Thy will be done on earth

Pastor Don Porter

Many times in the Gospels we are told of Jesus going off by Himself to pray to His Father. This fact was noted by His disciples. They also saw the great wisdom Jesus had when He taught them and the crowds that surrounded Him and the miracles that Jesus performed. Though the disciples were uneducated men, it did not take them too long to be able to see the relationship between Jesus’ prayer life and His ministry. So one day they gathered around Jesus and asked Him to teach them how to pray. Now the disciples were not ignorant about prayer. After all, they were Jews and as Jews they had a relationship with the Creator and a long history of God answering their prayers and the prayers of their priests. So why did they ask Jesus to teach them to pray? It must have been that they saw something different about Jesus’ prayers and God’s response to them. So when they asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus did not have to spend time teaching them who God was and all of His characteristics so they would know whom they were praying to. Many people today ask me why God doesn’t answer their prayers? There are as many reasons for this as there are prayer requests. Some of these people who ask me why God does not answer their prayers do not have a personal relationship with the God and Jesus, His Son. They don’t know who they are praying to and therefore their prayers are often amiss. If you want to have God answer your prayers then you need to invest the time to get to know Him. As you know, you are more likely to answer someone’s request if you have a personal relationship with them. The way to get to know about God is to spend time daily reading His book, the Bible. In the Bible, God spends a great deal of time revealing Himself and His characteristics to those who seek Him through His Word. Also, if you want to get to know God better then you need to invest the time to attend church every Sunday. Each Sunday God, through your pastor, will reveal something new about Himself. Regular attendance at church also ensures that your pastor does not have to repeat the lessons until everyone in the church has heard them. When you know about God, then you are in the same position as the disciples who asked Jesus to teach them to pray. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus did not give them a list of rules to follow. Instead, as He often did, Jesus gave them an example to follow which is recorded in Mathew 6: 9-13. Jesus did not expect them to follow this prayer He wrote but to examine its components and use it as a basis for them to place their requests before His Father. Jesus taught them to start their prayers by acknowledging who God is and to praise and honor Him for all that He has already done. Then Jesus did not spend time laying out all of his requests and needs like a shopping list before God but instead He taught us the most significant aspect of prayer. Jesus taught us to pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When we pray this and really mean it, we don’t have to pray about anything else because we are leaving what happens on earth and to us in the hands of the One who created us. If we learn to pray like Jesus taught us, and leave our circumstances in the hands of the One who is all-knowing instead of trying to convince Him to act in accordance with our wishes and desires, then our prayers will not be amiss. Then, if we spend the rest of our prayer time listening to God our Father and acting in accordance to His will, we will find that what happens in our life and our community will please us. We may even see God perform miracles to make things happen in accordance with His will.