According to Your Will

One day, Jesus was walking with His disciples and one of them turned to Him and asked, “How do we pray?”  That seems like a really loaded question, but Jesus answered it in a quite simple and quite famous way in Matthew 6 and Luke 11.  Many of us who have been around the church in any capacity have probably at least heard the term “Lord’s Prayer” if not heard, read, or recited the prayer itself. For those of us who don’t know it by heart, here it is:

“Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts,

   as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

   but deliver us from evil.”

I was at youth group in middle school the first time I remember hearing a sermon about prayer.  It was very interesting to me, because, while I’m sure I’d heard sermons on the topic before, this one stuck out in that the pastor fully dissected the Lord’s prayer and looked at each piece to help us have a more effective prayer life.  I don’t remember the whole sermon and my goal is not to regurgitate it to you word for word, but I would like to discuss the portion of the prayer that stuck in my head the most during the time I was sitting in the chair listening to my then youth pastor preach.

“Your will be done.”

That tiny piece of text is what really stuck out to me and entirely changed the way that I prayed from that night onward.  Here’s why.  I want you to take a look at a verse like Mark 11:24 in which Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”  Now, imagine you had a five year old girl living in your home.  Every year, she begs you for a pony and one year, she looks at that verse and decides that she should pray to receive a pony.  Will she receive the pony?  Probably not, or, if she does, probably not right away.  Humans were created to work and wait, even before the Fall, and just handing us things we desire but do not need is counterintuitive to the nature He has given us.

This is the way that many people approach prayer - as if God is a genie sent to grant our every wish and make our lives everything we ever dreamed they could be, but that’s simply not biblical.  Another verse that is often taken in this way is 1 John 5:15 (“And if we know that He hears us -- whatever we ask -- we know that we have what we asked of Him.”). I wonder how people would feel if, rather than taking these two scriptures at face value as if they stand alone as the Bible, we looked at the context surrounding these statements.

Let’s start with Mark 11:24.  “Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”  I challenge you to go read Mark 11:12-25.  I think what you will find interesting is that Jesus is not actually speaking on prayer in this section, so much as He is about faith.  He says, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their hearts but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.”  Having faith that God will do what needs to be done to show His strength and His power, and thinking that praying for a Ferrari will make one magically appear in your garage are two very different things.  Verse 25 says, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”  Here’s a scary tidbit: Jesus puts our forgiveness in our own hands by commanding us to forgive others.  We can’t cut out the one verse and ignore the things around it.

In the 1 John 5:15 verse, people often take it to mean that grandma is going to get one hundred percent better no matter what because they prayed.  But look with me for just one moment to the verse just before that, 1 John 5:14.  “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (emphasis added)”  The things we ask for will not happen unless God wills them to be.  Yes, grandma is an amazing person who has served Jesus all her life and shown nothing but love and compassion to everyone she meets, but she’s old, frail, and in pain.  God hears your prayers begging for her not to die, begging for her to be young again, begging for her to be healed here on Earth, but He wants to make her live forever, forever young, forever healed.  He wants to reward her for the work she’s done in life and so, He takes her to heaven.

Recognizing the will of God in our prayers is crucial to an effective prayer life.  Believing that His will is what is ultimately best for us and that, as our Creator, He has infinitely more wisdom than us, is absolutely necessary for our prayers to receive the promises God has made (John 14:13).  James 1:6 reminds us that we must have faith that He is who He says He is and what He says He will do.

There is a clear pattern that emerges when the Lord’s prayer is dissected and it’s very fun, and beneficial, to play around with this pattern in our own prayer lives. I personally like to end every prayer with “In Your name and according to Your will, Amen” because it reminds me that I am not in control and that He is.

Dear God above all other gods,

You are amazing and matchless in Your worth.

You have created the world and everything in it and everything lives and breathes by Your hand.

You are shaping the world through Your people who are called to do Your will.

The angels obey Your every command.

Provide for us everything that we need to be effective in the work You have for us.

Please help us to forgive those around us, just as we have undeservingly been forgiven by You.

Help us not to stray from the path You would have us follow.

In Your name and according to Your will,

Amen.

Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may be able to test and approve what God’s will is -- His good, perfect, and pleasing will.

Romans 12:2

“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

Luke 22:42