults in God's way and in God's time. If you go after them with an angry stick, you will soon be left with only an angry stick and the same faults at a deeper level of disguise and denial....To know that you don't know, and to know that you are always in need, keeps you situated in right relationship with Life itself."
God's strength will always pilot our wills - if we humbly ask God for strength. Then God's abundant life penetrates and flows into our life. God empowers us to make freer choices! God strengthens our wills by helping us look calmly at our real motives so we don't delude ourselves. We don't will to make decisions because others are unfairly pressuring us. We don't will to make decisions because we want to fit in. We don't will to make decisions to preserve a certain "self-image." We don't will to make decisions because "this is what I want and I don't care about anyone else." We will to make decisions and choices because these choices are true to us as we see ourselves through God's eyes. We embrace and accept God's vision of who we are and who we're capable of becoming through certain, wise, loving decisions and choices.
God energizes our emotions to love more unselfishly and with deeper commitment. God asks us to honor the deep desires of our hearts. St. Ignatius repeatedly advises us to pray for what we want and desire, such as a deeper, closer relationship with God. A certain job or life work. A vocation to marriage or to a single life or vocation to religious or clerical life. A type of artistic or scientific expression. Paying attention to our desires can be difficult for some women, because they're afraid that somehow this is selfish, that they should not honor their desires if they want to be generous with God. But Fr. James Martin says:
"Desire is a holy way that God speaks to us, whether in Advent or the rest of the year. Our holy desires are gifts from God....our deepest longings, those that shape our lives, desires that help us know who we are to become and what we are to do. Our deep longings help us know God's desires for us, and how much God desires to be with us. Our deepest desires are also one way that God fulfills God's own dreams for the world, by calling people to certain tasks." God's hand protects our emotions by showing us which of our desires are God-given and need nurturing.
God's strength pilots us. God's wisdom instructs us. God's hand protects us. God's word directs us by reminding us that we are creatures and God is the Creator.
To humbly ask God to empower, energize, and direct us is to acknowledge that we are dependent on God as God's creatures. We are not the Creator. We don't make gods of ourselves if we acknowledge this truth. But there can be an unhealthy, immature dependence on God if we expect God to take care of everything for us. God does NOT fight all our battles for us. God empowers us so we can fight our battles ourselves!
Jesus, God-in-the-Flesh, emptied himself to become one of us. Gave his life "foolishly" for us to open up new life for us. Divine Power, according to theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson, " is not the power of force, imposing one's will. Neither is it, as some fear, divine impotence. Rather, as lived out historically in Jesus Christ, it is the power of giving oneself freely in love with the effect that others are empowered; they are loved in such a beautiful way that they become capable of their own action."
And so, God loves us in such a beautiful way, poor creatures that we are. God has dreams for us, visions for us, desires for the wondrous, life and love-giving beings we can become! And God loves us by enlightening our understanding with wisdom, removing our faults in His way and His time, strengthening our vulnerable wills to make truth-filled decisions, protecting our emotions so we can discover our deepest holiest longings about who we can become and the tasks we can fulfill. Then - after humbly asking God to empower and energize us, we become capable of our own actions to flourish and flower in the sun of God's Light. God's Word inspires us to become all that we can be:
"Your ways, O Lord, make known to me;
teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth
and teach me..."
-Psalm 25