SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/15/2020 3:22 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Wrong Understanding of God’s
Will”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
6:10b
Message of the
verse: “Thy will be done, On earth as it is in
heaven.”
I cannot tell you how far we will get with this section
today, but I can tell you that this section along with the next section which
is entitled “The Right Understand of God’s Will,” are perhaps one of the most
important for us to understand as we go through this Disciple’s Prayer. We will take our time to get through this and
the next section so we can be sure that we understand it.
As we begin to look at this section of the Disciple’s
prayer we can be certain that many people, including many believers misunderstand
this section of the prayer. As we see
God’s sovereignty simply as the absolute imposition of a dictator’s will, some
believers are resentful. When or if they
pray at all for God’s will to be done, they pray out of a feeling of
compulsion. Needless to say that is not
the right kind of attitude to have when you are praying to the God of all
creation, the God who knows everything, or any other of His attributes. Perhaps they think that God’s will has to be
done, and He is too strong to resist; so what would be the point of praying
otherwise? What is the logical
conclusion to this for them? The logical
conclusion of most people who look at God in that way is that there is no point
to prayer and certainly not to petitions as they wonder “Why ask for the
inevitable?
Now we move to another type of people who are more
charitable in their feelings about God.
However because they, too, believe His will is inevitable, they pray out
of passive resignation. How does this
work? Well they pray for God’s will to
be done simply because that is what the Lord tells them to do. They do it because they are obedient. It is
not so much out of faith that they pray as out of submission. So they don’t try to put their will into
accord with the divine will, but rather shift their own wills into neutral, as
the let God’s will run its course.
It is really easy for believers to fall into praying that
way. We actually saw this in the early
days of the church, when faith generally was strong and vital, as prayer could
be passive and unexpectant. There is a story from the 12th chapter
of Acts that shows this way that the early church believers fell into this
trap. The story is most familiar to most
believers as we see that Peter and James, the brother of John, were thrown into
prison and James was slain. This made
the Jews happy so the plan was to execute Peter after a holiday. People began to pray for Peter’s release at
the mother of John Mark’s house. In the
mean time an angel set Peter free and he went to the house to tell them he was
set free. Rhoda, a slave girl answered
Peter’s call at the gate but did not open for him to come in. She told the prayer group that Peter was at the
gate, but they thought it was his angel.
Not sure why his angel would be there if Peter was still in prison. At any rate they finally got to see
Peter. MacArthur adds “They apparently
had been praying for what they did not really believe would happen.”
I will conclude this SD with a quotation from MacArthur’s
commentary and then, Lord willing we will pick up more on this subject
tomorrow.
“Our own prayer lives often are weak because we do not
pray in faith; we do not expect prayer to change anything. We pray out of a sense of duty and
obligation, subconsciously thinking that God is going to do just as He wants to
do anyway. Jesus gave the parable of the
importunate widow—who refused to accept the status quo and persisted in
begging, despite receiving no response—for the very purpose of protecting us
against that sort of passive and unspiritual resignation. ‘Now He was telling them a parable to show
that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart’ (Luke 18:1).” We will begin with more on this parable in
our next SD.
11/15/2020 4:01 PM
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