“Thy Will Be Done”

Many people throughout the annals of antiquity have undertaken to discover the will and purposes of the Divine. Yet unexpectedly, on a day long ago, in the countryside of Judea , God's Son opened his mouth and uttered the most profound prayer ever spoken. The Lord's Prayer is a short piece of prose in which the will of God is uncovered and his desires for us laid bare. In tonight's devotional address we are going to take a closer look at what Jesus means by such phrases as ‘Hallowed be thy name' , ‘thy kingdom come' and especially ‘thy will be done' . We shall also be contemplating how God speaks to us today and how we can discern his will for our lives both corporately and individually.

I would wager that the phrase ‘Hallowed be thy name' has rolled off our tongues a myriad times. But what does it actually mean? Hagiastheto is the Greek word which translates as ‘hallowed' in our Bibles and it means ‘to make holy' or ‘to become holy' . God's will for us here is that we come to respect and revere his many names and over time ponder and cherish them so that he can reveal himself to us more deeply.

As a devotional exercise we might like to try looking up some different names of God in the Bible and then meditating on them in prayer. Reciting each one over and over in our minds and allowing the Holy Spirit to cultivate a deeper knowledge of God is the point of such an exercise. Names such as: “I will be what I will be” [Exodus 3:14 ]; ‘The Ancient of Days' [Daniel 7:9]; ‘Wonderful Counsellor' [Isaiah 9:6]; “The Lamb of God” [John 1:29 ]; and “The Bright Morning Star” [Revelation 22:16 ] are all good for starters! As a suggestion, in our Lent groups, we might like to pool the names that we discover and share them with one another for private devotion.

‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done' is a phrase where the English translation helpfully rhymes suggesting that the two expressions belong together. The Greek word basileia , translated as ‘kingdom' , speaks of a royal power and rule that is to come and hence a looking forward to a day when the whole earth will be full of desire for God. The ‘coming' of the Kingdom, therefore, is glued to God's will being done!

Discovering and appropriating the will of God for our lives as individuals and as the people of God takes us from our inevitable hope that all will be black and white to the many shades of grey. There are the obvious commands from the scriptures such as ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' [Mark 12:30 ] and the command to love others with the same energy and consideration that we do ourselves [Mark 12:31 ]. But containing, as it does, such a vast array of wisdom and insight, the Bible is still only of a finite size and so lacks details about God's will for all situations!

You may have heard of the ‘What Would Jesus Do?' movement, which tells us that we can know the will of God through our anticipation of what Jesus would do in a given situation. This anticipation springs from intimate familiarisation with the New Testament (especially with the gospels) that equip us with a good idea of how Christ thinks. But however noble this philosophy may be, sooner or later we will stray out of the black and white into the grey shades of speculation. I personally think that there is great merit in the ‘What Would Jesus Do?' approach but it is far from a precise formula that guarantees to produce neat and tidy answers every time!

What about theological reflection as a vehicle by which to try to grasp the will of God? Can we use this? Yes, I think so! Faith has us ask the question ‘how can this be?' [John 3:9]: the same question that Nicodemus was prompted to ask Jesus when he told him that he must be ‘born-again'. And we all like Nicodemus have questions concerning our faith. Theological reflection, therefore, is indeed a good tool by which we can navigate those shades of grey in our understanding of God's will. We should never be afraid to engage the mind along with the heart in the loving process of seeking the will of God! [Mark 12:30 ] (I can recommend a couple of books on theological reflection for those who are interested!)

In the gospels we see Jesus applying his body, mind and heart to the carrying out of his Father's will in unswerving obedience. He is driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan for forty days and forty nights, to suffer hunger and thirst and the searing temptation to compromise this obedience [Hebrews 12:2].

And again he is tempted to call it a night in the garden of Gethsemane when the full terror of the path that his life was ordained to take was nearing the agonies of the tree at Calvary . And yet, even though he sweated drops of blood amongst the tears of anguish he still obeyed the will of his Father in heaven. We too are constantly tempted to compromise in carrying out the will of the Father. But in a much lesser way we must endure our crosses of temptation to compromise in the sure hope, like Jesus, of a harvest of joy set before us [Hebrews 12:1-2].

How can we have certainty in what we think the will of the Father is for us? And more importantly how can we know we are not going off the rails and careening away from God's will? In a word, the Bible! The Bible is our yardstick and balance with which to measure and weigh everything that comes before us. It is like the pan of a gold-panner where we use it to sift the water and silt of our life's river revealing the flecks of gold which are insights into God's will for us. A simple rule of thumb would be that if we feel what God is saying to us contradicts the overall teaching of the Bible then we, like the gold-panner should toss it back into the river. On the other hand if it is affirmed by the Bible then we should pray all the more fervently for God to confirm what we suspect he is asking us to do.

God frequently reveals his will through diverse things such as dreams or other people, through spiritual gifts and life's circumstances as well, of course, through reading the Bible prayerfully. Those moments of heightened awareness that draw our attention to take a closer look at something can often be God's murmurings. Or those pictures that frequently pop into one's mind when eyes are closed in prayer can often be from God and are pregnant with meaning begging us to ask him for their interpretation. Discerning the will of God is often a time consuming process and most certainly should not be rushed especially when involving issues of family, work or vocation.

In the very early hours of the 16 th March 1994 I had a dream that my next door neighbour had rung the door bell. In it I opened the door and noticed that he was wearing a hat (which was unusual for him because I had never saw him wear one) and he asked me if I could change a light-bulb for him. I then cannot remember any more of the dream after that! But later that morning, at about 4.30am, I had a telephone call from my mother telling me that my grandfather had died earlier in the night. When the morning had come my wife and I were actually on our way to the front door to jump in the car and set off for Kent to join my grandmother and the rest of the family, when the door bell rang. It was my next door neighbour wearing the hat I had seen him wearing in my dream. And the encounter and conversation with him unfolded exactly as I had dreamed it only hours before. He asked me if I could change the light-bulb that had blown in his house but I told him that I was running late but would do it when I got back the next day.

It was not until we were driving along in the car, reflecting on the bizarre nature of this dream-come-true, that as we passed the New Forest I realised that God wanted to say something to me. I had been so preoccupied with my own troubles that I could not afford (or so I thought) to spend five minutes at the most changing a light-bulb for a neighbour in need. This lesson changed my life because it made me realise that it is not God's will for me that I should wallow in self-preoccupation (a habit that I used to have) when it was in my power to help others. I was always to be ready to serve, just as Jesus was!

Mirrors in the ancient world were usually made from polished bronze and so reflected only an approximation of the mirror bearer's complexion. As St Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians we see God's will dimly as in one of those mirrors but one day we shall look God straight in the eye and know his will completely [1 Corinthians 13:12]. But for now, though, when the will of God seems elusive or covered by the clouds of indecision, we must apply all our diligence in body, mind and heart to seek God's will in love of him. And if we simply do that we will be fulfilling his will for us!

Father ‘hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.'