Thy Will Be Done

1 John 5:14-15: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him.”

I love that movie Bruce Almighty. Bruce thinks he can do a better job than God, so God gives him His power and lets Bruce give it a try. Bruce realizes that the job is a lot harder than he imagined when the prayer inbox start loading up. His email is full of unanswered prayers, so he decides to take the easy way out. He hits “Reply All” and types the message “YES”. Everybody is happy, right? Wrong. What follows is chaos. Everybody who prayed to win the lottery suddenly wins, so they only get about $40 each. A riot breaks out because everyone thinks they got cheated and next thing you know, the city is on the verge of destruction.

God could easily just hit the “reply all” button and say yes to all of our prayers, but He doesn’t answer prayer that way. He answers it according to His plan for us and we should pray in submission to those plans. Jesus gives us a great example of how to pray. In Matthew 26, the time for crucifixion was near, and Jesus in His humanness was overwhelmed with sorrow. He went to Gethsemane to pray and three times He asked God - if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Each time He ended with a statement of submissive obedience – that God’s will be done.

When we pray, our petition should always be followed with a declaration of submission. If our prayer is according to his will, we will have it. God always answers prayer – sometimes with “yes”, sometimes with “no”, and sometimes with “wait”, but He always answers.

We have to prepare our hearts and be willing to walk forward in obedience to His will when we approach Him in prayer. God doesn’t answer prayer like a great puppet in the sky or a genie in a bottle. Prayer is for communication and relationship building with the Lord and often times we forget that. God wants us to honestly share our hearts with Him. Jesus didn’t just pray that God’s will be done, He shared his petition first – openly and honestly. Then He professed his desire to be obedient to God’s will.

Remember:
We truly can trust in the Lord instead of our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5)
Our God has plans for us to prosper (Jeremiah 29:11)
His thoughts are higher than our thoughts & His ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9)
His wisdom is deep, His judgments are unsearchable and his paths are beyond tracing out. (Romans 11:33)

God wants us to share our petitions with Him, but we can’t forget to acknowledge our smallness at the same time. So pray that God will open you up to His will and build a heart of obedience in you. Remember to pray for His will in all things. Put your petitions in His hands and let Him take the reigns of your life. He knows what’s best for us and what’s best for all of mankind.

What petitions have you placed before the Lord lately? Have you asked Him to answer them according to His will?

Today's blog was posted by Bridge member Kelly Coxe