Prayer and the Will of God
Matthew 6:10; Romans 12:1-2; 1 John 5:14-15
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer (Thy Kingdom, Thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven) solves three big problems that many of us face in prayer. First, many folk are afraid to pray. ”What if I ask for the wrong thing? What if I do something stupid like in the legend of King Midas who asked that everything he touched turn to gold. Then he hugged his child and regretted his request.” Haven’t you heard someone say, “Be careful what you pray for; you might get it?” Many approach prayer as Aladdin’s lamp and the genie in the bottle. We get three wishes and three wishes only so we must save up our praying privilege until we really need it.
While some fear praying, others grow frustrated. We have been taught to believe in prayer. We have always been told that God answers our prayers. So we pray and when nothing happens immediately we are quick to conclude that somebody over promised us. Frustration sets in despite the fact that Jesus taught his disciples to “pray and not give up.” I personally believe that is the intent of the phrase from Paul about “pray without ceasing.” “Pray without ceasing” has less to do with praying all of the time than with never giving up on prayer.
The biggest problem with most people when it comes to prayer is neither fear nor frustration, but the simple failure to pray. We don’t pray because we don’t get it! It has not sunk into our thick skulls that God has actually made much of what he intends to do in this world dependent on our praying. He didn’t have to. He could have organized this universe in any way he saw fit, but He chose to order it around prayer—our seeking him and asking him to act. He has made prayer one of the great weapons in the arsenal of spiritual warfare. Consequently, the Enemy will work harder to keep us from praying than he will on any other tactic. Praying is simply hard spiritual work as those disciples learned in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus asked them to watch and pray for an hour. They slept. The task was bigger than their wills as it is with most of us.
If I were a betting man (and I am not—I am too Scottish and too cheap for that) I would wager that Satan has some of you in this room snookered. He has likely convinced a few that prayer is a waste of time. “God’s doesn’t want us to ask; he wants us to work.” That’s the motto. “We must work and answer our own prayers. Asking God is an easy way out for those unwilling to roll up their sleeves and work.” That is the bill of goods Satan has sold many believers in our world—believe it or not!
He is the father of lies. And that is one of his best. The fact is prayer IS work! It is hard work! It is just plain too hard for a lot of people. In fact, most grown men I know could do a lot of things for an hour—chop wood, dig ditches, pitch hay bales, even shop (you must admit that stretches credulity a bit) for an hour, but praying for an hour is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If anyone tries to convince you that praying is an easy way out, just ask him or her to join you for an hour. They will learn better—quickly.
Toward the end of his first letter, John brings the topic of prayer and the will of God together in a most powerful way. Did you catch this connection? “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15) John takes the fear out of praying. We can have confidence in approaching God. He removes the frustration factor. We know that he hears us. He provides a powerful incentive to prayer more and more aggressively. We know that we have what we asked of him. The key to all of this is found in the will of God, John says. If we ask anything according to his will!
Henry Ward Beecher, famous American preacher of another generation, wrote, “I used to think the Lord’s Prayer was a short prayer; but, as I live longer, and see more of life, I believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.“ (Christian Reader, Vol. 34.)
This second petition may well be the hardest part of the Lord’s Prayer. There will be other hard parts to come, but this is a high mountain pass that we must traverse before we attempt to scale those other peaks. What is involved in praying the will of God? Let’s start with a broad stroke and then consider one specific example of praying according to his will.
First, look back with me at the passage from Romans 12. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:1-2 NIV)
Romans 12 marks a major transition in Paul’s letter. Chapters 1-8 are the major doctrinal sections of the book. In chapters 1-5, the Apostle argues the case for salvation by grace through face in Christ alone and not by the works of the law. In chapters 6-8, he then answers the objection that being saved by grace through faith leads to a license to live like the Devil. Quite to the contrary, he says, it produces an obligation to live like Jesus. Chapters 9-11 pursues the question “If salvation is by faith through Christ, then where does this leave the Jews to whom all of the Old Testament promises were made?” Chapter 12 begins the practical application section of the book. That explains the “therefore.” Since God’s grace has been so abundantly provided in Christ and there is nothing we can do to earn it, what should be our response? Of particular interest to us is the way verse 2 ends, “then you will be able to test and approve (the idea is sort like of conducting a chemical experience to determine the make up of a particular compound) what God’s will is—(not just his potential or possible will, but) his good, pleasing and perfect will. What precedes is the way to get to that point in life.
Some folk talk as if God has no will. He just waits around and watches in an uninvolved, uncaring manner. Whatever will be, will be. Others suggest that God’s will forever remains a totally mystery. That is true if by know you mean to somehow figure it out on our own or force God to divulge his secrets through some magic ritual or ceremony. That is the stuff of which most pagan religions are made. But the Bible teaches that God has chosen to reveal himself to his servants to such an extent that major portions of his will are no longer a puzzle. But the end of Romans 12: 2 says, THEN you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is. This would also seem to be a prerequisite to powerful praying. Before we can pray according to his will, we must know what it is!
What’s the then of Romans 12:2? What leads to a knowledge of God’s will? Paul says it starts with a focus on the mercy of God. It has to begin there. Three actions follow—two positive and one negative. The first positive step after the mercy focus is “to offer” your bodies (that is, your total self) as a living sacrifice to God. Someone has said, “The problem with living sacrifices is they keep climbing off the altar.” This is the Bible’s definition of real worship. Worship is not so much what we do in church, as what we do after we leave church. It is the Monday and Saturday stuff, even more than the Sunday stuff.
In a sense, this first step means deciding that we want to do God’s will even before we know what it is! Think about that for a minute. Would you sign a blank check for just anybody and trust them to fill in the rest on their own. Probably not! But knowing God’s will begins there. You can’t negotiate with the Creator of the Universe. He asks you to decide up front whether you trust him enough to sign over your life to him. Once you have taken that step of faith, then he begins to let you in on what he wants to do—what his good, pleasing and perfect will is.
The next two actions define what this way of life is all about. Next, do not conform to the pattern of the world. The term for conform describes the outward form of something. One translation renders this, “don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.” What determines your values and priorities? That is the question! We are all under enormous pressure to adapt to the thinking of the majority around us. Sometimes it is subtle, sometimes overt. It’s always present!
The alternative is the third action: But be transformed. This word is related to the term used for what happens to a caterpillar when it spins a cocoon and later emerges as a butterfly. It is totally and radically changed from what it was into something new. How does this inner transformation take place in a human’s life? It certainly isn’t in a cocoon or through some chemical metamor-phosis. It is spiritual, moral, and, in some sense, rational. Our minds are changed or renewed. Our frame of reference is transformed. We think differently. We evaluate decisions differently. Our value system is altered. Until we enter into some mental or thought retooling we can never be transformed from the inside out. We are then headed toward discovering God’s will.
God’s will is not so much something that we discover as the result of a long search. God’s will for life is often something that is suddenly there after we have stopped looking for it and started endeavoring to get closer to God. It is no longer what he can do or can provide for us that matters. All that matters is that God is there. That he is in our life. Praying has a lot to do with that attitude. That’s why Jesus taught his disciples to pray: thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
There is another aspect to knowing God’s will and praying. Scripture clearly reveals portions of God’s plan and will for Planet Earth. If we are praying about and for those items, we can be absolutely certain that we are praying in God’s will. Consider just one of those areas:
It is God’s will that the lost be saved and that men and women, boys and girls, come to a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus phrased it like this, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40.) The Apostle Paul made it even clearer when he wrote, “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:3-5).
When we pray specifically and persistently for others to come to faith in Jesus Christ as personal savior and Lord, then we are praying God’s will. The Bible says categorically that if we pray according to God’s will he hears us. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we can read down through the phone book and pray that each name will come to faith next week and then have confidence that it will happen. We don’t know God’s timing. We don’t know God’s means. We don’t know all of the other details that God is working out at the same time. But this we can know—we are praying at the very center of God’s will. As we do, answered prayer increases.
Of course, we cannot pray this way without praying for our own witness and for others who are speaking for Christ. This is exactly what Scripture teaches we should do. Listen to Paul: “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Col. 4:2-6).
We do this when we pray for each other, when we pray for our congregation’s leaders, and especially when we pray for missionaries and Christian workers around the world. Closely related to this is our prayer for future and needed missionaries and other workers for the Gospel. Jesus specifically told his disciples to pray about that. “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matt. 9:38).
Conclusion: Six centuries before Jesus, Jeremiah assured God’s people of his will for their lives. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:11-13). God’s wants to bless us. He will when we want his will.
One last thought about God’s will. Someone has said that finding God’s will is much like steering a car. It is much easier to do so when it’s moving. We are more likely to find God’s will when we are about the business of doing godly things than we are sitting around waiting for him to tell us what to do.
Christian writer E. C. Baird put it this way, “You ask: what is the will of God? Well, here’s the answer true; The nearest thing, that should be done, That he can do—through you!” One thing that we can do NOW is pray!
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
