Thy Will Be Done

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​Hopefully, you have a prayer circle - a friend or two who cover you in prayer, and of course you cover them in prayer, too.  In our prayer circle we share our circumstances and perspective and we trust God to bring the situation to resolution.  This week, someone in my prayer circle expressed to me the resolution she was praying would occur and it was in conflict with how I was seeking resolve.  Well, who is right?  Should my prayer partner pray in agreement with me or should she ask God to resolve it the way she sees best?  

I’ve written multiple times about prayer as an acronym for PRAY - Praise, Repent, Ask, and Yield.  When we pray we should first give God praise.  We must thank Him for all of His many blessings both seen and unseen.  We must repent of our sins.  Everyone commits sin, intentionally, unintentionally, and sometimes we try to justify it, but it’s still sin.  Until we realize it and repent, we cannot receive forgiveness and the further blessings God has for us.  Once we repent we can go to God with the current situation and share our heart.  We can share our feelings, our fears, and the resolution we desire.  The last part of our prayer should be that we yield.  When we yield, we acknowledge that we are human and we are flawed.  When we yield, we acknowledge that our plans are in pencil, but His will prevail.  When we yield, we say, “Thy will be done.”

Jesus taught us to pray in the following way.
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’
~Matthew 6:9-13

In this prayer, we fully reverence God.  We acknowledge Him as Creator, our loving Father, One who cares, One who knows, One who plans, and the One who judges.  We say your will be done.  We don’t know the future, we don’t even fully know the past.  We know what we have seen, but God knows all.  We can go to Him in prayer and try to bend His will to agree with our needs and desires, but this is not effective.  Sometimes we know the resolution that seems best to fulfill our purposes, but we must realize that He knows best.  We must go to God in humility and reverence that His plans will prevail.  

Rather than asking for a particular conclusion, we should ask that He give us wisdom and discernment that we make decisions that keep us in His will.  We should ask that He work to align the hearts and minds of those we encounter with His will, so that His will be done.    

God’s will, will be done.  There is nothing man can do to change God’s plans.  He has a plan for each of our lives and as we live we tend to take detours coming in and out of His will, making good decisions one day and bad decisions the next.  We sin in new and inventive ways, but none of this surprises Him.  He knitted each of us in our mother’s womb and He knows the thoughts we will think before we even think them.  Our prayer life is an act of humility that acknowledges that we know our limited position in the world.  Our prayers should not be to tell Him what we want, but to align ourselves to Him.  

A prayer circle is awesome, but the purpose is not that we all agree and seek to convince God that we have the best resolution.  Our purpose should be that we each pray God’s will be done.  We must acknowledge that He already has the solution and that He guide us to align with it.  When He is finished His work that we will understand and rejoice regardless of whether He resolves it the way we would have preferred because we know that He is God and His ways are always good.   

Amen.  This week, when you pray, pray God’s will be done. Amen. 
Kim

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