Day Eighteen

I'm going out of town for a couple days so I'm leaving you with my thoughts from last Friday's Lenten lunch which borrow heavily from my Lenten experience. Enjoy.

In this season of Lent as we look at the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer and consider the road to the cross that Jesus walked we would be remiss if one of the stops on our journey didn’t take us through Gethsemane. It was at Gethsemane, in Jesus’ hour of struggle and crisis of conviction, that we see our Lord putting into practice the very pattern of prayer that he taught us to follow.

In the garden as he agonized over his future he prayed to his Abba Father – modelling once again for us how we are to approach this infinite and mighty God as beloved children. In the garden he rebuked the disciples for their inattention and exhorted them that they pray that they should not fall into temptation – echoing the plea of the Lord’s Prayer; and in the Garden – at the time when it was most difficult – Jesus modelled for us the critical petition “your will be done.”

Today our Lenten series through the Lord’s Prayer brings us to focusing on that very petition; that God’s will would be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. What does it mean to pray the will of God? What does it mean to relinquish our wants and desires and place them under the sovereign rule and plan of our Abba father? What does it look like when God’s will is enacted in this place even to the degree it is in the Heavens?

Not everyone takes on the observance of Lent as a personal discipline or sacrifice anymore – especially not in many Evangelical churches like this one. Lent has been in many traditions a lost art form – but I have taken it on personally to rediscover this season in my own life and walk with God over the last few seasons and this year – as I have decided to surrender myself in prayer to God three times a day by praying the hours, God has shown me something amazing that is centred around this very prayer.

Every day, three times a day I have been coming to the Lord in prayer – following a liturgy of prayer though scripture, psalms, hymns and classic prayers to prime the pump of my soul and draw me into deeper times of listening and reflection and worship. The prayers change every day – but the one thing that is always consistent is that somewhere in the liturgy I pray the Lord’s Prayer. And as I have repeated that practice for the last 18 days praying through this prayer over 50 times already in this season of Lent I have discovered some things about praying for God’s will to come. And in the brief time I’ve been allotted here today I want to share with you those things.

To pray the will of God is to pray selflessly desiring God’s greatest glory. In Matthew 6:33 Jesus reminds to “...seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Praying for God’s will to be done is akin to humble ourselves before his majesty and declare that we don’t know what’s best. Not for us, not for others, not for the world. We may think we know what’s best – but it’s only in seeking first God’s will we experience what’s best.

We think we need praise, but God knows we need to learn humility. We think we need things faster, but God knows that what we need is to learn patience. We think we need more, but God knows that we will be happier with less once we learn contentment. We want that promotion, but God knows that it will lead to burn out. We think we know a lot of things – but God knows that we don’t.

To pray for God’s will to be done is nothing less than acknowledging that He is God and we are not – and choosing to live with the implications of that reality. Your will be done Lord Jesus is the true prayer of a Christian, and God is teaching its refrain to my heart this Lenten season.

Secondly, to pray the will of God is to rightly understand God’s goodness as a loving Abba father. There is no hint of defensiveness or self-protection in this prayer. It’s not just acknowledging that God knows what’s best for us, but that he wants what’s best for us. It’s understanding that God does not see us the way we too often see other people – as resources to exploit for our own gain, or as collateral pieces of a much larger plan that doesn’t really affect us. To pray for God’s will to be done is to affirm the implications of the first line of the prayer that God is our father and that we are his children.

Jesus reminds us of this fact in Luke 11 with these words: “Which father among you would give a snake to your child if the child asked for a fish? If a child asked for an egg, what father would give the child a scorpion? If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” I have three amazing children – Jack who is five, Harry who is three and Penelope who is eight months old – I can’t conceive of concocting a plan that would bring them harm, or wish them anything but the absolute best in life. My will is for them to grow, and experience blessing and joy and the fullness of life – sometimes that means not giving them what they want – but instead what I want; not because I’m a tyrant (at least not once I’ve had my morning coffee) but because in my fatherly wisdom I know that the things they want aren’t good for them. Do I think I am a better father than my heavenly father? Of course not – so I pray for His will to be done because I know that his will for my life is better even than my will for my children’s lives.

This Lenten season God is teaching me that he loves me by having me surrender my will to his.

And lastly, to pray the will of God come on Earth as it is in Heaven is to release God to work in every aspect of existence – no realm or sphere of society or cosmology is off limits to him – and more specifically to give him free access to every corner and facet of our lives – not restricting him to work only in certain rooms of our hearts – but everywhere.

I think that sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that God only wants a piece of us. Perhaps what we consider to be the best piece or perhaps just a token piece but in understanding that God wants to be involved in our lives we miss the point that anything less that 100% is not giving ourselves to God. Heaven is a place that we don’t really understand very well – it’s not our reality and the pictures we get painted in scripture form the brief glimpses that some of the authors have had are full of paradoxes and mysteries and unbelievable, impossible things. Like I said, it’s not our reality – rather it is the reality of God. Heaven is a place where God’s rule is absolute – where his sovereignty goes unchallenged by the sinful desires of people and where his power and presence are unveiled and inescapable. What the Bible teaches us is that the great mission of God is to bring that sort of kingdom to earth. That’s why we pray for his Kingdom to come – but while we are waiting for the fullness of God’s kingdom to be revealed in this world we are taught to seek out in breakings of God’s kingdom in our own lives through surrendering our desires to his perfect and glorious will.

When the will of God is enacted in this place – even as it is in Heaven – we experience God in a way that human language in all of recorded history has been unable to adequately represent. To experience God’s action of will as we will one day experience it in heaven is to ask to be exposed to God’s glory. It’s to ask with the bravado of Moses to “show me your glory” and to be transformed in the most inner places of our being by it. Praying for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is asking for God to transform us and this world. It’s praying with a holy discontent for the state of humanity and creation and longing with the heart of God for things to be set right once again. This is what the Lord has been teaching me in my times of prayer.

So we come back to the idea of Lent. How does this prayer help us focus on this season of preparation for the cross? It’s quite simply this – when we pray for God’s will and not our own, we pray with Jesus in the garden. When we give up comfort so that God can do something better, we identify with our saviour who gave up everything so that God’s best will could be done in our lives. When we pray the prayer he taught us, we echo the heart beat of the saviour in our own chest. So God, this season, this year, this day – we ask as your people that your will would be done, in us, as it is in heaven. That your will would be done, in me, as it is in heaven.

To God be the glory. Amen.