Thy Will Be Done: What You Are Really Asking For in Matthew 6:10

You have probably prayed it more times than you could count. Maybe at a graveside. Maybe at a ball game. Maybe at a church supper with your eyes half open and the rolls getting cold.

“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-10)

“Thy kingdom come” looks ahead to the day Christ reigns. Then comes the next phrase, and it is the easiest phrase in the Lord’s Prayer to glide right over. Thy will be done. We say it like we are signing off on something.

But there is a second half to that sentence that almost nobody stops to think about: in earth, as it is in heaven.

You are not just asking God to have His way somewhere. You are asking for this world to look like heaven does when it comes to His will. Do you know what that looks like? And are you sure you want it?

What “as it is in heaven” actually looks like

Before you can pray for God’s will to be done here the way it is done there, you have to know how it is done there. The Bible gives us a glimpse:

“Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure.” (Psalms 103:20-21)

Look at the middle of that first verse: that do his commandments. In heaven, when God wills a thing, the angels do it. There is no committee meeting and no foot-dragging. There is obedience.

And it goes further than that. Hearkening unto the voice of his word. To hearken is to listen with the intent to obey. They hear what He says, they take it seriously, and then they carry it out. And while they are doing it, they are blessing Him and praising Him.

That is what is happening in heaven right now.

So when you pray “thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,” you are asking for that same obedience down here. Not just out there in the world. In you.

To understand that prayer better, it helps to see what God’s will is not, and then what it is.

His will does not make you a puppet

God’s will does not take away your free will.

That needs saying plainly, because a lot of people believe otherwise. They picture all of us as puppets dangling from strings in the hand of God. That is not what the Bible teaches.

Listen to what God told Israel:

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;” (Deuteronomy 30:15)

And a few verses later:

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

That was spoken to Israel, but by application it reaches you too. God has set a choice in front of you. Life or death. Blessing or curse. He does that because He gave you a will of your own.

It would not be love if you had no choice in the matter.

But free will comes with a heavy responsibility. It is astonishing what people will do with theirs. Most of the time it comes down to living for self, doing whatever self wants. The book of Judges sums up a whole generation that way:

“In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6)

God did not take their choices away from them. He let them choose. And He will not take yours away either.

God is not picking who goes to heaven and who goes to hell

This is another thing His will is not. God is not sitting in heaven choosing which people get saved and which people are left out.

That doctrine is getting more and more common. But listen to the Word of God:

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Not willing that any should perish. Salvation is offered to everybody. That puts a weighty responsibility on you. You have to decide whether you will turn to Him. And once you have, you have to make sure other people know they have that same choice in front of them. If they go on in sin, living for self, they are choosing too. They are choosing to turn away.

People ought to know there is hope.

I heard about a woman who held the view that God simply picks. She prayed again and again and again that she would be chosen to be saved. Think about living like that. If God says no, there is no hope for me. I am damned, and I cannot even turn to Him. I am praying, and He is not answering.

What an awful way to live. And honestly, what an awful view of God.

That is not a loving God. God loves every one of us, and He proved it:

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

He showed that love at the cross, and He is still showing it today. He is not choosing who gets saved. That is not His will.

“Thy will be done” is not permission to call down fire

Here is one more thing God’s will is not, and it may surprise you. It is not an excuse for your own brand of righteous judgment.

I am not pointing a finger at anybody in particular. But Christians in general can fall into this. That person is against God, so they deserve whatever they get. And from there it is a short step. You stop wanting to share the gospel with them. You are quietly glad when bad things happen to them. You might even wish it on them.

Two of the Lord’s own disciples did exactly that:

“And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.” (Luke 9:51-56)

You can feel the heat coming off James and John. How dare they turn away the Lord? It sounds holy. It sounds like loyalty.

And Jesus rebuked them.

He will judge. When His kingdom comes, judging is part of what it means for Him to be King. But that was not why He came the first time. He came to save. So it is not your job to work up righteous fury against the lost.

There are things that bother me. When I hear somebody take my Lord’s name in vain, it does not sit well with me. But that does not mean I get to say, “Well, you deserve what you get.” They do not understand what they are doing. Our Lord prayed for people just like that:

“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.” (Luke 23:34)

So don’t write them off. Think about what they could become. They could get saved. They could learn what that name means and who the Lord Jesus Christ really is.

You do not get to take His judgment into your own hands. You get to keep loving and keep giving them the gospel.

His will is that you come to Him

So what is the will of God?

First and foremost, that people would be saved. It bears repeating: He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

If you are reading this and you do not know the Lord as your personal Savior, God wants you saved. He wants a personal relationship with you.

That is why He made us in the first place. God created mankind for companionship, so that we could walk with Him. Then we ruined it. Adam and Eve took the very fruit God had plainly told them not to take, and the fellowship was broken.

But God was not caught off guard. He knew what man would do with his free will. Right there in the garden, He promised the One who would come and be the sacrifice:

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

What a beautiful thing that is. He wants every one of us to come to Him.

I’ll be honest with you. There are nights when I almost wish I were a puppet master with my boys. Last night was one of them. I could not tell you how many times they got out of bed, goofing off and saying things, over and over. And part of me wanted to say, All right, my will be done. Stay in bed. Put your head on your pillow. Go to sleep.

That’s not how it works. And I’m thankful it isn’t. Because the very fact that they are not puppets is what makes our relationship real. Things don’t always go the way I expect, but that is exactly where some of the sweetest moments with my boys come from.

Not long ago, one of my boys fell down the stairs. His face looked like he had lost a fistfight. I never would have wished that on him. But I can tell you what happened next. He came running to me, screaming and crying, and I got to sit there and hold my son for several minutes.

He was relying on me. He came to me for comfort and for whatever he needed in that moment.

That is what the Lord wants from you.

When you are hurting, when you are struggling, when you do not know what to do and you cannot get hold of your own emotions, when everything around you is unraveling, He wants you to come to Him. I picture myself all beat up and bruised, running to the Lord, and Him just holding me.

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

That is the companionship He is after. And He wants it with everyone:

“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3-4)

So when you pray “thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,” you ought to be thinking about lost people. Pray for lost souls by name. Pray for an opportunity to witness to them. Pray that they would see their lost condition and turn to Him in repentance and faith.

That is His will being done on earth.

What doth the LORD require of thee?

His will does not stop at salvation. He has more for you to do here.

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8)

We quote that verse often. But read it as a prayer request. What is the Lord’s will for you? What does He want from your life after you are saved?

Do justly

His will is for you to do right. To do good. To do the right thing as far as God gives you the wisdom to see it.

“To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” (Proverbs 21:3)

Picture somebody in the Old Testament hauling in a big, impressive sacrifice. Everybody sees it. But his heart is not in it for the Lord. It is in it for himself, for the show.

God says doing what is right is more acceptable to Him than that. This is a matter of the heart before it is a matter of the hands. You should still obey outwardly. But if the heart is wrong, the outward does not count for much.

“But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

Doing justly means doing what is right from God’s point of view, not the crowd’s.

Love mercy

“And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Matthew 9:10-13)

I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.

That ties right back to what His will is not. It is not your license for righteous judgment. It is a call to love mercy, toward the lost, and toward one another in the church too. Because we can offend each other. We do it more often than we like to admit.

Your Father is not pulling strings

Think about that little boy one more time, running to his daddy with a bruised face.

That is what God is after. He is not looking for puppets. He is looking for children who come to Him on their own, who listen when He speaks and do what He says, the way the angels do in heaven. He wants children who would rather see the lost saved than burned, who do right from the heart, and who show mercy because they have been shown mercy.

And Micah’s verse does not end with mercy. It ends with walking humbly with your God.

So the next time those words come out of your mouth, slow down. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

Do you mean it?

Then start with you.

Come to Him.

Adapted from a message preached from Matthew 6:9-10.