In our July hymn of the month Gregory Wilbur helped us sing lines like, “Love will make obedience sweet,” and “your commands become our happy choice.”
These lines get at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer and its third petition, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus teaches us to pray that the grace of God will grant power to obey the commands of God.
The Shorter Catechism reads this way,
Q. 103. What do we pray for in the third petition?
A. In the third petition, which is, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, we pray that God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.
According to the Westminster Assembly of theologians and pastors God’s grace (sanctifying grace) makes us able to obey God. This grace grants the power and the ability to do God’s will. It also grants a willingness. When God’s grace works in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, we want to obey God. Our hymn expressed this truth as a sweet obedience and a happy choice.
This is no formula to a challenge-free life. Nevertheless, it is the formula for a happy-in-God life. Our culture is deceived about what makes humans happy. We have mistaken fleshly pleasure for joy, and so we pursue pleasure as the world offers it rather than happiness as God offers it.
Make no mistake, obedience to God can be hard, but it pays rich dividends in this life and the one to come. However, to believe this and live this, we need to cultivate a taste for it. Church leaders from a previous time called this a taste of the heart. Such an appetite for godliness does not come from a bare, formal hearing or academic learning, as important as that is. The catechism does remind us that the grace of God enables us to know God’s will. But, that same grace can also give us a love for God’s will, an affection and desire for God’s will. This comes from the work of the Holy Spirit as we submit ourselves to a long meditation and contemplation of God’s word.
May we learn to sing together, Thy Will Be Done, until love for God and God’s love for us makes obedience sweet.
When we are taught to pray that God’s will be done, it makes some believe that it might be possible that God’s will might not be done, or that the will of God could possibly be thwarted. Surely we trust that His decretive will shall indeed be accomplished, yet we are taught by our our Lord to pray that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. How should we best see these various understandings of the will of God in light of praying for His will to be accomplished on Earth as it is in Heaven? Is it that we would pray that His preceptive will should be accomplished, or are we primarily dealing with our ignorance of His decretive will (considering eventual counterfactuals, though of course we should not worry about what a day may bring).
It certainly is food for thought to recognize Christ taught us to pray for God’s will to be done, when we Reformed Christians believe God’s will shall surely be accomplished.