Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10)

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10)

To pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is the hardest prayer to pray with sincerity. We prefer, because of our fallen nature, to be “captains of our own souls.” As John Stott says in his book, Christian Counter-Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, “We are constantly under pressure to conform to the self-centeredness of secular culture. When that happens we become concerned about our own little name (liking to see it embossed on our notepaper or hitting the headlines in the press, and defending it when it is attacked), about our own little empire (bossing, ‘influencing’ and manipulating people to boost our ego), and about our own silly little will (always wanting our own way and getting upset when it is frustrated).” We can’t be concerned about our agenda and at the same time pray for God’s will to be done on earth, therefore this prayer strikes at the heart of our pride and self-centeredness. Jesus teaches us to deny ourselves, and this portion of the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray it sincerely, leads us away from promoting our own agenda.

So many times in our lives we think we know what’s best, so we scheme and manipulate and control in hopes of bringing it about. It’s not unlike having one car and yet each one of us insists on being the one who drives it. So we stand around the car as each of us argues for why we should be the one who takes the wheel. But we won’t go anywhere until we agree to let one drive and the others ride. Praying for God’s will to be done means we agree to let him be the driver. It means letting go of our will in favor of his. It requires trusting that our heavenly Father knows best. Jesus modeled this when he prayed in Gethsemane. He pleaded with God the Father for some other way besides the cross. Yet he was willing to lay aside his desire in order to pursue the will of the Father (Matthew 26:39, 42). We must be willing to do the same. Praying for God’s will to be done means letting God take the wheel.