SELF-WILL

The one misery of man is self-will; the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. If we 'stand before God', then that means that our wills are brought into harmony with His. And that means that the one poison drop is squeezed out of our lives, and that sweetness and joy are infused into them. For what disturbs us in this world is not 'trouble', but our opposition to trouble. The true source of all that frets and irritates, and wears away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things.
--Alexander Maclaren