My favourite section of the break down covers the section, "thy will be done." Keller starts by quoting Luther as explaining this to mean:
"Grant us grace to bear willingly all sorts of sickness, poverty, disgrace, suffering, and adversity and to recognize that in this your divine will is crucifying our will."Keller follows up with writing:
"Unless we are profoundly certain God is our Father, we will never be able to say "thy will be done.""Later on he writes:
"If we can't say "thy will be done" from the bottom of our hearts, we will never know any peace. We will feel compelled to try to control people and control our environment and make things the way we believe they ought to be. Yet to control life like that is beyond our abilities, and we will just dash ourselves upon the rocks. This is why Calvin adds that to pray "thy will be done" is to submit not only our wills to God but even our feelings, so that we do not become despondent, bitter, and hardened by the things that befall us."I love the part about submitting our feelings to God. So often it seems like we're playing by the rules and submitting to God's will when in actual fact we're bitter and angry because it didn't happen the way we would've liked. Sometimes we try to take the high road, "well I'll submit because it's God will but I'm not very happy about it!" Turns out it doesn't work like that!
Just saw this tweet by C. J. Mahaney this morning: "Think against your feelings; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking." J.I. Packer. I think that this works well with what you're suggesting. That is, we need evangelical thinking not emotional, unbelieving thinking. And when we are thinking right, we apply that to our emotions and start feeling in a biblically informed way. Good post.
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