God’s will

In the fourth part of his series on the Lord’s Prayer, David Searle considers the words: ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’.

WE can express God’s will, first that he yearns all should be embraced by his love and grace (2 Pet 3:9), and second, that in what we do and are we should be increasingly become like Jesus (Rom 8:29).

We’ve all seen a toddler refusing to do what their mother was asking: ‘No!’ they emphatically say, their body-language showing defiance. All of us, not just kiddies, can be defiant. It is often said that we have freewill. But realistically our wills are self-centred. CS Lewis speaks of ‘our self-wills’! For the image of God in which we were created has been seriously marred.

There are occasions when vestiges of God’s image do shine out, as when footballer Marcus Rashford spoke out for disadvantaged children, or when passers-by stop to help an elderly person who has fallen.

Nevertheless, we see great suffering in our world as in the huge explosion in Beirut or the sprawling refugee camps across the Middle East. Let none of us say these are according to the Father’s will.

We have already noted that the kingdom of ‘the prince of this world’ opposes the kingdom of God, which is why we must not only pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ but also ‘Thy will be done.’ As citizens in this world, we are involved in this spiritual conflict of wills as we witness it in Gethsemane, for there we find Jesus, wrestling with the Father’s will.

An essential part of Christ’s incarnation was that he clothed himself with our humanity. As he prayed, he was not asking to fulfil his task without the anguish of the cross. Rather, it was that nothing should come between himself and his Father. As Calvin comments: ‘there was no fault [in his prayer] when the terror of death fell on him, and the darkness covered him, and he let out that cry to God.’ The conflict was won when he said, ‘Father, not my will but yours be done.’ Yielding wholly to the Father, he entered into the liberation of embracing ‘the joy that was set before him’ (Heb 12:2).

However, yielding our wills to God’s will, with Jesus himself as our pastor, is never a once-for-all victory. Every day we must surrender to the Father’s deep love for us. George Matheson’s hymn, ‘Make me a captive Lord!’ brings out the paradox of that struggle between our defiant wills and our heavenly Father’s perfect will for our fulfilment and usefulness in his hands. My will is not my own till thou hast made it thine; if it would reach a monarch’s throne, it must its crown resign.

The guiding principle of every Christian’s life must be to serve Christ faithfully that we may be God’s agents, praying and working to see his will done on earth as it is in heaven.