WHY PRAY THIS? This is a prayer because it isn’t happening much now.
- Matthew 6:10.
- So in this fourth part of the sermon, Jesus calls us to pray for God’s will to be done.
- But, wait, isn’t that already happening all the time? We hear people constantly speak that whatever happened was God’s will, so many presume that everything that happens is God’s will.
- That isn’t true - and that's a big reason why we are called to pray this prayer.
- We need to start with the difference between God’s perfect will and God’s permissive will. This is a little theological, but it’s essential.
- God’s perfect will is the exact thing that God wants to come to pass.
- God’s permissive will acknowledges the reality that God, as God, could stop anything from happening if He chose to. There are many times where He allows things to happen that He doesn’t want to have happen - times when evil is happening, for instance. God allowed it to happen but it wasn’t what He wanted to occur.
- This is necessary because of human free will. God has given us the freedom to choose against Him. With rare exceptions, He allows us to go down roads that are wrong, destructive to ourselves and others, and that reject His truth. He will not make us into robots. If we are going to obey Him, it has to be willingly.
- Therefore, God’s permissive will - the times when He doesn’t like what we are doing but allows us to anyway.
- Understanding that, we come back to this phrase in the Lord’s Prayer more ready to grasp it.
- Despite many people’s presumption that everything is God’s will, that simply isn’t true. Not only is some of what happens in the world not God’s will, but actually the majority of what happens is not God’s will. People regularly flout God’s will in a host of ways:
a. By sinning.
b. By living by the world’s priorities.
c. By sins of omission.
d. By putting self first.
e. By being ignorant of God’s truth and therefore not following it.
f. By having a religion that is a show only.
- That's only a partial list, but it makes the point.
- So what are we praying for here then?
- We acknowledge that God’s will is not being done the way that it should be all around us as well as in our lives. And so we come here to God to ask for basically two things (and these will sound familiar if you were here for last week’s sermon):
a. I pray that the world will do God’s will more.
b. I pray that I will do God’s will more.
- Now, similar to last week, we have more control over the second than the first. But we want both.
We are praying for the world to become the kind of world we want - one where God’s will is done with regularity.
- Again, thinking of last week, one way to think of these two phrases together is something like this:
a. “Your Kingdom come” is what we are hoping for long-term with God’s will being done.
b. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is what we are hoping for here and now.
- I freely acknowledge that this is a very incomplete way to look at these two phrases, but I think it gets us in the ballpark.
- To more fully understand this, there are a few questions we need to answer.
IS IT UNKNOWABLE? God’s will is not intended to be a mystery.
- Some of you might be thinking, “That all sounds good but God’s will is nearly impossible to know.” It’s an inscrutable mystery.
- My response to that is: no, it isn’t.
- This, of course, is an essential point. If God’s will is functionally unknowable, then this prayer is mere wishful thinking. But it’s not.
- Allow me to give some proofs of this.
a. God has given us the Bible.
- This, I think, is the biggest one.
- The Bible is not an irrelevant book of ancient tales that has no bearing on our present lives. No, it is filled with God’s instruction on a whole host of issues and life situations.
- Why has God given us all that? Because He wants us to obey Him and pursue His will. God is eager to help us follow His will. He does not want to leave us clueless.
- Now, that doesn’t mean that we are necessarily going to like what God’s Word says that we should do. It may be exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do. It might require us to go in a direction we have no interest in walking. That may be and we may reject His instruction, but that is not the same thing as saying that God’s will can’t be discerned.
- Often, the problem is not that God’s will is unknowable, but that it is unsought.
- Often, the problem is not that God’s will is unknowable, but that we don’t like what God’s will is.
- I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had down through the years where someone comes to me wanting to know what the Bible says about a particular issue. I explain what I understand it to say and as I do I can see from the look on their face that there is no way they are doing that. What they really came to be hoping for is a confirmation of what they already wanted to do.
- There are a small number of situations, like deciding between two job opportunities, where the Bible doesn’t have a word that speaks directly to that situation, but in the vast majority of situations (95%) it does.
- I should note that if you don’t know enough about the Bible to figure it out on your own, I would be happy to help.
b. Jesus regularly said that being a Christian meant following Him.
- While many think that being a Christian merely means having a vague, undefined “belief” in Jesus, in fact Jesus and the rest of the New Testament repeatedly make it clear that the definition of a Christian is that He is someone who follows the teaching of Jesus and obeys His instruction. Given that, it would therefore be essential that people who want to be Christians be able to know how to follow Him. This presumes an ability to figure out God’s will.
- The reality is that not only is it not a mystery, but God has gone to great lengths to spell out what it looks like. He wants us to be able to know God’s will so that we can be followers of Christ.
c. God offers to answer our prayers.
- Incredibly generous offers to answer prayer are repeatedly made in the New Testament. Jesus emphasized the eagerness of our heavenly Father to take care of our needs.
- One of the things that we can pray to ask help for is discerning what God’s will is in a given situation.
- For example, maybe it’s a little more complicated or complex than the straightforward situations where it is just a matter of reading a verse and directly applying it to our lives. In those cases, we go to God in prayer, asking Him to reveal His will to us to help us to know what to do. Is this a prayer that God will answer? Think about it - one of His children comes to Him saying that they want to do His will but they just need His help in figuring out exactly what that is. Is that a prayer God will be eager to answer? Of course it is. He loves that prayer.
- So God gives us prayer as another tool to discern His will.
d. God gives us wise Christian friends around us for advice.
- Finally, in the discernment process for all this, God has surrounded us with the church to help us figure things out. - There are wise Christian brothers and sisters with more experience and knowledge than us that we can turn to in the midst of our uncertainty to try to figure things out.
- So we can sit down with those we respect for advice on what the Scripture says on particular issues.
WHY SHOULD WE WANT TO PURSUE GOD'S WILL IN OUR LIVES? God’s will is not handcuffs but wings.
- Let’s directly address what some of you are thinking: I don’t want to pursue God’s will in my life because it will limit me. It will keep me from being able to enjoy the good life. It will keep me from having fun. It will keep me from living a full life.
- In other words, pursuing God’s will in my life is like handcuffs.
- It binds me, it limits me, it makes my life worse.
- I confess that such thoughts are a popular notion. Many believe that. But I think they’re wrong.
- I don’t think that pursuing God’s will is like handcuffs - I think that pursuing God’s will is like wings.
- How so?
- God loves us. God wants what is best for us.
- The biggest misunderstanding that most people have is that the pursuit of sin and self in their lives is essential to having a fun, interesting life. I disagree, as does Scripture.
- The wages of sin is death. Sin doesn’t bring joy and peace; it brings pain and anxiety.
- The way that sin works is that the “good parts” are all upfront. The negative consequences of sin generally show up later. But they do show up.
- God is the most loving, joyful, peaceful Being in the universe. He wants us to enjoy the fruits of the Spirit in our lives. He wants to give us the truth that we might be set free.
- One way to put it is that the way of God works. It is the path to abundant life. It is the path to deeper things.
So if that's what we want for our lives, then pursuing God’s will is the way to get there. God doesn’t want the Christian life to leave us in the same muck and mire we were in before we found Him. He wants us to be transformed.
- All that leads to this, though. There are some of you here this morning who hear all that and still say, “I don’t want that. I want to make the decisions. I want to go my own way. God’s will would handcuff me.”
- If you don’t want it, you don’t want it.
- But I think that, based on all that I’ve shared, that pursuing God’s will is like wings. You think of a glider sailing through the sky on the power of the wind under its wings. When we invite God’s will into our lives, the “winds of the Holy Spirit” begin to blow in our lives, empowering us and lifting us in ways that we couldn’t do ourselves. We have God moving in our lives, taking us to places we never expected and opening up amazing doors we never would have expected. Like a sailboat under the power of the wind can go farther than a regular boat with just a tank of gas, obedience to God’s will is wings.
- Before I leave this topic, let me just make one final effort to convince those who aren’t convinced on pursuing God’s will.
- Let me hit four things briefly.
a. God is smart.
- He is God, after all. He has all the intelligence and wisdom, so it makes sense to follow Him.
b. God knows all the puzzle pieces.
- We see only a part of the larger situation. We don’t know how everything fits together.
- He even sees the future, which we can’t.
c. God has our best interests at heart.
- He loves us and wants what’s best for us. So we can trust Him.
d. It helps us avoid the silliness of the world’s wisdom.
- There is a ton of questionable wisdom all around us. People telling us we should do this or do that, when in fact the advice is often contradictory or just terrible.
- God gives us wisdom we can count on.
WHAT'S THE NEXT STEP? On your next decision, seek God’s will.
- As we close, this is a big decision that each person needs to make in their life.
- If you haven’t been doing this, but you’re considering starting, let me speak to you for a minute.
- This seems big and scary, but also incredibly hopeful. It’s a major change but an exciting one because you’re inviting God into your life in a new, deeper way.
- It can seem overwhelming to think of all the potential changes this might mean. I would urge you to shift your eyes from that larger context down to a smaller one. This all happens one decision at a time. All you need to concentrate on is your next decision.
- This week (or today or even right now), as you think about your next decision, make a commitment to seek God’s will in that decision.
- Maybe you know what God’s will is and you just need to make the commitment to pursue that road. Do that.
- Maybe you don't know what God’s will is and you need to ask the preacher for help in figuring out what the Bible says on that. Do that.
- Maybe you have a complex situation and need to dig into the Bible yourself but also ask for wise Christian friends to weigh in. Do that.
- Seeking God’s will happens one decision at a time. Do the first decision and then move on from there.
