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[Alexandr Korol]

It is not when any evil, suffering, or sin occurs — for such things there is usually not
God’s will, but His sufferance (He permits it, because He gave us free will, but does not
Himself rejoice in it or desire it). The holy fathers always distinguished:

• The Will of God is the good that He wants and upholds (salvation, holiness, love).
• Sufferance is when He does not intervene, so as not to violate our freedom, even if
trouble comes of it.

That is why the phrase “everything is God’s will” often sounds too simplistic and even
wrong — for murder, violence, lying there is no will of God, it is against His nature. He
suffers it, grieves over it, but uses even evil for good for those who love Him (Rom. 8:28).

And the real will of God is when we say, as Christ did in Gethsemane: “not My will,
but Thine, be done.”

Here is what really works when you want to help people hear God instead of the ego:

• Deny yourself — this is straight from His words: “If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). When a
person sees how you (or someone else) voluntarily place God and your neighbour
above your own “self” — this strikes harder than any arguments. The ego hates this,
but this is exactly what opens the ears.
• Live in such a way that people ask. As one wise man said: “Don’t speak to people
about the Lord if they don’t want to listen to you. Live in such a way that they ask.”
Your life is the loudest message. If there is within you a peace that is not of this
world, if you love even those who wrong you, if you are not afraid to lose status
for the sake of the truth — people will notice. And then they will come up to you
themselves: “How do you do it?” And that is when you speak.
• Show that the ego is a prison. The ego promises freedom (“Do what you want!”), but
in reality it makes a person a slave to desires, grievances, fear, comparisons. God
offers real freedom: when you give your will over to Him — you cease to be a hostage
to your own “self.” Tell this not as a lecture, but as personal experience: “I used to
live only for myself, and it destroyed everything around me. But when I surrendered
to Him — for the first time I felt that I was truly living.”