From the fourth of five books that have had a major effect on me, Discipline, The Glad Surrender by Elisabeth Elliot (from page 37):

“God could have chosen to do everything Himself, but instead He so conceived the world that birds must build nests and sit on eggs, microbes must break down organisms, salmon must struggle upstream to spawn, earthworms must aerate the soil, bees must construct honeycombs, and man must will and work.

It is the willingness we must emphasize here. We pray “Thy will be done as it is in heaven.” God’s will is always willingly and gladly done in heaven. Willing obedience is a very different thing from coercion. A college dean once observed that the happiest students on any campus are the musicians and athletes. “Why?” I asked. “Because they’re disciplined, and they volunteered to be disciplined.” People sitting in required lectures are under discipline, and people sitting in television lounges are “volunteers,” but athletes and musicians put themselves under a coach or director who tells them what to do. They delight to do his will. They are actually having fun.

God does not coerce us to follow Him. He invites us. He wills that we should will—that is, He wills our freedom to decline or accept. If we want to be disciples, we place ourselves, like the football player and the instrumentalist, under someone’s direction. He tells us what to do, and we find our happiness in doing it. We will not find it anywhere else. We will not find it by doing only what we want to do and not doing what we don’t want to do. That is the popular idea of what freedom is, but it does not work. Freedom lies in keeping the rules. Joy is there, too. (If only we could keep the joy in view!)”