The Lord's Prayer - Petition 3: Thy Will Be Done
Dr. James Smith
Matthew 6:9-13
26 October 2003
I don’t know about you but I frequently need concrete and daily life examples to understand spiritual truths.
And this week, as I thought about this 3rd petition, “Thy Will be Done,” I struggled at how to get a real handle on it. And part of the difficulty, I think, is that it could be approached in any number of ways.
But the thing that struck me is that if we as Christians truly desire to see God’s will done, then His will has to first be accomplished in our own lives.
Otherwise, this 3rd petition is simply another abstract religious principle or it’s just a beautiful sentiment with no real-life substance.
But what does, “thy will be done” mean? After all, Christians toss these words around all the time. For example, you might hear, “I believe such and such is God’s will,” or “I’ll do this or that if it is God’s will.
The honest believer might ask, “what in the world is God’s will anyway?” Well . . . we know that it God’s will that all should be saved by coming to know Jesus Christ His Son.
We know that much of what we see going on around us in the world could not possibly be in God’s will, reminding us of the difference between earth and heaven.
But closer to home, how can we practically know God’s will for our lives while dwelling “on earth?”
Thankfully I and more importantly, the world was reminded this past week of a person who lived out her life as a very practical example of living out God’s will.
Mother Teresa embodied this 3rd petition that we find in the Lord’s Prayer . . . “Thy Will be Done.”
Now some of you may be aware that this week Mother Teresa of Calcutta was beatified during an impressive and beautiful mass in all of its worldly splendor at the Vatican in Rome.
The ailing Pope John Paul II along with his entourage of red-capped cardinals proclaimed her “blessed,” thus paving the way for her eventual elevation to the status of “saint.”
You may be unaware that the process of becoming a saint in the Roman Catholic Church is quite arduous and lengthy. They must be individuals of particular holiness and whose lives had been filled with countless examples of virtuous Christian living.
In short, it must be clear that their lives were shining examples of this 3rd petition . . . “thy will be done.”
Now usually, a group of people cannot petition the Vatican on behalf of a particular person until they have been dead for at least 5 years.
After that, a person may be “beatified” or declared “blessed” leading to the possibility of later canonization or sainthood.
Perhaps one of the greatest of ironies in all of this was that Mother Teresa had so little interest in such matters while she lived and worked among the destitute and dying in Calcutta, India. She was simply interested in doing God’s will in the most practical of ways.
Over the last two weeks, I have been reading the very simple and yet spiritually profound writings of this humble Christian woman and I should say that I have been entirely blessed by them.
One of the things that I learned was that the Lord’s Prayer was one of Mother Teresa’s favorite prayers. She recited it meditatively and often. She often spoke of the primary importance of prayer in her life and for her active work in the ministry.
She said, “I believe that that each time we say, “Our Father, God looks at His hands, where He has carved us. How wonderful is the love and tenderness of God.”
“The Lord’s Prayer is so simple yet so beautiful. If we pray it and live it . . . we will become holy. Everything is there: God, myself, my neighbor. All of this comes from a humble heart and if we have this, we will know how to love God, to love ourselves and to love our neighbor.”
Now I could stand here and tell you what I think this 3rd petition means and yet it seemed much safer to me to practically point us to someone who actually sought to incarnate the powerful words . . . “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
And Mother Teresa reminds us of the fact that God’s will for us on a basic level is all the same. It is God’s express will that we all “belong to Jesus.” How we spend our time on earth, like our clothes, may be different. But we are all called to belong to Jesus.
In fact, she says that we should never “allow anything to interfere with your love for Jesus. You belong to Him . . . remember you have been created for great things. You must not be afraid to say ‘Yes’ to Jesus.”
So “don’t try and interfere with God and be strict with yourself . . . and . . . anything that takes you away from the reality of what you have given to God must remain outside.”
If God’s will is to be accomplished on this earth, then you and I must belong to Jesus and our lives must continually say ‘yes’ to Jesus.
But that’s so hard, Jim, that would mean that I would be required to suffer in one way or another to really belong to Jesus and to really say ‘yes’ to Him with my whole being.
And you know what, you would be right. After all, God never exempted anyone in this life from suffering of one kind or another. But suffering need not be an overwhelming obstacle to us if we truly belong to Jesus.
After all, Jesus’ suffering proved to be both God’s will and for our spiritual benefit didn’t it?
For the Christian who is passionate about living in the will of God, Mother Teresa says, “suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation and feelings of loneliness are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that He can kiss you . . . remember that the passion of Christ ends always in the joy of Jesus’ resurrection.”
All of this from a woman who picked up over 40,000 people from the streets of Calcutta. Many of whom were starving, maggot infested, diseased and dying.
It is precisely these important issues of really belonging & saying ‘yes’ to Jesus and a failure to embrace the suffering that is part and parcel of being a follower of Jesus that has caused the unbelieving world to not only fail to see God’s will for their lives but to curse Christians themselves.
Take for example one of the top ranking heads of state in Sri Lanka who once told Mother Teresa, “You know Mother, I love Christ, but hate Christians.” She asked him why and he said, “Because Christians do not give us Christ; they do not live their Christian lives to the fullest.”
What a stinging and convicting indictment by an unbeliever on Christians who are not living out this 3rd petition of “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Or how about this from the famous Mohatmas Gandhi who said, “If Christians were to live their Christians lives to the fullest, there would not be one Hindu left in India.”
What can we say to that? How exactly and by what practical means are you to live out God’s precious will while dwelling on earth? I can’t answer that for you, as Mother Teresa says, those are simply the clothes.
But I can say, because the Bible says and it is confirmed in the lives of his saints, that it is expressly God’s will that you absolutely and without question “belong to Jesus.”
It is God’s will that you be honestly able to say “yes” to Jesus wherever life may lead. And it is God’s will that you embrace rather then flee from suffering, because Jesus suffered and died for you.
These are the most basic things required if we are honestly going to be able to pray . . . “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Let’s Pray
