When I began to think about this sermon series I wondered about the difficulty of preaching on one line of the Lord’s Prayer each week.  Then I started to wonder about the difficulty of what to say in one week about topics such as the holiness of God, the Kingdom of God.  God’s will.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  What does this mean?  What is God’s will for the world?  What is God’s will for our lives?  Let us look at this portion of Jesus’ prayer this morning and see what God has to say to our hearts.

As we look at this prayer, we see that the first four lines are directed vertically at God and our relationship with God, and the next four are directed horizontally and are more about us and our relationships with one another.  It’s not cut and dried, and both our relationship with God and our relationship with people and creation are involved in all parts of the prayer, as we’ve seen and will see.  We start off with “Our Father in heaven.”  Jesus then makes three petitions to God which in essence amount to very much the same thing.  Such repetition is a Hebrew poetic/literary device.  We see it in the Psalms in words like “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.”  Jesus is invoking the reign of God when he prays “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 

I would say, however, that as we approach the second half of the prayer where the prayer becomes more about us, if you like, Jesus is making this prayer much more personal.  We can think of God’s name being known – God’s love, mercy, justice, grace – and God’s Kingdom being established in the person of Christ and worked out through us and how we’re awaiting its fulfillment.  We don’t often think in terms of making our names known (though we might if we make fame/recognition our base).  We don’t often think in terms of our personal kingdoms being established unless we have megalomaniacal tendencies (though maybe in small scale way we do). 

I look at “Your will be done” though and I think it takes this prayer to a very personal place.  It took me to a personal place.  We need to talk about what God’s will is when we’re talking about asking him to make it be done.  Before we do that though we get the sense that, whatever it is, God’s will is not happening.  We look around our world and we see disorder.  A man getting out of his car and yelling at a woman for doing 110 in the fast lane is not in God’s will.  Children get cancer.  People are punched in the face.  Stabbed.  Shot.  Bombed out of their homes.  I don’t need to go on.  We know that God’s will is not worked out in and through us.  The person I was mean to last week was not experiencing God’s will through me.  This is why we ask for forgiveness in this prayer.

It gets personal because we’re talking about our own wills and God’s will.  We’re very familiar with our own wills, aren’t we?  We’re very familiar with the things we want.  The things we’ve wanted for a long time.  Our hopes.  Our dreams.  If we’ve been around long enough we’ve known their unrealization.  We’ve known what it’s like to say “This 

When I began to think about this sermon series I wondered about the difficulty of preaching on one line of the Lord’s Prayer each week.  Then I started to wonder about the difficulty of what to say in one week about topics such as the holiness of God, the Kingdom of God.  God’s will.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  What does this mean?  What is God’s will for the world?  What is God’s will for our lives?  Let us look at this portion of Jesus’ prayer this morning and see what God has to say to our hearts.

As we look at this prayer, we see that the first four lines are directed vertically at God and our relationship with God, and the next four are directed horizontally and are more about us and our relationships with one another.  It’s not cut and dried, and both our relationship with God and our relationship with people and creation are involved in all parts of the prayer, as we’ve seen and will see.  We start off with “Our Father in heaven.”  Jesus then makes three petitions to God which in essence amount to very much the same thing.  Such repetition is a Hebrew poetic/literary device.  We see it in the Psalms in words like “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.”  Jesus is invoking the reign of God when he prays “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 

I would say, however, that as we approach the second half of the prayer where the prayer becomes more about us, if you like, Jesus is making this prayer much more personal.  We can think of God’s name being known – God’s love, mercy, justice, grace – and God’s Kingdom being established in the person of Christ and worked out through us and how we’re awaiting its fulfillment.  We don’t often think in terms of making our names known (though we might if we make fame/recognition our base).  We don’t often think in terms of our personal kingdoms being established unless we have megalomaniacal tendencies (though maybe in small scale way we do). 

I look at “Your will be done” though and I think it takes this prayer to a very personal place.  It took me to a personal place.  We need to talk about what God’s will is when we’re talking about asking him to make it be done.  Before we do that though we get the sense that, whatever it is, God’s will is not happening.  We look around our world and we see disorder.  A man getting out of his car and yelling at a woman for doing 110 in the fast lane is not in God’s will.  Children get cancer.  People are punched in the face.  Stabbed.  Shot.  Bombed out of their homes.  I don’t need to go on.  We know that God’s will is not worked out in and through us.  The person I was mean to last week was not experiencing God’s will through me.  This is why we ask for forgiveness in this prayer.

It gets personal because we’re talking about our own wills and God’s will.  We’re very familiar with our own wills, aren’t we?  We’re very familiar with the things we want.  The things we’ve wanted for a long time.  Our hopes.  Our dreams.  If we’ve been around long enough we’ve known their unrealization.  We’ve known what it’s like to say “This

did not go the way I wanted or expected.”  We’re talking about a giant paradox here in the Christian faith which says “It is in subsuming our wills to God’s will that we find peace, freedom, fulfillment, live from above.”

How could this be?
Before we get to that question, I want to point out two worldviews in which this prayer is in opposition.  The first is that we’re ruled by blind fate or chance.  What do we do when calamity strikes?  Nietzsche suggested this – “You cannot endure it any more, your imperious fate?  Love it; there is no other choice.”

Thank you Fred.  In response to this Helmet Thielecke said “This would be just like telling a non-swimmer struggling for his life and crying for help, and then calling out to him, ‘What, are you afraid of drowning?  Stop your futile kicking; love the water and affirm it.’  My guess would be that never yet has a life been saved in that way - because it would be crazy.  But when it comes to the ultimate questions of our life, we men are crazy.”

Before we get too self-congratulatory on the crazy thing, there are ways that Christians get this God’s will thing wrong too.  We can succumb to a kind of blind fatalism where we look at everything that happens as God’s will and we should simply accept it.  A well-meaning but misguided person tells a mother grieving her child “God wanted another little angel.” It’s not God’s will that a mother be separated from her child like that. It’s disordered.  Disorder is not what God wills.  He does not will that we go around striking each other, stabbing each other, killing each other.  He does not will that people are bombed out of their homes.  God does not will that people should live in squalor or get their food from the garbage.  He does not will that we are separated by death.  When you are at a death bed and seeing someone struggling for breath and seemingly fighting for life, you get a strong sense that death was never part of God’s will for us.  You get a strong sense of disorder.

God’s will is to bring order.  I like to talk about “God’s Big Will.”  What is God’s Big Will is for his world?  It is very well stated in Ephesians 1:9-10 “he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to the good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven, and things on earth.”  This friends, is God’s Big Will for the world.  To bring life from death.  To bring peace from chaos.  To bring order from disorder.

Christ came to put this plan in place.  Through his life, death, resurrection, ascension, promise to be with us always, promise to return – Christ put this plan in motion.  He’s the one who is praying this prayer, remember.  He’s the one who showed us what it was like to live a life completely caught up in his Father’s will.  His Father who he knew loves him fully and completely.  His Father and Christ and the Holy Spirit who love us fully and completely and want to bring order in and through us.  My food is to do the will of him who sent me.  These were Christ’s words.  His food.  The essential thing.  The essential thing was being in tune

with the Father.  The most foundational part of him, working to bring all things back to God. 

God’s Big Will. Christ, we await the fulfillment of the plan and we pray for God to make his will done. 

Where do we come in though?  Right about now.  I talked about how personal this prayer was and I wasn’t going to forget about us.  About our role in the plan.  What is God’s will for my life, for your life?  When we consider this question we need to start with “What is God’s Big Will for my life?” The answer has been around for a long time.  It went like this. “He has told you , O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  When we’re considering what God’s will is for our lives, we must start with this Big Will for us.  People longed for it.  When young Samuel tells Eli what God had told him, Eli says “It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him.”  The Psalmist sings “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.  Let your Spirit lead me on a level path.”

Christ has brought about a whole new situation!  It would no longer be simply learning about God’s will or learning what God’s will for our lives us.  It would be about Christ showing us what God’s will for the world and for us is.  The bringing about of life from death, of peace from chaos, of order from disorder.  When Christ went to a town called Nain and a widow came to him to tell him her son had died, Christ didn’t say to her “There there, learn to love your fate.” He had compassion for her and went to the funeral bier, the place of death and he brought life.  Christ brought life.  When two blind men called out to Christ “Son of David, have mercy on us!” Christ didn’t say “Oh well – fate!” or even “Well that’s God’s will!”   Christ caused them to see.

This is the good news friends.  God causes us to see. He will shape our wills to conform to His own saving, delivering, ordering bringing, life giving will.  Through Christ’s life, death, resurrection, promise of the Spirit, ascension and promise of return, God is bringing about his will to bring all things back to himself. 

God wills for us to take part in this delivering work.  To accept the invitation to get caught up in his kingdom.  To turn to him.  To live in loving communion with him.  This is God’s will for our lives.  Paul put it like this to the Romans – (Romans 12:1-2)

To be transformed.  To find freedom in surrendering what we want – what we think will bring us peace, fulfillment, order, to what God wants.  To want this for our lives and so to say “Thy will be done.”  By saying this we are acknowledging that God is our loving Father and wants nothing but good for us and is bringing us back to him and wants us to participate in bringing all things back to him one day.

One day.

But… We don’t see this fully.  We might go through life thinking that the attainment of our hopes and dreams would bring us peace.  We think “If I could only get out of the house I would be good” and “If I could only get a job in my

field I would be good” and “If I could only find a spouse I would be good” and “If I only had children I would be good” and “If I only owned a home or lived in whatever place I would be good” or “When I finally retire thing will be good.”  And that’s it.

Or as Christians we might worry that God has a will, a plan for our lives and if we deviate from it we will be ruined, or calamities are a result of deviating from it, and how are we supposed to know the plan??  I want to talk about this for a bit.  If you feel this way I pray it’s helpful.  If you don’t I pray it may help you help those around you who may feel this way.

So do we consider when we’re seeking to discern God’s will in the details of our lives – whether it be vocation or marriage or family or where we live or whatever else?

The first thing I would say is, remember God’s Big Will for the world.  Remember God’s Big Will for our lives.  Live in that.  Make that your foundation.  You will make mistakes.  I have made mistakes.  God can make something out of our mistakes.  I resisted what I felt to be a call to vocational Christian service for about 15 years.  God did something in and through me anyway.  Live in a posture that puts your face toward God.  Take time to listen in the many ways that we listen – prayer, spending time with God’s word, worship together, service.  Listen to the Psalmist when he sings “My heart says ‘Seek his face,’; Your face O Lord do I seek.

The second thing I would say is get help.   Seriously, seek council.  Seek council from people who you know have an orientation toward God.  They are all around you right now.  No one is claiming to be perfect or that they’ve written the book when it comes to discerning God’s will.  Seek such people out.  Talk to them.  If you don’t know anyone like that, get in touch with me and we’ll figure someone out.  Someone who has gone through something similar and asked the same questions.  Seek council from people who will be an experience of Christ and Christ’s love for you.  We prayed “Our Father” at the beginning of this and it reminded us we’re not meant to do any of this on our own.

There are no pat answers.  We face difficulties.  We keep praying “Thy will be done.”  We do this in the face of our hopes and dreams that are sometimes dashed.  Let me make this even more personal.  Is it God’s will that Nicole and I don’t have children?  I don’t know.  It would seem so.  In the midst of this I turn to God and remember God’s will that he wants me to live in loving communion with him and he wants to bring deliverance in and through me.  I pray “Well if that’s not one of the ways you want me to bring deliverance, let it be through other ways.”  I’ve seen God bring deliverance through me in other ways.  Does this mean that it doesn’t sting?  That I don’t feel a pang every now and then?  Of course not.  When it does I keep praying.  Let your will be done on earth.  Let your will be done in me and through me.  Deliver me and make me an agent of deliverance for whomever you want me to be.

I pray that God gives us the eyes to take an eternal view.  On

earth as it ends in heaven. When the Bible says heaven and earth it means “everything”.  Let your will be done in every aspect of life – let deliverance happen for the oppressed, for the grieving, for the poor, for the outcast, for the desperate, and let is encompass every aspect of life – the spiritual, the material, the emotional, the eternal.

And this line reminds us that there’s a place where this is already happening.  God is in heaven and on his throne.  The heavenly worship is going on.  When we worship together and sing and praise we join that heavenly worship.  We do it every Sunday!  We’re reminded that there is a place where God’s will is for all and in all and through all.  There will be no more existential shock or questions or fears or stings or pangs.  One day we’ll be able to say steadfast love and faithfulness have met, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

This is God’s will friends.

God grant that it be done on earth as in heaven.

Amen