I have spent most of my life contemplating and exploring the tension between my will and God’s will; A tension I have found impossible to deconstruct with any real satisfaction. It is a universal question; Do we really have free choice or are we destined by the fates? My experiences give me assurances that I do have free will. I am daily confronted with choices. But like Oedipus looking back at my choices over time I still wonder, asking myself, why didn’t I choose the other option?
Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us to pray, “Your will be done”
Why? Isn’t God’s will irresistible? If the outcome that God wills will happen, why should it be a matter of prayer?
When God spoke to Moses and the children of Israel in Egypt, He swore to them that He would give them land. The land we now call Israel. The story of their rescue from Egypt is legendary. Their history in that land is also legendary. They conquered, they divided through a civil war of sorts. They were conquered, and made vassals to empires. Eventually being disposed and dispersed by the Romans. Yet today, as if reading a Greek tragedy, they are back in that land. After nearly 2,000 years! Exodus 6:8 “And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD.”
I would like to offer a suggestion in answer to my question: Why does Jesus teach us to pray “Your will be done”? Firstly I admit that I am a creation of God. I am not a product of chance and chaos. Secondly I admit that this universe appears to be ruled, governed, administrated by chaos and therefore I am subjected to that chaos. Thirdly this chaos is not God’s will, it is in fact a lie. Like all lies it alters the reality of those who believe in them. Fourthly, by revelation, Jesus Christ manifested the truth about God and reality inside this chaos. How does this help? We all have the power to make choices, that is a given. (Some might suggest that we are powerless inside of chaos to really make a free choice so to do so would take divine intervention. My suggestion is that is exactly what we have in Jesus Christ.) So the ultimate choice, the defining choice, the meta-choice is one. Will you continue to believe the lie of chaos or will you believe the truth of Jesus Christ?
Thus it becomes a matter of participation. As a creation of God I am endowed with the capacity to participate in God’s will. I was created for that. If I do, and this comes about through Jesus Christ, I like Israel of old, am rescued out of chaos. I am then a participant with Jesus Christ in revealing His truth to this world of chaos. As Joshua of old who led Israel into Canaan and destroyed their cities, so Jesus leads us into our inheritance, which will be the whole world. This is the will of God.
Surely God wills to do His work. John 6:26-29 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
