At our Tuesday morning prayer meeting, we always finish with the “Lord’s Prayer”. This is a wonderful way to conclude all the petitions we have brought to our Great God for the sake of our church. One phrase holds a particularly important conclusion, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” This is an act of submission and humility, demonstrated powerfully in Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. There Jesus releases his desires for God’s greater purposes. He wants God’s will to be done in his life. Jesus also releases his life to accomplish God’s greater purposes. Jesus sets his firm intention to be the one through whom God’s will is done.

Have you ever wondered how we might expect God to answer this part of the Lord’s Prayer? Those who willingly pray the Lord’s Prayer must believe that God will answer it in their lives first – “God, may your will be done in my life”. But how might we see God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven? We have a suspicion that God often chooses to work out the answer to this prayer through us; we have a part to play in being the answer to this prayer. Those who live their lives under God’s will, endeavour to bring to the world the will of God – “God may your will be done on earth, through me.”

Can we see our lives as a working out of this prayer? Do we see our church as a community which brings a taste of what heaven is like to earth? Can we demonstrate through action what life might look like when we live within the will of God? Can we face the challenges of a world askew and bring to it the hope, healing and wholeness God gives through Jesus?
Jesus answers his own prayer by offering himself to close the distance between heaven and earth. Every Tuesday morning, we remind ourselves we are called to do the same.

In Him
Jason

Photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash