SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/16/2020 10:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Wrong Understanding of God’s Will”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
6:10b
Message of the
verse: “Your
will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.”
We
want to continue talking about the parable that we ended up starting to talk
about in our last SD found in Luke 18:1-8 1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all
times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, 2 saying, "In a certain
city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. 3 “There
was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ’Give me legal
protection from my opponent.’ 4 "For a while he was unwilling; but
afterward he said to himself, ’Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, 5
yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise
by continually coming she will wear me out.’" 6 And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge said;
7 now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and
night, and will He delay long over them? 8 “I tell you that He will bring about
justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find
faith on the earth?’”
John
MacArthur writes “The very fact that Jesus tells us to pray ‘Thy will be done
on earth’ indicates that God’s will is not always done on earth. It is not inevitable. In fact,
lack of faithful prayer inhibits His will being done. In God’s wise and gracious plan, prayer is essential to the proper
working of His divine will on earth.”
I
think it best to continue to quote from MacArthur’s commentary: “God is sovereign, but He is not
independently deterministic. Looking at
God’s sovereignty in a fatalistic way, thinking ‘What will be will be,’
absolutely destroys faithful prayer and faith obedience of every sort. That is not a ‘high’ view of God’s
sovereignty, but a destructive and unbiblical; view of it. That is not the divine sovereignty the Bible
teaches. It is not God’s will that
people die, or why would Christ have come to destroy death? It is not God’s will that people go to hell, or why would His only Son
have taken the penalty of sin upon Himself so that men might escape hell? ‘The Lord is not slow about His promise, as
some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish
but for all to come to repentance’ (2 Pet. 3:9). That sin exists on earth and causes such
horrible consequences in not evidence of God’s will but of His patience in
allowing more opportunity for men to turn to Him for salvation.
“Other
people, overemphasizing the importance of man’s will, look at prayer as a means
of bending God’s will to their own. They think of God’s providence
as a sort of cosmic vending machines, which they can operate simply by
inserting the required claim on one of His promises. As Elton Trueblood observes, ‘In some
congregations the Gospel has been diminished to the mere art of
self-fulfillment. Some current religious
authors, far from emphasizing what it means to believe that God was in Christ
reconciling the world upon Himself, write chiefly of themselves. Egocentricity is all that is left when the
objective truth about the revelation of Christ is lost or even obscured.’
“But
Jesus undercuts that notion throughout His model prayer. True prayer focuses on ‘Thy’ name, ‘Thy’ will. Amy Carmichael wrote, ‘And shall I pray to change Thy will, my Father,
until it accord to mine? But no, Lord,
no; that shall never be. Rather I pray
Thee blend my human will with Thine.’
“There is tension between God’s
sovereignty and man’s will, between God’s grace and man’s faith, but we
dare not try to resolve it by modifying God’s truth about either His
sovereignty or our will, His grace or our faith. God is sovereign, but He gives us
choices. God is sovereign, but He tells
us to pray ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ And James reminds us that ‘the effective
prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much’ (5:16).”
Now
this is the end of MacArthur’s comments as far as from his commentary, but I
want to go over what he has written in his book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer,” and
see if there are some things that I may want to use in our next SD as he goes
more indebt in his book as I have mentioned before.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I desire to continue more about how my
prayers to the Lord will be how He desires me to pray. Prayer is such a deep subject and I suppose
that my prayer life has not always been in the way that I should be praying,
and that is why I am thankful for this section on what we have called “The
Lord’s Prayer” as it is so very important to me, especially in the times we are
living in.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to continue to trust the Lord in the
very confusing times that we are living in, trust Him to fulfill what Paul
wrote in Romans 8:28.
11/16/2020 10:37 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment