True prayer is not the pressing of our own desires upon God, but the yielding of our hearts to His will, where the Spirit plants deeper longings than we could ever name. —D.

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The hardest thing is to let go of our own will. We cling to it, turning it over in our hands like a stone worn smooth with worry. We shape prayers out of our wants, our longings, the small urgencies that press against the chest. But prayer is not a list of demands sent up to heaven, nor is it a bargaining table where we set out our terms. True prayer does not ask that our will be done, but that we might step aside and make room for the will of God to move through us.

We think we know what we need. We hold our desires close, tracing their outlines, feeding them with our thoughts. But there is another hunger beneath them, quieter and deeper, a longing placed within us by the Spirit, waiting to be heard. To pray for God’s will is to trust that this deeper longing is the truer one, that what He wills for us is not loss, but fullness—not the tightening of our grasp, but the opening of our hands.

It is no easy thing. The fallen self bristles against it, wanting its own way, whispering of what might be taken, what might be withheld. But the will of God is not a hand that takes—it is the breath that fills, the light that grows in the clearing once we have stepped aside. The Spirit moves where He will, planting what we could not have foreseen, bringing forth what we would not have known to ask for. And in the yielding, in the quiet surrender, we find that His will is not against us, but for us—that it is the only will in which we are made whole.