God’s Will In Earth, As It Is in Heaven

How can the will of our Father really be done in earth as it is in heaven? How can His desires, His wishes, His intentions be realized on an earth dominated by evil; held under the tyranny of Satan; and populated by stubborn, self-willed men? Is it essentially possible? Can the divine desires and wishes of my heavenly Father really be fulfilled in me, at least, in this bit of human clay, in this small fragment of the earth?

Our Lord was not a deluded idealist. He did not indulge in idle speculation or empty dreaming. Nor did He pray impossible prayers. So when He said, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,” He did not envisage that the will of His Father would or could be done in the hearts and lives of those who rejected His authority. It would be absurd to ask or expect that the will of God be carried out by those who were in no way in harmony with God.

But this did not mean that God’s overall purposes for the planet would not eventually be realized. They will. In spite of men and nations set against Him, the sovereign intentions of the Almighty are bound to be achieved.

The sooner a child of God discovers the great delight of moving in harmony with the will of God, the sooner he has set his feet on the threshold of heaven.

“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision” (Ps. 2:1–4).

Yet, here, in this simple request, the thought is, “Heavenly Father, may Your will be done in this bit of earth, in me here and now, just as it will be done someday on this earth.”

This would be very simple, very straightforward, very feasible if we human beings did not have a will of our own. This is the single greatest deterrent to the accomplishment of God’s will. We are not puppets who jump up and down, whirl our arms, or swing our legs by the pull of a string. Instead we deliberately make our own choices and reach our own decisions. We carry out our own ideas in response to our own wills.

Consequently we find ourselves faced by the fact that there are two wills moving separately, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in confrontation: God’s will and my will. And the Christian’s primary responsibility is to see to it that his human will responds to and complies with that of his heavenly Father. Well over ninety percent of all Christian growth and maturity and holiness lies in achieving this end.

In fact, we find that those great saints of God who have learned to know and love Him best not only come to the place where they did the will of God but actually enjoyed the will of God. This is important to realize, because in heaven it is no hardship to do God’s will, but a joy. Likewise in my heart, if God’s Kingdom on earth is there, doing the will of God should be a delight and not a drudgery.

The sooner a child of God discovers the great delight of moving in harmony with the will of God, the sooner he has set his feet on the threshold of heaven. For it is in doing the will of God and responding to it positively that heaven actually does descend to this fragment of earth and becomes a reality within. Because of our strong self-assertion and stubborn, unyielding wills, some of us deprive ourselves for years of the quiet joys and serene satisfaction that can be the heritage of those who adjust themselves to God’s wishes.

The Scriptures use a number of very graphic illustrations to convey to us the manner in which God, by His Spirit, endeavors to manipulate and mold the minds and wills of men and women. Of these perhaps the most picturesque is that of the potter at work at his wheel. The picture of how an insignificant, unyielding, rigid lump of earth can, through the application of the master craftsman’s skill and loving care, be formed into a beautiful, useful piece of china comes through clearly to us.