"Thy will be done..."

       It is easy to recite these words in a quick responsive reading. They certainly sound pious enough, unthreatening. After all, none of us consciously hopes to be out of step with God, deliberately opposed to the divine will—except perhaps atheists and agnostics. Even those not especially religious, who have no special interest in church-going, like to maintain a personal philosophy of a sort, comforting themselves in the thought they are not really a "bad" person, that they have a unique, comfortable relationship "with the Man upstairs."

        How often have I heard it? One will embarrassedly acknowledge, "Well, I ain't been no saint—but I think the Lord will understand when the time comes..."

        These plaintive gestures toward a God of convenience are undiluted human nature. It seems natural to forget God in our daily lives; then turn to Him in a sudden frenzy of need, calling out our self-pitying complaint, "O God, where are you when I'm in pain?" We do not deliberately intend to treat God as a piece of treasured bric-a-brac to be placed on the shelf to grace a breakfront, to be polished for display on special occasions. It is not that we plan to treat God as if He were our servant, instead of the other way around.

        Many seem to believe God is like the Genie that startled Aladdin when he polished the ancient lamp. We have but to rub the lamp with the magical words, "Our Father who art in heaven..." or even an informal, "O God, help me!" and expect God to come trotting to our aid.

        For centuries, man has asked, "Why does God allow wars! Why, if God says He is good and merciful, does He permit babies to be born blind, deformed?" A rather abrupt and perhaps slightly insensitive answer would be the analogy of homosexuals praying to God in self-righteous indignation, "O God, why AIDS?"

        Why, indeed? Let God answer, "Wherefore God gave them up to [allowed them to have; permitted them to exercise their own wills] uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who exchanged the truth of God into a lie [margin], and worshipped and served the creature [including man; themselves!] more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature; and likewise the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet [fitting]" (Romans 1:24-27).

        God allows the natural consequences of man's actions to obtain. He has set in motion natural laws; forces, energies. God is the Creator of this universe, of earth, and all life upon it, including micro-bacterial life. When man breaks God's laws, those laws come crashing down upon him, not only in a spiritual sense at the judgment, but here and now!

        Men lust for power, covet the possessions of their neighbors; they harbor hatreds because of racial, linguistic, cultural differences. They are especially intolerant of the religious beliefs of others. In all this hatred is the disease of war. War stems from the lust for power, among other passions. God allows wars, accidents, sickness, because those things are the natural outcome of God permitting the free exercise of human nature. Is anything more pitiful than a newborn baby that is deformed, or blind? Have you ever seen a pregnant woman smoking, drinking, eating harmful foods? Widespread information is available today about the direct cause-and-effect relationship between alcohol and a developing fetus. And what about venereal disease? It is known that syphilis causes blindness in babies. God does not cause sexual promiscuity, remember. He has chosen not to prevent it. You see, the Ten Commandments are not preventive legislation. God commands. But He leaves the choice up to us.

        Remember our scenario of the smoker who found God interfering with his habit? It is the same right across the gamut of all human activity contrary to the expressed will of God. We may cry out our complaints about the effects of certain causes, but we would be enraged if God forcibly removed our free volition—took away our freedom of action. In other words, we would be extremely upset if God removed from us the opportunity to commit the cause that produces the wrong effect!

        To be brutally frank, we seem to want God to allow us to sin, but to remove the penalty!

        What you are about to read from your own Bible may appear a little shocking at first. Yet, upon reflection, you will see the logic in what Jesus said. He had launched into a discussion of false prophets, as He did on many occasions. He said, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. " He then gave the analogy of judging a religious leader in the same fashion as one would judge a tree, or vine—by the fruit it produces. Speaking of false prophets He said, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:15-20).

        Now, notice what may appear to be a startling statement at first reading: "Not every one that saith unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).

        Why startling? Because it is obvious the recognition of Christ as Savior, believing on Him, calling out to Him by name is not sufficient. Yet, millions have heard the strident voice of evangelists pleading, "Only believe!" Many seem to believe that they may be saved by merely "believing on the name of Jesus. " Not so. Christ said "...even the demons believe, and tremble." No, God requires much more than lip service.

        What are those requirements? Christ said, "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matthew 12:50).

        The Bible is the written will of God. It can be likened to the "handbook" about mankind. It is revealed knowledge, information we could find from no other source. God's Word does not purport to be a text on science, engineering, chemistry, or architecture. It is a text, instead, which explains who and what God is, and all about mankind! It tells us why we were born, why we were put on this earth, what is the purpose and ultimate destiny of every human creature.

        Doing the will of God is not threatening. It does not mean a life of asceticism, of abstinence, of "Don't do this, and don't do that." The will of God toward us is that we live life to the full, that we meet with success, reward, happiness, fulfillment! Notice: "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health... (III John 2).

        God is portrayed as a loving Father, One with vast resources, great wealth—not only in material things, but in great and good gifts which could never be purchased with money. However, like any loving Father, He wants only the best for His children. Because of His vast knowledge and experience, He knows we tend toward many things that are going to bring us the wrong results!

        God knows there is a cause for every effect. If we would listen to Him, we could learn the cause of all the suffering, heartache, trauma, sickness and disease, failure, poverty, crime and wars which stalk this earth. There is a cause for lung cancer. Millions know one of the main causes—cigarette smoking. Yet, they persist in slowly polluting their lungs, perhaps robbing themselves of many years of life. Many cling to stories about various long-lived individuals (George Burns and his famous cigars are an example) who seem to sail merrily through their 80's with no difficulty, and continue to smoke. Yet, when hundreds of thousands of Americans go to their deaths through the years, suffering the slow agonies of lung cancer, perhaps undergoing chemotherapy, radiation treatment, surgery, only to be followed by a lingering death under massive sedation, both they and their loved ones call out to God—sometimes in heartbroken desperation, asking Him to spare their lives.

        There are causes for broken marriages, failed businesses, poor health, alienated children, group and tribal instincts which lead to political ferment; causes which produce wars! The protracted struggle in the Mideast is an example of the centuries-long, implacable hatreds between two of the great religions, two separate racial groups. After a few decades, the hatreds wax so white hot no one remembers the first "incident" which triggered the constant acts of terrorism; interminable war.

        By the same token, there is a cause for the right result. We know what causes good health: plenty of exercise, a good, balanced diet, and avoidance of harmful substances. But do we know the cause which will produce happy marriages, obedient children, successful lives? Those causes are set forth in God's Word, which is His written will as expressed toward us.

        God's Word contains plenty of information concerning the state of marriage! Several of the Ten Commandments bear directly on the family. God says, "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long on the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Could close family ties, honoring parents and grandparents—familial love and respect—be a cause for longevity? Gods Word says it is. He commands, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. " Unfaithfulness is probably the major cause of ruined marriages today; yet, virtually all entertainment—the motion pictures, television, magazines, books—tend to treat casual sex, and its effect, divorce, as something to be done, something virtually "natural." Millions of young people have "live-in" mates, with no true bonds of marriage, and upwards of fifty percent of babies born in our inner urban areas today are illegitimate.

        The cause for all this chaos in the family unit—the building block of society—is that God's laws are being broken. Broken laws mean broken lives. We break them, they break us—it's just that simple.

        God's Word says much about rearing children. It portrays proper roles for father and mother, and strongly encourages the closest possible family ties. Christ said divorce is a sin, that it should be avoided! This is not to say God cannot forgive sin, for He can, and will, when we call out to Him in real repentance. But, when we repent, God wants us to quit sinning. He will not save us "in" our sins; He will only save us "from" our sins!

        God's will toward us is benevolent, kind, solicitous, loving, caring. David said over and over again, "For His mercy endureth forever. There is nothing fearful or "bad" for us in the expressed will of God.

        Too many have equated the will of God with one or another of the organized religions. Recoiling from offensive religionists, from this or that television evangelist they may feel is not exactly sincere, some make the mistake of throwing out the baby with the bath water. But we must not compare human beings to God, no matter how "religious" they may seem. Usually, the successful, well fed, second martini-for-lunch-bunch have little time for God. That is, until they develop some terrible disease, or their business collapses, or their marriage is destroyed. Why? Why not go to God when times are good, and pray they'll stay that way? God wants us to prosper. It is not His will that we suffer heartache, sickness, want. Like any loving Father, He wants us to be happy!

        Many seem to feel God's ways are drab, dull, uninteresting; that He gave us "Ten don'ts" by which we should live. They seem to believe "fun" and "sin" are synonymous. Not so. Christ said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10: 10).

        What kind of a God is our "Father" in heaven to whom we should pray? Notice what He says, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more" (Hebrews 8:12).

        Do you really want God's will in your own life? Notice Jesus said we should pray, not for our will to be accomplished, but God's. No one came face to face with this choice in a more bitter moment than our Savior, Jesus Christ.

        After His lengthy final supper, His discourse to His disciples following the Passover, Christ and His disciples went out of the city to the Mount of Olives.

        There, He went a distance away from His disciples and prayed in an agony of intensity. He knew the minutes were fleeting; He knew Judas Iscariot had fled the dinner a few hours earlier, that armed men were on the way to arrest Him. He knew what this dark night would bring. With perfect clarity, He could see His own body being ripped and torn by a cat o' nine tails, a crown of thorns cruelly jammed down on His head, lacerating the scalp. He could picture the agonies awaiting Him as they pounded spikes through His hands and feet, hoisting Him into the air on a stake to die a slow, pain-wracked death for the sins of the world.

        Did Christ merely toss off this horrible ordeal with some Godlike "macho," some super human reserves of courage and bravado? Note well the biblical account: "And He was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, saying, 'Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me…’ "

        Here, Christ was plainly asking His Father if there was some other way this fateful hour could be resolved. His total humanity comes clearly into focus; we see Him as lonely, forsaken—facing torture and death, praying with all His might that God could find some other solution. In asking this, Christ was clearly expressing His own will, His own point of view. But instantly, with no pause in His praying, He quickly said, "Nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done!" Let's read the rest of this stirring passage: "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground" (Luke 22:41-44).

        No wonder God's Word says, "When He had, by Himself, purged our sins, [He] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3).

        Probably, we tend to pray for our will to be accomplished without realizing it. After all, most don't pray except in emergencies, tragedies, when we hurt, or when we are frightened because of the suffering of a loved one. By the time many get around to prayer, the die is already cast. They only pray in times of desperate need. They are surely going to be asking, "My will be done—my request be granted; my desires be fulfilled," if they are only moved to pray in a dire emergency which stresses those needs.

        It is not easy for those who rarely pray to ask for God's will to be done. Actually, prayer and Bible study are inextricably linked. It is impossible to draw close to God in prayer without drinking in of His written Word. In that Word, we learn of His will toward us we learn how to ask "according to His will."

        Prayer, after all, is petition. It is not easy to get on our knees with hearts filled with urgent requests, and ask, instead, that God's will be done—and not necessarily our own. It is especially difficult if His will in some matter proves to be the opposite of our own. Notice the experience of the apostle Paul: He had a terrible affliction. There is strong indication it was a disease of the eyes, perhaps cataracts. On one occasion he signed one of his letters in very large characters to attest to its authenticity (Galatians 6:11), leading to the assumption he had great difficulty in seeing.

        He related how he had asked God to remove this affliction: "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations [referring to the vision he had seen of heaven], there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness' " (II Corinthians 12:7-9).

        I know people whose strength is made perfect through weakness. Paraplegics, who spend their entire lives in motorized wheelchairs, can make those of us who have normal use of our limbs shrink in stature spiritually, when we see their courage and their faith. There are innumerable examples of incredibly courageous people who have found seemingly bottomless reservoirs of strength in terrible adversity. After knowing God's will was different from his own, Paul meekly said, "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong!" (II Corinthians 12: 10).

        What an incredible example! Yet, is there any more beautiful example than the one we read concerning Christ Himself.? This is the epitome of selfless prayer, of beseeching God for HIS will and purpose to be accomplished, subjecting our will entirely to His.

        Let's face it, most of our lives are taken up with pursuing our will and purpose. The vast majority of our waking hours are spent in three self-directed purposes: self preservation, self determination, self perpetuation.

        We cannot ask that God's will be done unless we are willing to submit to His will. What does He require of us? He tells us we must repent of our sins. And what is sin? God says, "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law" (I John 3:4). Paul wrote, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect WILL of God" (Romans 12:1-2).

        God's will toward us is that we come to Him as His children; that we ask forgiveness of our sins, receive baptism, and become a begotten child of God through receiving of His Holy Spirit. "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit," said Peter to thousands on the Day of Pentecost following the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:38).

        God says, "Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk [live] in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). God says we can change, that we can start afresh, begin anew! He is willing to wipe clean the slate of our sins and mistakes, blot it all out as if it had never been, allow us to begin a new and different way of life as if a new-born child without a single bad mark against us. It is His will to give us of His Holy Spirit to help us overcome the trials and troubles that seem too big for us.

        There is a story about the man who supposedly died, and, when confronted by Christ in His Kingdom, said, "Lord, I want to thank you for helping me through life. I looked back along the trail, and noticed two sets of footprints almost all the way, so you must have been right there beside me. But, tell me, Lord, why, when I got to those rocky, steep places did I see only one set of prints?" To which the Lord supposedly replies, "Because that's when I had to pick you up and carry you."

        Each of us possesses a natural human mind prior to conversion. In other words, we are concerned about material things, those things that are of this mundane world—carnal, physical, natural. We have no spiritual perception if we have only a natural, or carnal, mind. Oh, we may be "good" people, the way this world would look at it—we may be trustworthy, faithful, hard-working; we may possess qualities of character which cause others to admire us. But, unless we have repented of sin, we still possess what God calls a "carnal" or fleshly mind. "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:7).

        It is impossible to ask for God's will to be accomplished in our lives if we are not yielded to God's laws, if we do not sincerely thirst for God's purpose to be accomplished in our own personal life. Such a prayer cancels itself out immediately, for it is obviously insincere. We must not ask for something we do not truly desire, something we are not willing to receive. God is eager to answer the prayers of His children if we pray according to His will. We have only to sincerely want His will in our lives in place of our own.

        It is peculiar to human nature that we want other nations to obey God's will; we want our neighbors to obey God's will, but, for some reason, we tend to avoid applying His will in our own lives. We wish with all our hearts that the Soviet Union would yield to God's laws, that they would "beat their swords into plowshares, " dismantle their nuclear arsenals, and turn all those tanks into tractors so they could feed their population. We wish they would disband their multi-millions of Red Army soldiers, that they would immediately cancel their plan for world conquest, order all their spies home from nations around the world, and live at peace and harmony with all nations. We wish all child abusers, pornographers, dope dealers, rapists and murderers, would repent of their sins, turning their lives over to God in an agony of self-abhorrence for what they have been, and allow God to totally change their lives.

        We could wish that others around us obeyed the golden rule, that our neighbors were kind, considerate, law-abiding; we could wish they were perfect examples of the will of God in daily action. It sure would be nice to live in a region where all our neighbors were in submission to the will of God, wouldn't it?

        Yes sir, what a world it could be if all our neighbors obeyed the will of God! What a world it could be if the Soviet Union turned to God with their whole heart—as a nation!

        But, on the other hand, we have been talking mostly about us, you and me, in this chapter, haven't we? Maybe we become frustrated over being unable to change the Soviet Union, or stop abortion, or crime, or prevent wars. But there is something important we can change, with God's help. Us!