How to Make God Do What You Want

And how holiness begins when we stop trying to control Him

I have spent a lot of my life trying to become better.

A better wife, better mother, better friend, better Christian. A better pray-er, forgiver, listener, helper, responder-to-annoying-things-with-grace kind of person.

You know the feeling?

You might read a spiritual book, hear a homily, go on retreat, or have one quiet moment of clarity in prayer, and suddenly you see it: all the ways you are not yet holy.

You’re not as patient as you want to be, not as generous, not as detached, not as prayerful, not as loving.

The Plan Always Falls Apart

And so you make a plan. You will get up earlier. You will pray better. You will be gentler. You will stop snapping. You will respond instead of react. This is the week, this is the plan, this is the new improved version of you.

And then, somewhere around Tuesday, the whole thing falls apart.

You lose your temper. Or you forget to pray. You revisit an old resentment and hold on to some of those deliciously bitter feelings. You say the sharp thing. You choose comfort over sacrifice. And in the end, you realize, once again, that holiness is not something you can grit your teeth and conjure up with sheer willpower.

Oddly enough, that may be very good news. And maybe even stranger, one of the saints suggests that love can make God do what we want.

Holiness Is God’s Work

I have been re-reading In the School of the Holy Spirit by Father Jacques Philippe, and one of the ideas he returns to again and again is this: holiness is God’s work. Not ours.

That doesn’t mean we shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, God will have to handle it,” while we keep on being selfish and difficult or spiritually lazy.

But holiness is not a self-improvement project. It’s not something we accomplish by designing the perfect spiritual program and then executing it flawlessly. It’s not a ladder we climb by ourselves. It’s not a personal optimization exercise where we slowly curate a more impressive Catholic life.

Holiness is the life of God in us. And only God can give God’s life.

That should humble us, but even more than that, it should relieve us.

Because sometimes the call to holiness can feel crushing. We know we are called to love as Jesus loves, forgive seventy times seven times, pray without ceasing, carry our cross, die to self, and become saints.

And maybe, on our better days, we actually want that.

But then there is the real stuff, the daily material of our everyday lives: The messy kitchen counter. The stress-inducing inbox. The medical appointment. The sticky relationship. The person who misunderstands us. How are we supposed to become holy in the middle of all that?

The answer is not, “Try harder.” At least, not only try harder.

The answer is: Surrender more deeply.

The Answer is Surrender

Most of us don’t really mind giving God part of ourselves. We give Him Sunday mornings. We give Him certain prayers. We give Him the parts of our lives we have already decided are acceptable offerings.

But to entrust ourselves wholly to Him? That is something else.

To say, “Lord, I cannot make myself holy. I cannot even love You rightly unless You teach me. I cannot heal myself. I cannot purify my motives. I cannot transform my own heart. I place myself in Your hands.”

That kind of prayer feels vulnerable because it is.

We would rather hand God a plan: Here, Lord. I have mapped out my sanctity. I have color-coded the virtues. I have scheduled the sacrifices. I have identified the outcomes. Kindly put this plan into place.

But God makes us holy by drawing us into Himself.

That may happen through prayer, Scripture, sacraments, spiritual reading, silence, and service. But it also happens through interruptions, humiliations, hidden sacrifices, ordinary disappointments, and all the little moments when we discover that we are not nearly as patient or detached or loving as we imagined.

Those moments are not proof that holiness is impossible. They are invitations to stop pretending we can do it alone.

Father Philippe quotes Saint John of the Cross, who writes in the Spiritual Canticle:

“Great is the power and persistence of love, since it overcomes and binds God Himself. Happy is the soul who loves, because that soul holds God captive and obtains from Him all that he or she desires. For God’s nature is such that, if we take Him by love in the right way, we will make Him do what we want.”

I have not been able to stop thinking about that. At first glance, it almost sounds dangerous. Make God do what we want? Isn’t that exactly what our selfish hearts are always trying to do?

We want to control God. We want to manage Him. We want to negotiate with Him. We want to pray in such a way that He will finally get on board with our own amazing ideas.

We are very good at wanting things from God.

And yet Saint John of the Cross says that love can, in a sense, bind God. Love can obtain from Him all that the soul desires.

The secret, of course, is love. Not manipulation, not bargaining, not spiritual control dressed up as devotion.

Love.

Love Changes What We Want

When we truly love God, when we give ourselves to Him completely, our desires begin to change. We stop trying to use God to get our own way and begin wanting God Himself.

And when God becomes what we want most, then yes, we can obtain everything we desire. Because then, all that we desire is Him.

This is the great reversal and beautiful life-changing work of the spiritual life. We come to God with clenched fists full of demands, and slowly, patiently, He teaches us to open our hands. We come wanting Him to change our circumstances, and He begins by changing our hearts. We come asking Him to make other people easier to love, and He gives us more love.

Not always the feeling of love. But always the grace of love.

The ability to choose patience when irritation rises. The ability to remain silent when we want to defend ourselves. The ability to forgive when part of us would rather keep the wound right there and available for review. The ability to begin again after failure without collapsing into discouragement.

That is holiness. Not a life where nothing bothers us anymore and we glide through stress radiating serenity.

Holiness is God’s love taking root in the real soil of our lives. And sometimes that soil is rocky. Sometimes it’s dry. Sometimes it appears to have been trampled by children, deadlines, husbands, hormones, grief, and the 4:00 PM question of what on earth we can possibly make for dinner.

God works there. Especially there.

And this is what encourages me most: I don’t have to become holy by sheer force of will.

I have to consent. I have to return. I have to ask. I have to trust.

I have to let God love me, correct me, heal me, stretch me, and lead me. I have to stop grabbing the tools out of His hands and insisting I can renovate my own soul with a podcast, a planner, and one heroic Monday morning.

The work is His. The surrender is ours. And even the surrender is something we can ask Him to accomplish in us.

Lord, I want to give myself to You, but I am afraid.
Lord, I want to love You, but my love is small.
Lord, I want to be holy, but I keep choosing myself.
Lord, I want Your will, but I also very much want mine.
Lord, take even this. Take all of it. Make me Yours.

It’s hard to trust that God is working when we cannot see results. But the saints remind us that love is powerful. Love “binds” God, not because God is weak, but because God has chosen to be moved by love. He is not conquered by force. He is not persuaded by perfection. He is not impressed by our elaborate spiritual accomplishments.

He gives Himself to love.

And when we love Him, even poorly, even imperfectly, even with a weak and broken, trembling and divided heart, we are already opening the door to everything He wants to give.

Lord, Make Me Holy

The prayer is simpler than we think.

Not, “Lord, show me how to make myself holy.”

But, “Lord, make me holy.”

And then we let Him begin. Again today. Again tomorrow. Again as many times as it takes.

Because our holiness is not our achievement. It’s God’s gift. And He is very good at giving.

With grace,

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