Your Will Be Done
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Dearly loved people of God,
James is pretty blunt. The writing style in the whole letter is more abrupt than we expect to find in the Bible. In the verses we read, James sounds like a coach who’s mad, “Now listen!”
What he confronts is our own selfish ambition arising from pride. We have great ideas and plans for what we’re going to do and the success we’re going to have. Maybe that’s too general.
I’ll speak for myself: I get convicted of selfish ambition once in a while. Eager to accomplish great things.
Maybe you’ve mastered pride and selfish ambition already, if so, feel free to spend the rest of the sermon reading through the last few chapters of the OT book of Job. The rest of us face the challenge of getting ahead of ourselves. Not just counting our chickens before they hatch, but also imagining that making money or becoming famous, or winning awards is the best measure of success.
James takes the wind out of our sails by reminding us that we aren’t so significant. “What is your life?”
You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
and then vanishes.
It’s the same message the OT faith hero Job heard when God confronted him from a storm,
Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom
and spread its wings toward the south?
Does the eagle soar at your command
and build its nest on high?
(NIV)
We shouldn’t let the pendulum swing too far in either direction. In humility we confess that we are made from dust and after 70, 80, 120 years we return to the dust. Yet God loves us dearly. He made us in his image, “to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” in the delightful phrase of the Westminster Shorter Confession (Q&A 1).
God loves us so much he sent his one and only Son. Because of his love for us, Jesus shouldered the sin and guilt that kept us far from our Creator. “Sin” is the failure to live up to God’s will. It’s rebellion, disobedience. Sin always causes death.
We can’t atone for our sin ourselves. No sacrifice would do. Jesus, true God, true human, yet without sin, atoned for our sin and guilt by suffering on the cross. He died in our place.
His resurrection demonstrates that we’ve been set free from sin and death. We’re set free from the idolatries and traps of a sin-stained lifestyle. That’s why James writes so forcefully about selfish ambition. We’ve been set free from that trap; why would we live that way any longer?
Our new desire is to see God’s will be done; to pursue God’s will in our own lives and in the lives of our neighbours. That’s what Jesus instructs us to pray for.
In the renewed relationship with our Creator that Jesus won at great cost, we’re permitted to call Jesus’ father, our Father, “Abba, Papa, Daddy.”
We pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Praying for God’s will to be done is a big request. How do you pray that?
You can just say it. We do that when we say the Lord’s Prayer.
But what does it mean? What are you asking God for?
God has revealed his will in the Bible: 10 Commandments. He has told us what righteous living looks like. He has shown us in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
This request asks God that his will is done in our lives, that his will shapes our desires, hopes, and behaviour, that our “selfish ambition” gets transformed into an ambition to glorify his name by enacting his will.
In his book Why Pray?, John Devries unpacks what it could look like to pray, “Your will be done.”
Let’s say you set aside 30 minutes to pray for your household and the household of someone you’re concerned about: a friend, a sibling, a neighbour. That feels like a long time for praying. Not long for a TV show, but long for prayer. Could you do that?
What if you prayed through the 10 Commandments: asking that God’s will would be done according to each of God’s instructions for holy living?
You’d talk to God about that for 3 min./commandment.
Is that do-able?
God’s will is:
How would you pray for this?
Let me quote John DeVries
“I became convicted that the success of my organization had been more important to me than the glory of God’s name, and thus I had turned the mission into an idol.”
AND
“When we fear something, we make it bigger than God in our minds. We say, ‘God this is out of control. I worry because I think this threat is bigger than you can handle”
“To pray for God’s will to be done in a home is to pray that all forms of idolatry, esp. pride and fear, will cease.”
Do you long for God’s name to be honoured, respected, glorified, praised – hallowed?
Could you pray that God’s name is hallowed daily in your home, workplace, sports field?
Pray for enjoy rest from the tyranny of all the urgent stuff, rest from screens and gadgets, rest from disobedience.
As you pray for it, God the HS might move you to make changes so that you can enjoy God’s rest.
Do you ever find yourself dreaming of the time of life when you’ll be able to invest 30, 60, 90 minutes in devotions or prayer – aside from worship services?
Praying for Sabbath, might involve asking for help to carve out the time.
Pray for relationships:
Authority to be honoured in your household, neighbourhood
Remember those facing abuse in homes or workplaces
So many stories in our books, songs, video games, films are based on a premise of killing, sex outside marriage, and theft.
We could lament that to God.
Ask our Lord and King that our imagination isn’t made captive to hate, violence, unrighteous anger, lust, stealing.
Ask God to restrain you from giving in to those temptations – not just you, but each person in your household, workplace, neighbourhood
This is courtroom language, yet it goes beyond legal testimony. All of us know how significant our words can be in the court of public opinion.
Can we spend time wrestling with God in prayer, begging for the grace to speak the truth in love when we talk to and about other people?
All advertising is based on the premise that your life would be better if you had that company’s product: shoes, entertainment, drink, vehicle.
Could we ask God for the gift of contentment – (daily readings)
Request the ability to discern between needs and wants
Praying for God’s will to be done might be a bigger prayer than we initially thought.
That’s not where I am at this point, but my calling – straight out of the ordination service – is to be a man of prayer. Re-reading this section of John DeVries’ book reminded me of ways to pray that I had forgotten.
The whole reason I’m doing this series on the Lord’s Prayer is to spark prayerfulness among us. Equip God’s people for prayer; equip you for ministry.
Being prayerful might be more challenging than we thought. It might be harder work. Is it worth the investment?
When we work, we work – how successful are we on our own?
When we pray, we’re relying on God to work. He’s all powerful. He invites us to ask him.
We don’t know how God will answer our prayer. He always, always, always answers prayer; are you okay if God answers pray according to his will instead of according to your instructions? – or do you need to pray for that?
In the Alpha video on prayer, Nicky Gumbal says that coincidences happen more often when we pray . . .