Thy will be done…
One question that’s been lingering on my mind lately is the subject of prayer. I’m wondering, how do we balance confidence that God will indeed answer our prayers (e.g. Mark 11:22-24) with praying for God’s will to be done (e.g. Matthew 6:5-15)? In other words (to be true to my title), how do we caution against turning “God’s will be done” into a cop-out? For example, someone is sick with cancer and we earnestly pray for miraculous healing and end it by saying, “Thy will be done.” Do we add that at the end because we just honestly leave it in His hands or have we misused it as a way to let God “off the hook” when/if the person isn’t healed? Is it as simple as Luther’s explanation to the 3rd petition of the Lord’s Prayer in his Small Catechism that ultimately, regardless of our temporal circumstances, God’s will is for people to be saved? Or maybe I’m misreading Luther. Your thoughts…
From reading the Small and Large Catechism Luther is treating the third petition in relation to the two that preceded it. Therefore he interprets it as basically saying that we are praying that anything that would try to keep us from hallowing God’s name or from having His kingdom come will be overcome. This is because it is God’s will for His name to be hallowed and for His kingdom to come. I don’t have the time to read through his sermons on the catechism at the moment, but I wonder if he gets into the issue you are talking (ie. someone is dying and we use God’s will as way to get God off the hook for not healing the person). I don’t know if Luther or people in his day would have thought of it that way.
I think people could use the third petition in the manner you are speaking. I guess it’s a matter of watching out for it and making sure we’re not using it that way. Is it becoming a way of answering the theodicy that arises when God does not heal? Is it someone’s response to why God allowed a bad thing happen to a good person? Then one would be using the third petition for a Theology of Glory and dodging the Cross. When we pray for God’s healing we ought never omit the Cross and the eschatological healing that will come to all those in Christ even as we pray for temporal healing. Does that make sense? I’m not sure if I’m explaining it well enough without writing a novel.
Rev_Eze said this on October 3, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Lessing wrote a great article on prayer a while back. I don’t have a copy that I can find, but if you email him, I’m sure that he’ll happily send you the pdf.
Joe Burnham said this on October 6, 2008 at 8:57 am
Joe, thanks for the reminder on that. I’m pretty sure this is the article to which you are referring: Pastor, Does God Really Respond to My Prayers? It’s in the July 2006 Concordia Journal (which can be accessed by clicking on the article title). I had only skimmed it before, but having read it fully now it does get at the heart of the issue I’ve raised. In fact, here’s an excerpt from his conclusion that I think certainly helps:
The problem is, I’m not really sure it fully answers my question – and maybe the point of the article is that there really isn’t a definitive answer. I’ve realized now perhaps how to better articulate my question: how can we pray with confidence for something in the realm of our daily bread (e.g. healing) when we know the answer may be “no”? This is what I’m struggling with because it’s tough to confidently ask for God to miraculously heal someone (and I mean heal in this life – not the “eternal healing” we might say a Christian receives upon death) when all signs point to “no” and past experience tells me the answer has, more often than not, been “no”. Does that make sense? Perhaps the best answer is simply “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Ps. 46:10)
The Rev Russ said this on October 6, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Russ,
I’m gonna give you my viewpoint on this subject as i followed it during the death of my faith, you might appreciate it.
btw…i was a Charismatic Christian (aka Full Gospel as conceited as that sounds when you say “my faith is Full Gospel whilst yours is not”, but i am just speaking on the terms that i once lived by.)I believed in and practiced (and still do, another ex-christian hangup) speaking in tongues. Somehow i took from the bible and from my own experiences, that I was incapable of knowing 100% what the will of god was, at some point i started feeling it was selfish to pray for anything other than the will of God. Couple this with a belief that praying in tongues (in a secret place or prayer closet) was the Holy Spirit taking over for you and allowing you to pray gods will and eventually you get the idea that the only proper prayer is that where the holy spirit simply uses your tongue to petition god.
thats just a perspective that i held on to for a little while during the time that i was losing my faith and feeling less connected with my understanding of god. I certainly cant defend any of the claims
Matt said this on October 22, 2008 at 10:44 am
Thanks for your insight, Matt. I think to an extent, the struggle you went through is the same I am dealing with. I would say that the conclusion you came to, that we cannot know the will of Good with 100% certainty in terms of this life is absolutely correct. God doesn’t give us all the answers to every aspect of life. And as for the garbage we deal with in life, I certainly won’t try to explain it away because Jesus himself said “in this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). However, two things that I’d point out. 1) Just because we don’t know 100% God’s will for us in this life, doesn’t mean we don’t know his will for eternal life – that all should believe in Christ for eternal life and 2) Just because we don’t know God’s will for us in this life, doesn’t mean we can’t ask for certain things. It just means that when he says yes, we give thanks and when he says no, even in the difficult circumstances, we recognize that it must not have been in his will.
As for the praying in tongues aspect, my answer there was that is descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is to say, even though I don’t classify myself as a Charismatic Christian, I don’t deny the possibility of people praying/speaking in tongues. However, I don’t believe that is the norm prescribed for all Christians.
The Rev Russ said this on October 22, 2008 at 2:08 pm
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