THY WILL BE DONE

After this manner therefore pray ye... Thy kingdom come... – Mt 6:9-10

There’re two extremes people take in prayer. One is treating God as some genie-in-a-bottle whose only job is to grant them their every wish.

The other extreme is seeing God the same way the priest Eli did and saying, “He is the LORD. Let him do whatever he thinks is right.” (1Sa 3:18 ERV)

Prayer is not about telling God what to do; or maybe even forcing God and insisting on what we want. Prayer is about agreeing with God and granting Him permission to intervene in our affairs. It’s about asking that God’s will be done.

But some Believers misread even this concept. Whenever they pray for something and it doesn’t materialise, they automatically state, “that means God doesn’t want me to have it”, or “it is God’s will that I bear this”, etc.

But if we’re to take our Lord’s word’s in context we see that He didn’t just say “Thy will be done in earth,” but he explained that God’s will is to be done on earth, “as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:9-10).

Now, how is it in heaven? Is it Pain? Lack? Heartbreak? Sickness? Shame?...

Those things sound very earth-y to me. You won’t find any of those in heaven, so how can that be the will of God?

“The will of God” is seen perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ while He walked the Earth; and nowhere do we see Him tolerate any of those things; and “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” (Hb 13:8).

Beloved, we do not COMMAND the Almighty God in prayer, rather we ask Him to do His will in our lives; and He says His will is to give us “life – life in all its fullness.” (Jn 10:10 GNB)

There’re various reasons why answers to our prayers are delayed, but resigning to fate and declaring that “it must be God’s will” is only truncating whatever miracle that might be on the way. When God refused to remove Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”, He told Him so! So, unless we have God’s explicit declaration on the issue we mustn’t conclude on His behalf that it’s His will the issue remains that way.

AMEN.

GREG ELKAN