I want to want what You want

Bearing the Cross by Anatoly Shumkin

Every morning for the past few years I’ve received this notification on my phone.

It’s from something President Henry B. Eyring shared in April 2022:

I have come to know some of what King Benjamin meant when he said that we could become like a little child before God. I have learned from many experiences that the Holy Ghost speaks most often in a quiet voice, heard most easily when one’s heart is meek and submissive, like that of a child. In fact, the prayer that works is “I want only what You want. Just tell me what that is. I’ll do it.”

15 words. Three sentences. Wanting what God wants should be the most obvious, easiest thing in the world, right?

Well…

Anything but, actually. Or should I say, anything but…at least in my case.

A part of me wants to be all His, all the time. I feel that deeply. In moments when I’m aligned and quieted, I become small and more pliant - easy to be entreated. I think we’ve all experienced that in different moments. We hear an inspiring message or attend a meeting where the Spirit is strong and resolve to do better - to be better. And then, for all the reasons, the feeling fades. Our resolve dissolves. We slip back into familiar patterns and find ourselves once again on the upside of the hill, blundering about.

Part of the battle is that we know more than we do. In my head I have mastered all of my weaknesses, live by the Spirit 24/7, act promptly and effectively on every impression I receive, never have bad thoughts, treat everyone with Christlike love, and never ever want to do anything wrong.

But the actual me is a thousand miles away from the idealized, “wish I was that way” me.

This gap asks some hard questions: “Why won’t you do what you know you should do?” “Why won’t you change?” “Why are you so weak?”

I have tried to pray using the words President Eyring suggested. More importantly, I’ve tried to fully inhale them, to make them my own. I want a heart like His.

I do, right?

Hop aboard the Livingston Time Machine and travel with me back to early 1985. I’d been serving as a missionary in Arizona for just a few months, and I was still trying to forget myself and give my all to the Lord (if I’d understood then how hard that would be, I wonder if I would’ve given up?)

My mission president had just stunned me with an assignment - after I’d only been out for two months - to train a new missionary. Even more surprising, I learned that my new companion had some special needs which would make doing missionary work a real challenge.

He lasted one week.

From the moment he left our little missionary apartment in Mesa to return home, I began blaming myself. If only he had been assigned to another missionary. If only I had tried harder.

Raising of the Cross by Alessandro Magnasco

For several months afterwards I was sorrow on two legs. This sweet missionary I’d failed was who I thought about when there was nothing to think about. I couldn’t forget his face when he was told he was going home. He kept asking “why?” I had no answers.

April general conference arrived and I was on spiritual life support. Nothing was clicking. I would have short bursts of confidence, followed by long stretches of self-imposed scorching. I had even started thinking about whether I should go home.

There were many encouraging messages given during each session of conference, but nothing had broken through my fog. And then, the first speaker for the final session on Sunday was Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I don’t think I knew who he was until that moment, but within the first few lines of his message titled Willing to Submit, he had my full attention.

“I do not apologize for trying to speak about one of what Paul called ‘the deep things of God,’ (1 Cor. 2:10),” Elder Maxwell began, “only for my inability to go deeply enough.”

He then proceeded to masterfully expound on the principle of spiritual submissiveness. I was pinned to the church bench, sitting in that dimly lit chapel somewhere in Mesa. This is to me, for me, about me.

Hallowed Be thy Name by Jay Bryant Ward

Since that day almost 40 years ago I’ve heard hundreds, perhaps even thousands of talks, but none has had as much impact on me as this one did. It was a total spiritual reset. There was a “before Willing to Submit” me and an “after Willing to Submit” me. Elder Maxwell’s message was also my first introduction to the idea of discipleship as a form of offering oneself to God. It made perfect sense when he taught it, but until he did, my understanding of following Jesus through offering my will was something I’d never imagined.

What does all this have to do with wanting what God wants? I’ve come to understand that becoming fully submissive to God is the pursuit of a lifetime. It is iterative, “line upon line.” And at least for me, it is a fruit of focusing on Jesus Christ and His Atonement - not only what the Savior’s Atonement is, but how He gave it to us - willingly, lovingly, with all His heart, might, mind, and strength. I have so much distance yet to cover before I am there. Most importantly, I understand I cannot become willing to submit without the help of the One who was perfectly submissive.

The more we study, pray, and ponder the awesome Atonement, the more we are willing to acknowledge that we are in His and the Father’s hands. Let us ponder, therefore, these final things.

When the unimaginable burden began to weigh upon Christ, it confirmed His long-held and intellectually clear understanding as to what He must now do. His working through began, and Jesus declared: “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.” Then, whether in spiritual soliloquy or by way of instruction to those about Him, He observed, “But for this cause came I unto this hour.” (John 12:27.)

Later, in Gethsemane, the suffering Jesus began to be “sore amazed” (Mark 14:33), or, in the Greek, “awestruck” and “astonished.”

Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and other worlds, “astonished”! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not experientially. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting process of an atonement before. Thus, when the agony came in its fulness, it was so much, much worse than even He with his unique intellect had ever imagined! No wonder an angel appeared to strengthen him! (See Luke 22:43.)

The cumulative weight of all mortal sins—past, present, and future—pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! All our infirmities and sicknesses were somehow, too, a part of the awful arithmetic of the Atonement. (See Alma 7:11–12; Isa. 53:3–5; Matt. 8:17.) The anguished Jesus not only pled with the Father that the hour and cup might pass from Him, but with this relevant citation. “And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me.” (Mark 14:35–36.)

Had not Jesus, as Jehovah, said to Abraham, “Is any thing too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14.) Had not His angel told a perplexed Mary, “For with God nothing shall be impossible”? (Luke 1:37; see also Matt. 19:28; Mark 10:27; Luke 18:27.)

Jesus’ request was not theater!

In this extremity, did He, perchance, hope for a rescuing ram in the thicket? I do not know. His suffering—as it were, enormity multiplied by infinity—evoked His later soul-cry on the cross, and it was a cry of forsakenness. (See Matt. 27:46.)

Even so, Jesus maintained this sublime submissiveness, as He had in Gethsemane: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matt. 26:39.)

While bearing our sins, our infirmities, our sicknesses, and bringing to pass the Atonement (see Alma 7:11–12), Jesus became the perfect Shepherd, making these lines of Paul’s especially relevant and reassuring: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35.)

Indeed, we are in His hands, and what hallowed hands!

The wondrous and glorious Atonement was the central act in all of human history. It was the hinge on which all else that finally matters turned. But it turned upon Jesus’ spiritual submissiveness!

May we now, in our time and turn, be “willing to submit” (Mosiah 3:19), I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen!

Neal A. Maxwell