Prayer That Our Father's Will Be Done
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
11/20/2011 AM
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Text:
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Luke 22;
Lord's Day 49
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Psalters: |
85, 334, 290, 271 |
- What is our Father’s will.
- The will in a rational, moral being is the expression of a want or desire.
- God is a willing Being Whose intellect directs His will (not an impersonal power or blind fate).
- God’s will is always sovereign, so what He desires always comes to pass (Psalm 115:3).
- God’s will is good.
- God is one and His will is one.
- The will of God’s commands is His desire/pleasure for the conduct of His moral creatures (Romans 12:2).
- The will of God’s decree is His eternal plan for everything, which He always executes (Eph. 1:9-11; Rom. 9:19).
- Jesus teaches us, God’s children, to pray that we want our Father will to be done.
- This implies that we also have a will, i.e., what we want or desire.
- To pray that the will of God’s decree be done in our lives is to bow without complaint to His wise plan for us.
- God, in perfect wisdom, puts us, at every moment, in a specific place, which we are to accept humbly.
- This petition is an confession that we naturally oppose or dislike God’s will for us (Rom. 9:20).
- Concerning God’s will of command, we pray for the grace of obedience.
- Jesus suffered and died so we might renounce our own wills and delight to do God’s will (Ps. 40:8).
- We ask for the grace to discharge our duties properly and cheerfully (reluctance is not real obedience).
- The possibility comes in the way of our fellowship with Christ, so His mind is in us (Phil. 2:5).
- We ask that we want God’s will to be done as the angels in heaven want and do it perfectly.
- “As” is the kind of obedience (loving desire to please our wonderful Father), not the degree of obedience.
- Concerning the will of God’s decree, we want to do it “without murmuring.”
- Concerning the will of God’s command we want to do so “willingly and faithfully.”