Tuesday, November 17, 2020

PT-3 "The Wrong Understanding of God's Will" (Matt. 6:10b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/17/2020 9:55 AM

 

My Worship Time                                 Focus:  PT-3 “The Wrong Understanding of God’s Will”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 6:10b

 

            Message of the verse:  Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.”

 

            I mentioned in our last SD that we may want to get some quotes from John MacArthur’s book that we have been looking at entitled “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer,” and after reading again for about the third time the chapter that goes along with these verses I have decided to quote from this book again.  Two things that I want to say before I do this:  First it will probably take two days to get all I want to quote as I don’t want to make it too long as it is good to think about what we are reading.  Second, and this goes back to when I began this section on “The Lord’s Prayer,” and that is that because of all that is going on in our country at this time I was praying that God would give me insight in how to pray for our President and for our country.  I truly believe that He has given me insight on how to pray and it came from a paragraph from my reading last night, but I will not get to that today, so you will have to wait until tomorrow to see what I found out.  As always, Lord willing we will do that tomorrow.  One more thing that I want to mention and that is the word paradox, as while we study this prayer we will see a paradox in it, and this is not the first time we have talked about paradoxes as there are many of them in the Scriptures, especially in theology.  What do we do with them?  I hope to answer this question later on as we quote from this chapter.  I will begin with an unknown quotation that is found in this book that is very worthwhile reading.

 

            “I cannot say ‘our’ if I live only for myself.

            “I cannot say ‘Father’ if I do not endeavor each day to act like His child.

            “I cannot say ‘who art in heaven’ if I am laying up no treasure there.

            “I cannot say ‘hallowed be Thy name’ if I am not striving for holiness.

            “I cannot say ‘Thy kingdom come’ if I am not doing all in my power to hasten that wonderful event.

            “I cannot say ‘Thy will be done’ if I am disobedient to His Word.

            “I cannot say ‘in earth as it is in heaven’ if I’ll not serve Him here and now.

            “I cannot say ‘give us this day our daily bread’ if I am dishonest or seeking things by subterfuge.

            “I cannot say ‘forgive us our debts’ if I harbor a grudge against anyone.

            “I cannot say ‘lead us not into temptation’ if I deliberately place myself in its path.

            “I cannot say ‘deliver us from evil’ if I do not put on the whole armor of God.

            “I cannot say ‘Thine is the kingdom’ if I do not give the King the loyalty due Him from a faithful subject.

            “I cannot attribute to Him the power if I fear what men may do.

            “I cannot ascribe to Him the glory if I’m seeking honor only for myself, and I cannot say ‘forever’ if the horizon of my life is bounded completely by time.”

 

            Now we will move onto quoting from John MacArthur, and we talk about paradoxes.

 

            “If prayer is effective, then how can God still be absolutely sovereign?

            “I don’t know.  It is one of the great paradoxes of Scripture that tells me again that God’s mind is infinitely beyond my own.  This is an impossible dilemma for me and for everyone else.  But it is no contradiction at all of our majestic God.

            “It is akin to the question, Who wrote the book of Matthew—Matthew or the Holy Spirit?  Is either answer wrong?  Are both right.”

            “Who live the Christian life?  You say, not I but Christ in me.  Yet Paul says, ‘I beat my body to bring it into subjection.’  Who is doing it?  You or He? Both? Yes.

            “Another paradox:  Was Jesus God or man?  It’s like asking, Is it colder in the mountains or in winter?  Jesus is God, and He is man.  He cannot be 200 percent of Himself in the limits of our comprehension, but somehow in the infinite mind of God, those seeming paradoxes exist.

            “We could go on forever with mind-bogglers, but my point is that when you find paradoxes in Scripture—and you’ll find them at all the points of great doctrine—do not come up with some compromise and ruin both sides.

            “That’s the temptation, but let them both exist.  If God allows them, surely we can too.  We don’t have to fully understand.  If we could understand the mind of God, what would that make us?  God is sovereign.  God has predetermined the flow of the universe.  God does know the end from the beginning.  God will do what God will do.   And some day we will know as we are known.

            “On the other hand, prayer does work, and if you don’t understand how those fit together, don’t let your theology destroy your prayer life.

            “Once you have decided that you can accept the fact that prayer—even to the predeterminate God—is valid and vital, a right attitude toward prayer is achieved.

           

            I want to know move onto a different part of the chapter.

 

            “To say, ‘Thy will be done in earth,’ assumes that it is not always done, and that is true of some other elements of this prayer.

            “We say, ‘Hallowed be thy name,’ but there are times and places when His name is not hallowed.

            “We say ‘Thy kingdom come,’ yet there are hearts that reject His reign.

            “So when we say, ‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,’ we have to admit that not everything that happens in the world is His will.  Otherwise the petition is pointless, and the Lord is asking us to mumble meaningless things.

            “Very often you hear of someone telling the parents of a child who has died, ‘It’s the Lord’s will.’

            “Or a mother, who is so needed by her husband and children, becomes wracked with cancer and is fading fast, and somebody says, ‘It’s the Lord’s will.’

            “Or you hear about a flood or an earthquake or a fire or a train wreck or an airplane crash or a famine or starving boat people, and you say, ‘It’s the Lord’s will.’

            “You know what?  If you start looking at things that way, it will suck the energy right out of your prayer life.  Would you want to pray to the person who will such horrible catastrophes?  I wouldn’t.

            “Those things are not God’s will.  Those are the kinds of things that Jesus came into the world to stop.  His will must be seen as His preferred purposes for those He loves.  God ‘is not willing that any should perish’ (2 Peter 3:9), but people are perishing all over.”

            As I look at the rest of what I want to write I have to say that it will probably take two more days.  We will see.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I have to say that as I have read and studied this section that it has brought a new light on God’s will, and one verse comes to mind that helps me understand what I have learned, and that is Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  I worship a God who can use my circumstances to work together for my good and for His glory even though many times my circumstances are not good.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I trust God to do as He says in Romans 8:28, along with giving me strength to deal with difficult situations.

 

11/17/2020 10:55 AM

 

           

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