Today's Word
"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10
“Not my will, but your will be done." Luke 22:42
How to say, "Thy will be done"
There are three ways to pray “Thy will be done”
1. With defeated resignation. I say this because I have no other option. I feel helpless and give up. This is not Christianity.
2. With a tone of bitter resentment. Beethoven died all alone; and it is said that when they found his body his lips were drawn back in a snarl and his fists were clenched as if he were shaking his fists in the very face of God and of high heaven.
3. With trust because the Christian can be sure that God knows what He is doing and because the Christian can be certain of the love of God.
"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?" Romans 8:32
Praying “Thy will be done” is an act of trust, of faith, of belief. It contains hope, even optimism about what kind of future hard acts of obedience will bring.
Today's Prayer
“Lord, the truth is that I know more often than I like to admit what the right thing is and what the wrong thing is. The bigger thing is obedience. Lord, please lead me to acts of courage when faced with the hard choice of obeying you when everything in me wants not to. In Christ’s name. Amen”
Commenting upon Jesus' response to Satan's temptations in the desert, J Dwight Pentecost says, "Christ showed Himself to be in obedience to the willl of God, and for Him that will was revealed in the Word of God. Submission to the Word of God is esssential to obedience to the will of God. He recognized that the highest good is not to satisfy or gratify but to obey." That last sentence is a lesson that humanity just cannot seem to learn.
ReplyDeleteIn taking a look at 'thy will be done', I find I cannot do so without first sorting through what in so many ways threatens to become rhetoric. Though the terms are true, are just, are applicable, I can only make sense of them when God, through his patience, makes them a reality for me.
ReplyDeleteThe only hope of reality I have this way is through the Holy Spirit. I, alone, cannot be trusted to discern His will by my own standing. Yes, even my obedience can only be completed by the reality of truth He reveals to me.
Many people feel they have "done the will of God" by obeying something that they felt was right but in the end was not.
"Thy will be done" for me is a cry, a plea, a desire, that I hope I will learn to listen to as the Spirit "guides me into all truth". One, I recognize and confess that without God's mercy I am helpless to commit to. "For what I want to do, I do not do" (Rom 7:15)
We have no hope other than to be a willing pupil with a willing heart trusting that God's will for us includes grace and mercy as well as instruction and justice. These I can get a handle on. Mention the word obedience and somehow, when man says it, I can't help but shrink back and cringe. When I read it from the Lord, I read it entwined with the ever loving threads of mercy and grace, for "thy will be done" is nothing if not based on love.