Your will be done

Have you considered how must of a factor trust plays into your daily life?  You drive across a bridge and think nothing of it…you trust those who put it together.  You take medicine from the pharmacy…you trust the doctor you trust the pharmacist and you trust the people who made the meds.  You pick up groceries or go to a restaurant and you eat the food…you place a lot of trust in those who cook or those who package the food.

What’s the point?  I’m glad you asked…to pray as Jesus taught the disciples to pray requires a great deal of trust…especially the line, “Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  There is much I could write about God’s will, but I want to keep the focus on praying so let me suggest four statements about asking for God’s will to be done.

First, you are asking for obedience. For His kingdom to come—our kingdom must go.  For His will to be done—our will must either conform to His or be crucified.  That requires trust that His will is better than our will.

Second, you and I are never more like Jesus than when we pray for God’s will to take precedence over our will.  Remember what He prayed in the Garden, “Yet not my will, but yours be done!”

Third, the flip side of that is also true, we are never more like Satan than we insist on our own will above God’s will. If you read Isaiah 14:12-14 which many understand to be a description of Satan’s fall…in those verses Satan says, “I will” give times.  We are never more like Jesus than when we pray for God’s will to take precedence over our will, and we are never more like the enemy than when we insist on our own will.

Fourth, the great lie of the enemy is that we will find more joy in disobedience than in obedience.  The greatest joy we will ever experience and the greatest peace we will ever know are the times we are in the center of God’s will.

Imagine how that would play out in the way you spent your time, in the way you treated your family, in your desires, in your love, in your marriage, in your finances, in your everything.  God, I want your will over mine and I want your will in my marriage, or in my job, or in my business to be done like it is in Heaven.  It is done perfectly there, and I want it done perfectly in my own life.  Would that make a difference in the way you approached your job, your school, your home, or your recreation?  Your will be done in my life and on this earth as it is in Heaven.

The catechism’s say the chief end of man is to know God and to enjoy Him forever.  Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (Jn 15:11).  That joy comes when we are living in His good will and in His good plans for our lives.