Your Will Be Done Series

Intro

Today we are continuing in our series “Soul Matters… Shaping our Souls in the light of The

Lord’s Prayer.”

Emmet Fox called it the Great Prayer, and declared that..

The Lord’s Prayer is “compact formula for the development of the soul.”

Lets read aloud together…

Matthew 6:9-13

"This, then, is how you should pray:

"'Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come, your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.'

Today we are engaging the central issue… not only of this prayer…but of ourselves as persons.

Matthew 6:10

Your kingdom come,

YOUR WILL BE DONE

On earth as it is in heaven.

“Your will be done”…

Here Jesus sets the reality of prayer and life in order. Before asking for daily bread or any other

desire…we set God apart as our Father in heaven…the source of all life and love…the need for

His name to be hallowed…which means His nature set apart from all else… whose Kingdom we

must desire to have come… which means the extent of His reign and rule over us an our

world…and that WE WANT HIS WILL TO BE DONE.

> What is central to prayer is what is central to reality – God’s will.

“Your will be done.” These four words confront our most basic posture towards prayer…and

God.

We think prayer is the application to getting what we want. We want something so we apply

for it. We want a job we fill out an application. We want government benefits we apply for

them. these days our smartphones can give us many things… we just need to get the

right…”APP.”

We want things…and we think prayer is the “App” for that.

But…the point of prayer is NOT to get God to give us what we need.

The point of prayer is to get our hearts back into their true orbit.

We often get it in reverse, and pray as if we expect God to change the universe just to

accommodate us. We treat God little better than a genie in a magic lamp. We make our wish

known, we expect God to change the universe to give us what we want.

In truth,

“Prayer is an interruption of personal ambition.” - Rowland Hogben

(Teacher at the China Inland Mission Training Centre in London)

I don’t believe there are any words more central…and more challenging that we could pray. (They

may be easy to say…but the hardest words to actually pray.)

As I have sat before them this week….they remain as sobering as any.

Praying “Your will be done”….is inherently bound in the line it flows from… “Your

Kingdom come.” For as we focused on last week… a kingdom reflects authority… what reigns

and rules. Jesus has come to bring God’s ultimate reign and rule back to bear upon the created

realm.

So both of these statements flow with a parallel intent.

"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done." As God’s Kingdom comes… His will is being done. And

wherever God's will is done, his Kingdom has come.

But as we noted last week….there is a clash of kingdoms…creator of all things including

freedom…and that which chooses to separate itself from that source. Jesus said he came to

confront and overcome that “prince of this world.”

But ultimately there are as many self proclaimed kingdoms as there are lives. For we all bear

the power of our own will.

A kingdom represents one’s scope of control…of ruling.

As Dallas Willard describes…

In creating human beings God made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited

sphere. Only so can they be persons. We are meant to exercise our "rule" only in union with God,

as He asks us to act. [2]

“Will is the ability to originate or refrain from originating something: an act or a thing. It brings

things into existence. Sticks and stones do not have that ability. Will is the capacity for origination

of events and things. Therefore it is the core of who and what we are as individuals, for what

arises from it is from us alone. It is that aspect of personality in virtue of which we have a likeness

to God or are "in His image." We are created to be creators -- of good. It is the core of our

nonphysical being. [3]

Our capacity to make choices… to exercise a will… is something we find dignity in.

That’s why we get excited when a child exercises their will with words… and movements. We

find beauty when we see the total dependency of a newborn infant being held in that arms of an