Matt 6:9-13
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.10 Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. -KJV
“Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”
In the last article on The Lord’s Prayer we talked about the Kingdom of God and concluded that the Kingdom represents the ‘rule of God’. Therefore wherever God rules there is his Kingdom. So when we pray for his Kingdom to come we are really praying for an extension of his rule and authority which is exactly what we are praying for also when we say:
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”
His will is done in Heaven. There is no sickness, there is no death, there is plenty of everything for everybody. His will reigns in Heaven but not necessarily here on earth. Choices and free will changes the whole equation here and messes it all up. We have sickness, death, famine, and natural disasters. Also, sometimes nature itself seems to be completely out of control.
Jesus came to change the direction of all creation and bring it back and reconcile it to God the Father. God had given authority over creation to the first man Adam and Satan had stolen it when Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God in the Garden.
Jesus reversed the course of and possibility of all creation when he lived as a perfect man and took back the mantle of the earth. Mt 28:18
tells us that Jesus now has all authority in Heaven and on earth. He holds the keys to bringing the rule of God to the earth just as it is right now in the Heavenly realm.
Roman 8:12-19 tells us that all creation awaits the revelation of the ‘Sons of God’. That is All of creation awaits and is depending on some folks to wake up and understand more fully what it means to be the children of God through faith in Jesus and cry out—Abba Father!
All creation waits for a group of folks to not only pray- Thy will be done- but actually live it?
But how can it be done? How can we even know what the will of God is? Then how can we actually do the will of God on Earth? After all, all sorts of weird doctrines have been formed using this Romans 8 passage as an excuse.
A lot of the will of God is communicated to us in his written Word—The Bible. If we follow all of the rules and teaching laid out there then will His will be done on earth at least in our lives? No, not necessarily, we could never be ‘religious’ enough. It is really all about relationship. One can follow all of the rules and yet really not know God the Father. How do we know? Because Jesus said so.
There were a bunch of folks that followed all of the rules and even elaborated on a few of them but Jesus told them that they didn’t even know God. Meanwhile one of the religious rulers in Judea came to Jesus and asked him what more he needed to do to be received into the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus told him that he needed to be ‘born again’. The guy’s name was Nicodemus and he really didn’t understand what Jesus was saying.
Most people today think that it is just a matter of being ‘good enough’ to get into Heaven. Folks mistakenly think that God grades on the curve and since they aren’t all that bad they figure they’ll make it in. Nicodemus was a religious leader who followed everything he knew of in the scriptures, was one of the very best people in all of Judea, and was pretty well shocked when Jesus told him that he wouldn’t even get to see the Kingdom unless he was somehow ‘born again’.
Being ‘Born Again’ is really the key to doing the will of God. When we say yes to God and his plan and accept his son Jesus then that is the beginning of saying yes to the will of God. When we submit to His plan of salvation through His Son Jesus then we become part of the family of God and God the Father gives us a part of himself—His Holy Spirit to dwell in us. The Spirit is there to teach His ways and counsel us and give us direction.
When we actually listen to the counsel and direction of God’s Spirit within us then we begin to actually do and live according to the will of God. The hardest part is to learn how to listen to the counsel and word of God for our lives.
We need to realize that when we pray ‘thy will be done’ we are actually committing ourselves to be a part of the fulfillment of that scripture. To date Jesus is the only one who ever fulfilled the words of the prayer and did the will of His Father on earth as it is in Heaven.
It is only through His Spirit that we have any hope of doing any of the will of God. Individually we always fall short but collectively the ‘body of Christ’ working together for a change can make a difference and bring about changes that could never be accomplished alone. All creation waits for the ‘Body of Christ’ to rise up and do the will of the Father?
It would mean that for once all of the body parts would be working together for a change and edifying and building up the entire body instead of working against each other. It would mean that finally there would be an organization –a church that does what the Father is doing as Jesus did (John 5:19) and nothing else.
Can you even imagine a church that actually does the will of God on earth? Yes I know, with what we have today it is hard to imagine. Yet, that is what we are praying for when we say “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth”.
The greatest fulfillment will wait for Christ’s return but I do believe that we can have and should have a glimpse of it in our midst.
It is time for the church to get this down—all of the church. I believe that the ‘Fatherhood of God’ and greater intimacy will be part of the Kingdom message of a ‘New Awakening’ coming soon near you. Again, all of creation awaits for the church to understand more fully what it means to be and act like the children of God and cry out—Abba Father! (Romans 8:12-19).