The Lord’s Prayer (Part 3): Prayer for God’s Will Be Done
Jan 25th, 2010 by admin
Introduction
Thus far, we have learned that God is our gracious Father, who through the work of His Son Jesus Christ, has adopted us into His family. Because of such love and grace, He loves to hear His children in prayer, when we address Him as our Father. He also desires for us to long for Him, to yearn for His Kingdom to come, and to want that more than any other desire we might have. And next week, we’ll cover the part about our requests and petitions, what usually takes over our prayers and consumes most of Christians’ prayers. But I hope you can see how the first two parts set the parameters for requests. You cannot pray to God asking for things if you don’t know who He is. And you cannot pray to God asking for things if you don’t actually want the Giver before the gifts. And this week, we learn that you cannot pray to God asking for things unless you realize that His will must be accomplished first, here on earth as it is in heaven. Anything less will actually undermine our love and desire for our Father.
So what does it mean to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? I like the way J. I. Packer describes this prayer:
Here more clearly than anywhere the purpose of prayer becomes plain: not to make God do my will (which is practicing magic), but to bring my will into line with his (which is what it means to practice true religion).[1]
And the biblical record makes this clear, that such a prayer ultimately means that we 1) Accept God’s plans, 2) Abide in God’s Word, and 3) Align our prayers with Jesus.
ACCEPT
So first, praying ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means accepting that what God has planned is for your absolute greatest delight. Again, just as a reminder, I am combining this exposition on the Lord’s Prayer from Luke 11 and Matthew 6:9-13 and this part of the Lord’s Prayer which comes from Matt 6:10. Of course, this flows directly from our understanding of God as ‘our Father.” It means trusting God with our lives completely, knowing that He really is a Father who will always act in our ultimate best interest. And we’ll cover this in greater detail next week, especially as we examine verses 11-13: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Most Christians do not have a problem with God being in control, per se. The Bible makes every effort to show God is ultimately in control with texts like Proverbs 19:21: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand,” or Lamentations 3:37: “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?” or Revelation 3:7: “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.” Knowing that God is in control is critical to how we respond to difficult circumstances, and how we pray during such times. Jerry Bridges tells the story of a military chaplain friend whose job was put into serious jeopardy because he had confronted the chief of chaplains, who was attempting to do something illegal. The chief responded by writing a critical report against Jerry’s friend. Scripture seems clear that God allowed this act of injustice to happen to Jerry’s friend, as much as God allowed Satan to inflict Job with all sorts of terrible things and as Lamentations 3:37 tells us, nothing can ultimately come to pass unless the Lord has commanded it.
Think of your own lives. You’ve probably lived long enough (and if this hasn’t happened to you yet, it will one day) where someone has unjustly wronged you: a friend turning her back on you because of a slight that was not your fault, a coach who overlook your gifts only to choose his less talented son to be in the starting lineup, a boss who is looking out only for his own reputation and places the blame on you even though he was the one at fault, etc. How do we cope with such injustices? Do we seek revenge, or is it quite possible that even though there is real pain and anguish, knowing that God is still in control and out for our good can be the greatest comfort we can have during such times?
Many of you might not wrestle with whether God is sovereign, but you might be tempted to think God is not loving or good because He is sovereign. After all, if God is sovereign and in control, then why do bad things happen? Why did an earthquake happen in Haiti killing so many people (and if there is anything that seems to be ‘an act of God’, it would be an earthquake)? Why do good people get cancer? Why do families trusting in God and serving Him lose their jobs and have to scramble to make it? These are very difficult questions, but the one thing that we must never forget is that God is not evil or the author of evil. He loves His people and desires the absolute best for them. John reminds us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). That is, God’s nature is perfectly loving and perfectly good. So it cannot be that such events happen in our lives because God has erred or He’s evil or He’s good only part of the times.
Instead, the Bible teaches us a very different story. It reminds us that prior to Adam and Eve’s turning from God, there were no earthquakes, or death, or suffering. Creation was not groaning as Romans 8:22 tells us. But when sin entered the world, so too did the wages of sin, which according to Romans 6:23 is death and all of its consequences. The idolatry of the self has ruled the world ever since, and we no longer want God’s Kingdom at all, but our own. And so as long as we remain in this world, there will always be sin and there will always be the wages of sin. So here is the question, is God still in control even when there is sin and Satan reigning here? And the answer is absolutely yes! God is sovereign and control and even sin and Satan must submit ultimately His will. And as we see in Joseph’s life, when sin (Joseph, his brother, Potiphar, Potiphar’s wife) and Satan think they rule the day, ultimately God’s plans cannot be thwarted as Joseph declared to his brothers in Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” And do you see the purpose in God’s good, it was to save His people. God always has in mind the keeping of His promises and the salvation of His people. Thus, the Bible teaches us that though suffering and death came into the world through sin, God is still in control and cause even use sin, sinners, and Satan for His ultimate glory and our ultimate joy. He is not powerless against evil, far from it.
We see this in David, where David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah was a terrible story of David’s arrogance and self-centeredness, worthy of the worst condemnation. And yet, it was out of that evil relationship, God would use the son of David and Bathsheba, Solomon out of all David’s other sons, to carry out His plan to save the world from sin, since Jesus came from the descendency of Solomon. In a broken world filled with sin, there is something in adversity that the Lord sanctifies us as we trust in Him. If we pray for faith, He brings us a situation where we have to trust in Him so we can grow in faith. If we pray for patience, we are placed into positions of patience. If we pray for more love, we are given unloving people to love. If we pray that we would be more empathetic, gracious, kind, merciful, tender-hearted to Him to others, guess what? We are given circumstances upon which we learn how to grow to develop such characteristics. And we are given such circumstances ultimately because our natural, sinful tendency is to believe that we don’t need God in our lives. Some of our greatest times of trust in Christ and growth as a Christian are often our most difficult and painful ones. As Moses tells the people of Israel why they had to wander in the desert those many years in Deut 8:2-3:
And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Without the wandering, they would have never believed God led them. They would have believed it was all their own effort which led them to the Promised Land. Left to their own, humanity will worship the self before it trusts in God.
What do you think would be God’s greatest judgment upon your life? Would it be cancer? Job loss? Hair loss? Bankruptcy? Foreclosure? Disastrous earthquake? Death of a loved one? Or would it be eternal punishment? It is because the Father loves you that He will do whatever it takes to call you to Himself, even if it means making sure you wake up from you self-worship. That’s why Romans 2:4 reminds us that “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” It is kind of God to even bring disaster in our lives if that is how we come to trust in Him. It is His mercy to do so. And through such suffering and adversity, you will come to know God’s grace and love and joy in a way that you might never know should you have prayed only that your personal will be done. And so, we believe with Scripture that joy in this world is fleeting, but with Him, as Psalm 16:11 proclaims, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” And for this reason, Jesus tells His disciples that rather than rejoicing that even demons are subject to them, far greater, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20)
The “Your will be done prayer” guards us from the ‘name it, claim it’ mentality. That is, all we need to do is to ask God for something and He will give it to us and if He doesn’t give it to us, it’s because we haven’t asked hard enough or with enough faith. As if to say that we have to convince our capricious God to listen to us because He is inclined to think otherwise. This simply is not the biblical idea of how and why God listens to us pray. Sometimes, within God’s sovereign will, He decides not to heal (as He did with Paul’s thorn in the flesh or as He decided with David and Bathsheba’s first child) regardless of how hard we pray or how much faith we have in God that He can heal. Sometimes, God will still hold His ground and allow us to face the consequences for sin (as He did when He did not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land because of his actions at the waters of Meribah) regardless of how close you are to God, how long you have walked with Him. And ‘Your will be done’ prayers remind us that prayer is about getting not that which is good for us, but rather, that which is best for us, God’s best.
ABIDE
Second, praying ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means abiding in God’s Word so that our motives in our requests will be God-glorifying and ultimately satisfying. Jesus tells us in John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Abiding in God’s Word is not simply the reading of the Bible, or the knowledge of certain doctrine, or the listening to sermons. Abiding here means that one’s whole character and worldview and relationship to others is being transformed by the faith, obedience, and trust in God’s Word as the grid upon which one lives. It’s the yielding and surrender of one’s personal ideals and agenda for the sake of Christ. And as one experiences this transformation, then requests in prayer will be spoken in God’s will.
Think of it this way. The more a husband and wife grow in love for one another, biblically maturing in grace, trying to outdo one another in love, where the husband strives to love his wife as Christ loved the church and the wife strives to submit to her husband, the more their actions will coincide with their will for one another. I know for many wives, they long for their husbands to cherish them, to consider them, to keep them in mind. But this will not happen unless we are so deeply enthralled by our spouses, that we can actually predict their response, know their hearts, and desires, and wills, that our response will always be in accordance to their will. In other words, if I am cherishing my wife, listening to her speak, caring for her proactively, most likely my actions of love for her will be exactly what she desires. But if I spend no time with her, I am wrapped up more in what I want than what she desires, I am consumed by what is pressing to me (flipping on Sports Center to chill, eating first because I’m hungry, etc.), doesn’t it make sense that I have no idea what she really wants from me? And so on her birthday, when I buy her a George Foreman Grill so she can make really great sandwiches for me, doesn’t it make sense when she throws the gift down, leaves crying, and slams the door shut.
If our wives deserve more from us, how much more our Father in heaven who has given us His own Son to pay the punishment for our sins? If our requests are apart from His Word, we will only pray prayers which we think and believe is best for me, without even considering God’s glory. And just like the husband who stands bewildered and upset and frustrated and confused by his wife’s response as he stands alone with his George Foreman grill, so too, when we come with self-centered desires before God, we do not have the ultimate joy we long for. That’s why James makes it so clear that God sometimes answers our prayers with, “No,” as he tells us in James 4:2-3: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” Wrong motives from a self-centered heart keeps us from experiencing joy in prayer.
And so when we pray, especially when we are petitioning God for help, we must always consider our motives. We should ask ourselves, “Do I care more about the outcome (healing, marriage, job, reconciliation, comforts) than God’s glory or my own sanctification?” Also, “Does God’s Word really support my desires, or am I simply forcing God’s Word to get what I really want?” I shared with you the story of when Shua and I were considering dating. I ‘prayed and fasted’ the whole summer asking God essentially to bless what I really wanted, the beginning of our relationship. It sounded ‘spiritual’ to so say I was fasting and praying to discern God’s will. But instead, what I was really doing was asking God to rubberstamp what I had already decided, that I want this relationship whether it would be a God-honoring one or not. And so many people pray this way. They pray that God would bless a relationship or a new job or the start of a new business that ‘has to be from God because all the cards fell into place’ or the Super Bowl victory because a Christian threw the winning touchdown or the winning of the lottery to support Christian ministries or the entrance into grad school as a means to serve God. But oh how our motives can be simply from our desire to have or our coveting of what others have. We must be self-suspicious as we ask God for things. And the way we will grow in our prayers, in praying prayers that are in His will, is when we are regularly striving to abide in His Word.
ALIGN
Lastly, praying ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means aligning our prayers with the same trust as our Lord Jesus had in our Father. As Jesus does in the Lord’s Prayer, He continually provides us a model for us to pray in the Father’s will. We see this clearly in Matthew 26:39, 42: “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” No one can imagine what Jesus must have been facing as He prepared to die for us. Jesus was not a masochist. He didn’t ‘want’ to suffer and die. His prayer makes it so clear that this choice was one of pain and anguish. This was hard for Him. Why? Because He would physically bear the pain of crucifixion, an indescribable pain that cannot be understood by most of us. I wince at a hang nail or a canker sore, how much more being nailed to a cross for the purpose of maximum torture. But it didn’t stop there. His eternal sweet fellowship with the Father would be separated. Think of saying goodbye to someone you love, perhaps even forever. Well that feeling of loss and grief is there because we are created in God’s image, reflecting the communion of the Triune God, Father, Son, Spirit. We were made like Him, to enjoy relationship, to need relationship. But Jesus would no longer have this relationship. He was to be forsaken by the One who loved Him most. And then, He would bear the crushing weight of every sin of ours, past, present, and future.
Think of a sin you commit, anger to a loved one. Think of the pain, the anxiety, the frustration, that that one bit of anger could cause. Think of the separation that is faced when you are angry at another. That sin was borne by Jesus, the weight of the sin, the punishment of sin, the guilt of sin, the consequences of sin. According to 2 Cor 5:21 which says: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” Jesus was made to “be sin” so that we might be able to enter the family of God. And then to top it all off, He knew that by accepting the will of the Father, His friends would betray Him and abandon Him, the world would scoff at Him and mock Him, He would be tried and convicted by a kangaroo court without any sense of justice, and He would simply remain silent without defense throughout the process. But though Jesus did not ‘want’ to suffer and die, He willingly yielded to the Father’s will
Jesus tells us why He did this in John 6:38-40: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” He did this for the greater joy of allowing sinners to enter Paradise with Him in fellowship with the Eternal Father. And so Hebrews 12:2 comments: “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” As terrible as the cross was, the end result of the work of Christ is astounding joy for sinners like you and me. And for this reason, even the evil of the cross was taken up with joy by Jesus. And it was for this reason that the Father was willing to crush His own Son and put Him to grief according to Isaiah 53:10.
Conclusion
How can we face all of the peaks and valleys of life without being swamped over? How can we pray without feeling either too confident that I control how God reacts to me or feeling as though prayer is utterly worthless because God does not respond the way I believe He should? The only way is by knowing that God’s will done in our lives is the best possible outcome for us. And how do we know this to be true? Because the Bible teaches us that even though sin, sinners, and Satan attempted to thwart God’s plan of salvation, the cross is a stark reminder that no matter how much evil forces tries to defeat God, it never can. The cross is God’s eternal reminder that what man intends for evil, God can and does use it for His glory and our joy and satisfaction.
And so praying, ‘Father, Your will be done’ is a prayer that understands who He is as Father, what it cost the Father to become our Father, a longing for the Father to come through His Son, and a deep trust that He will never let us down no matter how difficult the circumstances might be. That in Christ, no matter what happens, there is still hope and joy. So this week is a week of prayer and fasting. May I give you a few exhortations about prayer and fasting:
1. Trade Good for Best
Food, Coffee, Internet/Web/PHONE, TV, Movies, Sports: TV/Radio/Fantasy, Exercise, Physical Intimacy (Husband and Wives Only)
2. Email about Prayer requests – Please send prayer requests so we can pray for you (PUBLIC) (prayer@wellspringsg.org)
3. Morning Prayers (Tues-Wed, Office 6:30a, Sat different homes!)
4. Prayer and Worship at Sam and Shua’s Place (Tuesday, 8:30p)
5. Fasting – Alameda County Food Bank
John Wesley wrote a prayer that surrendered to the will of the Father and may you pray this prayer this week as you fast and pray:
I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.[2]
[1] J. I. Packer, Praying the Lord’s Prayer, 58.
[2] Quoted from Phil Ryken, When You Pray, 102.
