REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain: moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Key verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14).
FLIP CHART: John Stott’s outline of SOM.
This then is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:7-13)
INTRODUCTION:
We must remember that Jesus has already given us two standard prayer requests of highest priority:
(1) That God be honored and revered throughout the world
(2) That His kingdom would come throughout the world.
These are prayer requests we should pray daily.
John Stott writes, “It is comparatively easy to repeat the words of the Lord’s Prayer like a parrot (or indeed a heathen ‘babbler’). To pray this prayer with sincerity, however, has revolutionary implications, for it expresses the priorities of a Christian.” (Stott, Pg. 147)
One commentator (N.T. Wright) feels that this prayer sums up in a nutshell the passion of Jesus. We need to keep this in mind as we study the prayer.
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. INFERENCES IN THE PHRASE “THY WILL BE DONE” ABOUT GOD
2. DEFINING “WILL” OF GOD
3. GOD’S WILL AND DIVINE FLEXIBILITY
4. OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD IN THE DOING OF HIS DESIRED WILL.
5. PRAYING EFFECTIVELY FOR GOD’S WILL TO BE DONE
THY WILL BE DONE!
REVIEW OF POINTS 1-3
God is a good God.
His will is good.
His will is not always done on earth.
God’s will is sometimes done only when we pray.
God’s predestined will / decreed will is always done whether we pray or not.
His desired will is affected by our prayers.
Ill: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (I Thess. 5:18).
When we pray God does not greet us with an “unblinking cosmic stare,” as one inflexible and not affected by our requests. He is not an aloof monarch but instead a caring, loving parent.
“Clark Pinnock contrasts two models of God’s sovereignty. We can picture God as an aloof monarch, removed from the details of the world. Or we can picture God as a caring parent with traits of love, generosity, and sensitivity; an infinite Being who personally interacts with and responds to creation. Accordingly, God considers prayers much as a wise parent might consider requests from a child.” (Prayer, P. Yancey, pg. 134)
Our Father is not “the unmoved mover” of Aristotle. He is “the most moved mover” of the Bible?
“Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to co-exist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication.” (C.S. Lewis quoted in Prayer by P. Yancey, Pg. 144).
IV. OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD IN DOING HIS DESIRED WILL.
“ ….your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
In his chapter on “Partnership” in his book on prayer Phil Yancey begins by saying: History is the story of God giving away power.
QUESTION: What does he mean by that statement?
C.S. Lewis writes: “For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He would do perfectly in the twinkling of an eye. He allows us to neglect what He would have us do, or to fail. Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to co-exist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication. …. Creation seems to be delegation through and through. He will do nothing simply of Himself which can be done by creatures. I suppose this is because He is a giver.” (P. Yancey, Prayer, 144)
“For we are God’s fellow workers ….” (I Cor. 3:9). “As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain” (II Cor. 6:1).
Other translations use laborers, fellow helpers, helpers, work-fellow, fellow laborer. A good illustration is II Cor. 5:20: We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Instead of designing everything to happen automatically (our hands to be cleaned automatically, our bodies to be nourished automatically, knowledge to enter our brains automatically …. “God chose a different style of governing the world, a partnership which relies on human agency and choice. God granted the favored human species the ‘dignity of causality,’ to borrow a phrase from Pascal.” (P. Yancey, Prayer, pg. 136.
QUESTION: Can you list other ways God invites us into a partnership with Him in ministering to the world?
Instead of spreading the Gospel around the world through human agency, God could have spread a large banner in the sky, sent myriad of angels. God could feed the hungry, minister to the poor, visit prisoners, house strangers without human agencies but he chose a different course of action …. He decided to involve human partners to work with Him in ministering to the world.
Rev. 1:6 refers to the church as “a kingdom of priests to serve God.”
Prayer is a gift of grace, God’s gracious invitation to us as His priests on earth to participate in the future of the world, of the cosmos.
“Prayer as kingdom praying is an arrangement explicitly instituted by God in order that we as individuals may count, and count for much, as we learn step by step how to govern, how to reign with Him in His kingdom” (The Divine Conspiracy, 250).
God ‘instituted prayer in order to allow His creatures the dignity of causality ‘. (Blaise Pascal – Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher.)
QUESTION: What does the statement by Pascal mean?
Causality – the notion that each event is the result of a prior cause. Thus prayer keeps humans from being robots, from having no impact on the world. Prayer gives us dignity for via prayer we can impact our world.
Prayer is God’s gift of honor to us. It is our way of interacting with the Trinity concerning the outcome of human events.
Thus, according to Dallas Willard, the most adequate description of prayer: Talking to God about what we are going to do together. “Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life. And of course he is concerned about my concerns and, in particular, that my concerns should coincide with this.” (The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard, 243).
ILL: C.S. Lewis suggests that we best imagine the world not as a state governed by a potentate but as a play, in the process of being created. The playwright allows the characters to effect the play itself and then incorporates all their actions into the final result. The scene and general outline of the play is fixed by the author but certain minor details are left to the actors to improvise.
ILL: Donald Gray Barnhouse, a committed Calvinist, illustrated the coordination of God’s decreed will with His desired will with an ocean liner headed to England. The ship was headed for England. That is the decreed will. What people did on the ship related to their free will. Our prayer do not affect God’s pre-determined destiny for the world but they do affect some of the things that happen in this world.
Barnhouse started a radio program known as “The Bible Study Hour”. In 1949, his program began a famous weekly study of Romans, which lasted until his death. The program is now known as “Barnhouse & the Bible”. Barnhouse wrote many articles and books. He founded Eternity magazine. He pastored the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Along with fellow evangelical Walter Martin, he influenced public perception by arguing that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was a relatively mainstream Christian denomination, albeit with some heterodox teachings. Barnhouse died in 1960, and an entire edition of Eternity was dedicated to him
Someone wrote: I believe God built into the design of history the potential for being affected by our prayers, for accomplishing things not possible through mere human cleverness.
There are some things God won’t do apart from prayer.
Some examples of our prayer effecting outcomes (God’s desired will) in history:
ELIJAH PRAYING ON MT. CARMEL
41 And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain.” 42 So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees. 43 “Go and look toward the sea,” he told his servant. And he went up and looked. “There is nothing there,” he said. Seven times Elijah said, “Go back.” 44 The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’ ” 45 Mean-while, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain came on and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. (I Kings 18:41-45) . . . . 17 Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:17-18).
QUESTION: Would it have rained if Elijah had not prayed?
James, under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, credits the coming of rain to the prayer of Elijah. Elijah prayed and it rained. If Elijah had not prayed it would not have rained.
THE COMMAND OF JESUS TO PRAY FOR HARVESTERS
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field (Luke 10:1-2).
DRAMA: For the drama pick an owner and his wife (a couple), 2-3 individuals to function as children. Give them the script and have them improvise.
Note: I gave the general outline to the actors. They improvised as they went. A good example of the illustration by CS Lewis.
QUESTION: What lessons can we learn from this text / this drama?
(1) God is the Lord of the harvest and thus can recruit harvesters at will.
(2) God is limiting the number of harvesters dependent on our prayers.
(3) God is delegating power and authority to us in relationship to the harvest.
(4) God is giving us the privilege through prayer of playing a key role in the harvest.
(5) If we don’t pray for God to send forth Christian workers, missionaries etc. God will not send them.
(6) One of our daily prayer requests should be that God will continue to call workers into the harvest.
SO WHAT???
1. Although God’s decreed will is settled what He desires and wishes to be accomplished on earth is affected by our prayers.
2. A good model for God’s sovereignty is not that of an aloof monarch but of a caring parent.
3. God has chosen to govern the world through a partnership and thus we are co-laborers, fellow-workers with Him and a kingdom of priests.
4. Prayer is one of God’s gifts to us. It is His way to honor and show His love for us in that it enables us to play a role in the outcome of events.
5. We all have answers to prayer. Share some of these answers that you are very sure are the results of prayer. Remember the “co-incidents” are also often “God-incidents.”
6. There are certain things that are very dependent upon our prayers, one being the sending out of harvesters, e.g. Christian workers into the world.
7. How often have you prayed that God will send forth Christian laborers into the harvest? Do you plan to start praying consistently that God will send forth laborers? Share your intentions.