The Will Of God

Our kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."— Matthew 6: 10.

1. The will of God is the living power to which the world owes its existence. Through that will, and according to that will, it is what it is. It is the expression or manifestation or embodiment of the Divine will in its wisdom, power and goodness. It has, in beauty and glory, but what it owes to God’s having willed it. As that will form it, so it upholds it every day. Creation thus does what it was destined for, it shows forth the glory of God. “The living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, for you created all things, and by your will, they existed and were created.”

2. This is true of inanimate nature. It is still more true of intelligent creatures. The Divine Will undertook the creation of a creature in its own image and likeness, with the living power to know and accept and co-operate with that Will to which it owed its being. The blessedness of the unfallen angels consists in counting it their highest honor and happiness to be able to will and do exactly what God wills and does. The glory of heaven is that God’s will is done there.

The sin and misery of fallen angels and men consist simply in their having turned away from and refused to abide in, and to do, the will of God.

3. Redemption is nothing but the restoration of God’s will to its place in the world. To this end, Christ came and showed in a human life, how man has but one thing to live for, the doing of God’s will. He showed us how there was one way of conquering self-will- by death to it, in obeying God’s will even unto death. So He atoned for our self-will and conquered it for us, and opened a path through death and resurrection, into a life entirely united with, and devoted to, the will of God.

4. God’s redeeming will is now able to do in fallen man, what His creating will had wrought and ever works in nature, or in unfallen beings. In Christ and His example, God has revealed the devotion to and the delight in His will, which He asks and expects of us. In Christ and His Spirit He renews and takes possession of our will: works in it both to will and to do, making us able and willing to do all His will. He Himself works all things after the counsel of His will. “Equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight.” As this is revealed by the Holy Spirit, believed, and received into the heart, we begin to get an insight into the prayer, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” and the true desire is awakened for the life it promises.

5. How essential it is to the believer that he realizes his relations to God’s will and its claim on him. Many, many, believers have no conception of what their faith or their feeling ought to be in regard to the will of God. How few who say: My whole thought of blessedness is in nothing but the most complete harmony with the will of God. I feel my one need to be, the much maintained surrender, not, in the very least thing, ever to do other than what God wills me to do. By God’s grace, every hour of my life may be a living in the will of God, and doing it as it is done in heaven.

6. It is only as a living faith in the Divine Will, working out its purposes increasingly in us, masters the heart, that we shall have the courage to believe in the answer to the prayer our Lord taught us. It is only as we see, that it is through Jesus Christ that this working of God’s will in us is carried out, that we shall understand how it the close union to Him that gives the confidence that God will work all in us. And it is only this confidence in God, through Jesus Christ, that will assure us, that we too can do our part, and that our feeble will on earth can truly ever correspond and co-operate with the will of God. Let us accept our destiny and our obligation as the one thing our heart desires, that in everything the will of God be done in us and by us, as it is done in heaven; that faith will overcome the world.

7. The will may not be disconnected from its living union with the Father here, nor the living presence of the Blessed Son. It is only by divine guidance given through the Holy Spirit, that the will of God in its beauty, in its application to daily life, in its ever-growing revelation, can be truly known. This teaching will be given, not to the wise and prudent, but to the babies, the men of childlike disposition, who are willing to wait for and depend on what is given to them. The Divine guidance will lead in the path of God’s will.

8. Our secret oneness with God is the place where we repeat and learn the great lessons… the God whom I worship asks of me perfect union with His will… My worship means: “I delight to do your will, O my God” The morning hour, the inner chamber, the secret oneness with God, as in these the knowledge of God’s will, the power to perform it, the entire and joyful surrender to do all God wills is sought and cultivated, our study of God’s word and our prayer will bring their true and full blessing.