Two stories. Number one: in a recent sermon I referred to the fact expectation that my wife was going to take over as chair of our children’s pre-school. For reasons that are not appropriate to mention on a public source such as this blog, she isn’t going to do so. She has withdrawn her acceptance of the nomination, and she has also resigned from the committee.
Number two: on Monday afternoon I visited a ninety-two-year-old saint in hospital. Her conversation was liberally seasoned with phrases such as, ‘God willing.’ I saw her on the day when she had been told that she was not going to be discharged today, as she had been led to believe, because they could not yet find the staff or budget (not sure which) to put in place the care package she will need at home. ‘God willing’ seemed appropriate language.
Yet expressions like ‘God willing’ are ones I have been hesitant to use. They have been too much like religious catchphrases. I have bracketed them alongside tacking ‘If it be your will’ onto the end of a prayer. However, I really should have spoken of my wife’s aspirations in ‘God willing’ terms rather than absolute ones. In the New Testament James reminds us of the importance of this approach.
Might it be more than just an aversion to the language of Zion that has seen ‘God willing’ language slip out of our vocabulary? Might it be a reliance on science, technique and technology in our culture that has changed us? They delude us into thinking we have more power than we truly do. It is the weaker and more vulnerable who resort more habitually to qualifying their aspirations along the lines James commend: ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that’ (verse 15). We are seriously lacking in omnipotence, contrary to our regular delusions. The recent floods in the UK have brought this home in devastating fashion.
Having said that, many people yearn for certainty. ‘God willing’ is altogether too provisional for them. They prefer life to proceed with mechanical certainty. I think the words point us to considering that our security is not in our actions and decisions but in God. And even when I say that, it is not about a security in expecting God to behave in a particular way – we can be blown off course when prayers are not answered according to our expectations. The firm foundation of Christian hope and faith is in the character of God.
This coming Sunday I have to preach twice, and both will be on the Lectionary Gospel of Luke 11:1-13. With such a passage the theme of prayer is central, and thus I may well be touching further on the question of ‘God willing.’
Technorati Tags: prayer, faith, Godwilling
Big Circumstance 
Thank you for your post. In ministry, I have heard “God willing” a good bit, too. My aversion to using it has more to do with the “flip side”. I mean by this the questions of, is it God’s will if an ill person dies? In pastoral situations, I have yet to figure out how to approach those, who after a loss, will say it was God’s will. I guess in my own understanding, I am more willing to let this issue remain in tension until I am confronted with people who really want to know.
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Will,
Yes, this is a different manifestation of the issue. I have had to face the problem of a young mother dying of breast cancer. One man in the congregation (who often had a very accurate ‘hotline to God’) was convinced she was going to be healed. My first pastoral visit in the wake of the death was to this man. He was remarkably humble in acknowledging his mistake, and made connections with his own wife’s death. Perhaps his conviction about healing was more a personal desire that had accidentally been transposed into what he thought was God’s voice, something many of us need to be careful about. With the same incident, there was also one person on the fringe of the congregation who made all sorts of unhelpful noises about the woman’s death being the will of God. She was a pastoral disaster. Most of the church simply grieved, and held onto the questions. I think they did a healthier thing.
Some of my African-Caribbean Christian friends have been quick to quote Job at the time of a death: ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessèd be the name of the Lord.’ I remember this being said around the bedside of another young mother who died. However I took their invocation of this verse not as explanation but as simple faithful acceptance and trust in the face of tragedy.
Thanks for posting your comments – I appreciate them. I think you’ve taken this post further with them. Do feel free to come back with more.
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Dave,
After I posted, I thought immediately of the verse from Job. I like that better than “God willing”, but on first thought I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s an acceptance of reality rather than trying to “get behind” God and make sense of what he is thinking (if that makes sense). I think it leaves the tension there (that I spoke about in my last comment). My NT prof Richard Hays said in a sermon that the NT doesn’t address the question of theodicy, but calls us to persevere (the text he was preaching on was the widow and the judge). I may be oversimplifying him on this, but I think the point was around that.
Changing slightly, another thought to our usage of “God willing” might not be our reliance on ourselves, but our not wanting to say too much about God. That way, if what we pray for didn’t happen, we can say it wasn’t God’s will (this is a negative view of this approach, I realise). We have an out that may not damage our faith, so to speak. We no longer pound on the door of the judge like the widow, but meekly say, “well, if you want to, would you do this?” I remember from this year’s York Course for Lent, I heard Leslie Griffiths saying something about prayer being a way not to change God, but change me. OK, I see that in some respects. Still, if my wife had cancer, I would not be praying to change me and allow me to accept this. I would be praying that God would change what’s happening in my wife.
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Will,
The Richard Hays stuff is interesting. Wonder what he makes of Moltmann and ‘The Crucified God’? I think he’s onto something, though.
I agree that ‘God willing’ can be used as a cop-out clause, rather like the way ‘If it be your will’ is tacked onto the end of some prayers, rather than going to the (sometimes considerable) effort of trying to discern what that will is. It may be fair game when we genuinely can’t discover God’s will, or as the acceptance of his sovereignty, as in the case of the ninety-two-year old I mentioned in the original post.
I’ve heard the kind of line you say Leslie Griffiths took in the York Course from several people. That too seems to be a cop-out, for the very reason you give. Surely prayer is about both/and, not either/or of the two possibilities he lists. In any case, your illustration is rather close to home for Debbie and me: we have both had cancer false alarms this year. If one of us had been diagnosed with it, our sympathies would have been with your stance.
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