025 On Earth as it is in Heaven Pt 1

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” can sound like a calm line you recite, but it’s actually a daring request. If God’s will is always done, why would Jesus teach us to pray for it? I work through that tension and show why this petition is less about guessing God’s hidden plan and more about learning real dependence on a Father who helps us obey.

We dig into a classic piece of Christian theology: God’s revealed will versus God’s secret will. God’s secret (sovereign, decretive) will cannot be thwarted, but God’s revealed will is disobeyed every time we ignore what He has clearly made known in Scripture, in the life of Jesus, and by the Holy Spirit. That’s why this prayer is so practical: it’s a request for a spirit of obedience, and a confession that the problem often isn’t knowledge, it’s desire and weakness. I also walk through Romans 2 and the idea of God’s law written on the heart, which means we’re not starting from zero when it comes to right and wrong.

If you’ve ever felt too ashamed to pray, this conversation is for you. I press the point that God is not looking to scold you before He helps you. The petition assumes struggle, names the reality of the flesh and the enemy resisting dependence, and still invites you to keep asking because God is willing and able to meet you there. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with the line that challenged you most.

Transcript

Welcome Back And A Candid Update

Speaker 0:25

Hello and welcome back to Holistic Christian Prayer. I'm your host, Nickolas Meinerz, and today we're continuing our study of the Lord's Prayer by looking at the petition, Thy Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven. Together, these phrases teach us both what we should pray for and how God's will is meant to be carried out. Before I get into like the prayer section, I feel like I owe you guys an explanation because it's been so long since my last publication, and I just feel so bad about it. Basically, I was laid off from one of my jobs and I was forced to find another one very, very quickly, and it was stressful, and whatever. But then after that, I just had like a period of I don't know, I guess like a funk. I wasn't really feeling like writing or recording. Both of them just felt like way more than I could handle at the time. And so I apologize, I'm really sorry about that. I'm trying to be more consistent for you guys, but I'm just kind of like the worst. So, you know, um I'm not gonna stop. I'm gonna keep putting out these episodes whenever I can, and I'm hoping that you guys will continue to listen anyway. I also hope that you're able to start seeing prayer as something that's enjoyable and not just a duty, and as something that can really change your life. And once we're done with the Lord's Prayer, my plan is to do sort of like a review and a bit of application of what we've covered so far. Maybe after we do that, it'll become a little bit more real to you, the practice of prayer and like the reality of prayer changing things. Maybe it'll become even perhaps a little bit more practical in your day-to-day life. That's my hope, is that you're able to see prayer as something that's both enjoyable and also as something that you can actually do in your day-to-day life. It's not something that has to necessarily be set aside for like, you know, three, four hours at a time, um, but something that you can fit in your real life. It's not something you have to try to squeeze in. It's not something that you gotta check off your list, but it's something that you really actually enjoy doing. You get a bit of a sense of refreshment, and uh maybe you feel a bit centered or you feel calmer or you feel like you've got some direction. And ultimately, I want you to like really enjoy prayer and see some benefit from it. Because I really do believe that prayer changes things. I don't think it's just a psychological thing. You know, I I think that's kind of the vibe I get from some people. Um I don't think that that it's just in our heads, if that makes sense. You know, that if we pray, that the only real change only happens in our minds. I don't believe that. I know a lot of people have that kind of view towards prayer, that it's only really good for changing your perspective, that it's just basically good for giving you like a different frame of reference. But that's not my view. I I really think that prayer changes things in the real world. And maybe you have a similar view and maybe you totally disagree. But my hope is that through listening to this and by trying it out, that's the key part, by trying it out, that you'll realize that there is real benefit to doing this. So thank you again for all of you guys for continuing to listen. And I just hope that you will give it a shot. I'm eager for all of you to see how things will be different for you if you do these things. I just hope I can be more consistent.

Opening Prayer For Real Change

Speaker 3:50

So if you guys could pray for me that I become more consistent, I'd really appreciate that. Yeah, speaking of prayer, let's start all of this off with some prayer. Makes sense, right? So let's jump right in. Dear Lord, thank you for all these people who are continuing to listen to this podcast despite my very erratic publishing schedule. I thank you for all of their patience. Lord, I just ask that as people are listening to the content of this episode today, that you reveal to them that prayer really can change not just how they feel or how they think, but it can change the real things that go on in their life. The actual events of their life can be shaped by prayer. Then, on top of that, of course, their minds and their emotions can also be formed or refreshed and redirected by you in a healthy way through prayer. Lord, I ask that you motivate them to pray and to experience what I'm saying rather than just taking my word for it. Help them apply it to their life so that they can start to see benefit from prayer, that they can start to enjoy prayer, and that they can begin to see prayer as something that's not simply a duty, not a spiritual duty that they have to do, but as something that truly enriches their life the more that they do it. So Lord, I thank you, and we all worship you and we love you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Why Jesus Teaches This Petition

Speaker 5:31

Okay, so it might be stretching your memories a bit, because it's been quite a while, but like I mentioned in the last episode, today's discussion will be a little less technical, though I can't promise I'll completely stop being nerdy. Nerdy's sort of my thing. Jesus instructs his followers, originally the disciples and also believers today, to pray in a similar manner to the Lord's Prayer. As I've mentioned before, these two phrases are composed of a petition and a modifier, or a conditional statement. Today, we will address two main ideas as we study this portion of the Lord's Prayer. The first being that the difference between God's revealed will and God's secret or decretive will. The second point would be we need God's help to obey His revealed will. Let's look at the petition itself. Your will be done. That's the petition part. If you remember from the previous episodes, a petition is a formal request from someone with lower power and authority to someone with greater power and authority. When we make petitionary prayers, we are therefore making a request of God, who has greater power and authority than us. It's important to note that this entire prayer, not just this phrase, is directed at God. This might seem obvious at first, but don't gloss over this fact too quickly. As we've begun studying the Lord's prayer, we've seen that Jesus teaches us to ask God for some extraordinary things. We ask God to hallow his name. We ask God to bring his kingdom to earth, and now we ask God to cause his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. But think about what that seems to imply. We participate in all these things, don't we? As Christians. We honor God's name. We share the gospel, aka you know, hallowing his name, making his name, you know, larger and important and full of glory. We do those things. We strive to obey his will. Is Jesus commanding us to pray for these realities and then expecting us to produce them? Is the success of these petitions ultimately resting on our shoulders? Jesus is the one who instructs us to petition the Heavenly Father for these things. When we pray these petitions, we aren't just asking for God to bring about these amazing things. We are also offering up ourselves to Him as an instrument of His will to see those things done. In love we say Send me, I'll go. It's a dangerous thing to try and hallow the Father's name, share the gospel, forsake a kingdom of darkness, aka the world, for light, and strive to obey him in this world without first petitioning our Father. Put that on the back burner for now. We will revisit it again in the next episode. And consider now the oddness of this latest petition we are meant to pray to the Father. Why does Jesus tell us to petition God for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven? If you think about it, it's a little odd, right? If He's God, isn't His will always done? If His will is always done, why bother to pray that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven? I think the implication is obvious. God's will isn't always done. That is why we need to pray for it. Of course, saying that out loud might sound strange or troubling, and to some perhaps even heretical, but hear me out. Christians throughout history have noticed that Scripture speaks about God's will in more than one sense. Theologians from all different denominational backgrounds debate this topic,

Revealed Will Versus Secret Will

Speaker 10:05

with the majority of them agreeing that God has at least two different types of wills, one that can be known and denied, and one that cannot be known or denied. Let's look at what theologians have to say about this. The secret or decretive will of God is always done equally on earth as it is in heaven, for none can thwart or even hinder it. It is equally evident that God's revealed will is violated every time one of his precepts is disobeyed. This distinction was clearly drawn when Moses says to Israel, The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. This first quote of AW Pink is from his book The Lord's Prayer. I think this frames the issue very well. In a sense, God's will is always done. But in another sense, every time we disobey God, his will is not done. Theologians use different terms for this distinction, with a number of them being so similar to one another that it can be hard to spot their differences. Some speak of God's revealed and secret will, while others will use terms like permissive, prescriptive, decretive, or efficacious will. Christians belonging to different denominations will describe this differently, especially when discussing free will and God's sovereignty. But most traditions acknowledge that Scripture speaks of God's will in at least two senses one that cannot fail, and one that human beings can resist through disobedience. Here's another quote for him. God does not reveal his secret or hidden purposes. What he does reveal is that kind of life or character that pleases him. Thus, we see already that there are different meanings attached to the word will. In the Bible, one is of that sovereign or efficacious will of God. This will is beyond anything we can fully know on earth. Indeed, it provides the origin of all things and orders them. God's will is absolute. It is unlimited. It is determined only by God Himself. God does not need to consult anyone in formulating his plans, and he does not need help from anyone in carrying them out. God's will is independent. It is fixed. It does not need to adapt to changing circumstances. It is omnipotent. This is the sense in John chapter six, verse forty, in which Jesus says This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. That quote comes from Boyce's book Foundations of the Christian Faith a Comprehensive and Readable Theology. Well, I don't know how readable that was, but that was a good definition, right? Maybe a little bit confusing, a little wordy, kinda like me. Perhaps shorter would be better. AW Pink summarizes this petition we're considering right now and the will of God quite nicely in his book The Lord's Prayer. Broadly speaking, there are two parts to this petition one, a request for the spirit of obedience, and two, a statement of the manner in which obedience is to be rendered. If you're paying attention to the quotes I just gave, notice that while AW Pink and James Boyce use some different terminology, such as God's sovereign or efficacious will, they both claim that there is a knowable will of God and a secret will of God. One can be known and resisted, the other cannot be known and cannot be resisted. Here in the Lord's Prayer we are being instructed to pray concerning God's revealed will. His knowable will. We are praying primarily that God help us obey God's revealed will, and His will is revealed in the Scriptures, Jesus His Son, and by the work of the Holy Spirit within believers. It wouldn't make much sense to pray that God's secret, unknowable, and irresistible will be done, since it'll happen no matter what we say or do. Instead, we want to concern ourselves with the will of God that can be denied or disobeyed. So when we pray thy will be done, we are praying that His revealed will be obeyed. And since we're making that prayer ourselves, we're simultaneously saying, God, help me obey your revealed will. When we pray thy will be done, we're not praying about God's hidden decrees. Jesus is telling us to pray to our honorable and glorious and wise Heavenly Father and ask Him to help us obey Him. We know and He knows that we know what we should or shouldn't do, because He's already revealed it. And this is true even in places where there is no Bible.

God’s Law Written On Hearts

Speaker 16:05

There are no scriptures to look at and to read the words, to read the commandments. God's laws still speak to our conscience and our hearts about what's right and wrong. I like how Romans chapter two verses twelve through sixteen puts things in no uncertain terms for us. God has revealed His will to all of us, and we can't say that we didn't know, at least on some level. Listen to what it says. For all who have sinned without the law, without the Scriptures will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. So far I hope this makes sense. Again, when it talks about the law, that's kind of like a catch-all phrase for like basically Old Testaments. It can refer to more specific things, but whenever you hear people like Paul or Timothy or any of the New Testament writers talking about the law, they're usually referring to writings of the Old Testament. So what that scripture is saying is even if you don't have the words, you don't have the commandments in front of you saying thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not murder, whatever the commandment might be. What it's saying is everyone is basically without excuse because God's put his laws on your hearts and in your minds. So like we get a sense of right and wrong within ourselves. And we can kind of we can ignore that and we can, you know, we can justify, we can rationalize like why it's not bad or how it's not bad. But what this says is that God's will in terms of like morality has been in some way communicated to us, and we have a degree of responsibility to that law. We have to respond to it in some sort of way. So just know that anytime it's talking about, if you see somewhere in the New Testament it's referring to the law, it's sort of a Christian-used term that just means any of the scriptures that was written before, any any time that God has revealed his will in the past, either through a prophet, and then that was written down, or through some act of the Spirit, something to that effect, maybe an angelic experience, God reveals his will. You just know that we we have a responsibility to respond to whatever degree of revelation we have. But here in this prayer, in this petition, we're not praying to discover what God's secret will is. We're not praying to know and to obey his unknowable will, his undeniable will, one that even if we wanted to disobey, we couldn't disobey. Jesus is saying, No, I want you to pray for the revealed will. After all, how can God expect us to obey his will if he's never expressed it to us in some way? We're asking him to help us obey what he's already revealed to us. So I feel like that's a lot that's I feel like that's a lot more fair for God to be like, look, I already told you what I want you to do, and now what he's asking us to do is ask him for help to obey the things that he's already told us to do. So it's not an it's not a knowledge issue. It's an issue of desire and the weakness of our will. But as we make this prayer, it's at the same time a plea for help, and it's a confession of our impure desires and also our weakness in resisting those desires, the things that we know are wrong. For some of you hearing this, you might immediately think, Oh yes, the typical we're all so wicked and shameful spiel of the church. Yeah, I get it. They want me to self-debase and feel bad about myself. Yeah, yeah, okay, yes, w we are wicked and shameful, but that's not the point here. Zoom out with me and just think about this. Jesus is telling us to pray this to God the Father, the same God who loves you and knows you, who created the universe and everything in it, to ask him for help in obeying him. Why would Jesus tell his disciples and therefore us to pray like this? What does that imply? It implies that he knows you're going to fail at some point. He knows that you're going to sin. He knows you're going to disobey his revealed will. He knows that there'll even be times where you don't even want to obey his will. And that's something that leads us into a common area of struggle for many Christians,

Asking For Help When You Feel Ashamed

Speaker 21:20

where they feel reluctant or too ashamed to ask the Heavenly Father for help. As a matter of fact, that kind of segues and brings us into the second idea I said we discussed in this episode. We need God's help not only to obey his revealed will, but we need his help even to desire to do his will. Maybe right now you're in a place spiritually where you realize that you don't even have the desire to do God's will, let alone the ability to obey him. If that's you, I feel for you, and I I've been there, I actually was recently in that kind of position. Position, but rather than letting your inability or lack of desire to follow God crush you, praying a prayer like this should encourage you actually. If God expected us to follow His revealed will without His help, every time we prayed something like this, it would be a crushing reminder of our wickedness and our shamefulness. It would be like saying, Your will should be done, but I know I won't do it or I can't do it, so I'm bad, I'm a bad person. If we stop there, it ends in shame and guilt. But what God's really saying here is like, yeah, you can't do my will on your own, or even consistently desire to do my will, so ask me for help. I want you to ask for my help. And obviously, we're supposed to ask for his help in humility and respect, you know, appropriate respect for our Father. And he says, I will help you. I don't think Jesus would tell us to ask for the Father's help if he wasn't going to help us or if he wasn't willing to. When we don't keep asking God, and that's the key, when we don't keep asking God for help to do the things we know he wants us to do, sinning just becomes easier and routine, and you don't even feel anything from you, kind of become numb after a while. And eventually we start feeling like we can't even ask God for help because we feel so ashamed. But what God is saying to us through this is that if you have faith in Jesus, he is your brother, and I'm your father. And I will always help my children when they humbly ask me. I really believe that we should be encouraged by God's willingness to help despite our failures and our weakness and even our lack of desire. He's ready to help. We need to understand that we won't naturally desire to do God's will all or even most of the time, and that God wants us to ask for His help. I had to repeat that several times because I feel like a lot of people think I've messed up too many times, God's mad at me, uh, he doesn't talk too many more, and he doesn't want to help me. He wants like I put myself in this position, and basically I made my bed, now I have to lay in it, kind of thing. I had to repeat it many times because God really wants us to know that He is both willing and able to help us. He just wants us to keep asking Him for help. He wants us to be dependent on Him, and we'll come back to that. But remember, first and foremost, that this is a petition. I'm gonna draw you out of that. I just want to kind of go into that like a little bit of a personal note. Like if you find yourself in that position where you feel like you've been maybe disobeying God for a long time, maybe you feel like sinning, like you become numb to sin, or you feel just so distant or too ashamed to ask God for help, realize that God wants you to ask Him for help despite how you feel, that He's available to help you despite all that. And so I hope that's encouraging. But let's come back to back to back to our study here. I want you to zone in back on the fact that this is a petition. We're asking God to align our desires and wills with God's, which is something that even if you could argue we have the authority to do, I think both experience and scripture shows us we lack the power to do for ourselves. If you remember the quote from A.W. Pink I shared with you a few moments ago about this petition, you'll recall that we're asking God to create a spirit of obedience within us, as well as stating in what way we wish our obedience to be expressed. We're not just asking God to make us obedient to his word like some sort of robot or a slave or something, but obedient here on earth in the same way angels and the heavenly host are obedient in heaven. We will cover that aspect in the third and final episode on this phrase of the Lord's Prayer. So, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll say it one last time. We can't obey God's revealed will without his help. And what's even better about the reality of that is that God is eager to give us that

Flesh And Enemy Resist Dependence

Speaker 26:45

help. What a relief that actually is. Because as long as we pray for his help, we should be good, right? Well, I wish. You know, it probably would be all good. You know, if God just told us, hey, you're having you're having struggles obeying me, well prayed pray that I like I help you. And then there's no more issues after that, right? Oh man, I wish. Well, we we've just got two things working against us the desires of the flesh and the enemy. But to be honest, if dependence on God is central to this prayer, if that's the point of this prayer, is dependence on God, then it shouldn't surprise us that both our flesh and the enemy resist it. In a way, it's because we struggle against sinful desires and because we have an enemy who tempts us into all kinds of destruction, that we need to pray this petition often. God knows we will need his help to do his will because of these things and tells us to ask him for it. You ever notice that? It's Jesus, who is God, telling us to pray to God the Father for help to do the things that we know we should do and maybe don't desire to do. But he also knows that we're going to struggle on account of our own like sinful fleshly desires that are contrary to God's will. And at the same time, we also have a spiritual enemy who tempts us into doing things that are wrong. Um and so God says, pray to me, ask me for help because I know what you're up against. I know what you're gonna be dealing with, I know what's gonna be difficult for you. This is going to be beyond you. So I want you to ask me for help and I want you to ask me often. I want you to trust that I'm your father, that I love you, and that my help isn't conditional, that I will I will help you when you ask. So think about that, you know, because God knows we will need his help because of all these things, and he tells us to ask him for that help. So I know I repeated myself a lot, but I feel like sometimes when people hear things like God wants to help you, or God loves you, or God really cares about you, it can go in one ear and out the other so quickly that it doesn't register. And unless you slow down and maybe say it out loud to yourself, God wants to help me. God knows what I'm struggling with, God understands how difficult this is, and He's compassionate and loves me and is and is going to help me. Maybe say those kinds of things out loud because you can hear it a million times, but until you start to kind of own it and believe it and trust in it, it can be really difficult to have a different experience, first of all, but also to feel any differently. Because it's one thing to say, you know, God loves people, but when you make it into like a personal thing where he's like willing to help you, he loves you, he cares about you. A lot of people seem to shy away from that, myself included. So if you find yourself in that place, just know that it's genuine. God wouldn't tell you to pray to him, to ask him for help, to obey him, if he wasn't serious about helping you. And he doesn't have, he's he's not out to shame you, he's not out to like scold you before he's gonna help you. If you ask for his help and you ask for it often, and you have a spirit of like, I want to be obedient to him, there's a lot of life in that. There's a lot of change that can happen from it. And so I just I just want to press that home. That if you're in that position where you don't feel like these things are true for you, you think that it's true for somebody else, but not for you, put that to the test. Pray and and and repeatedly ask God for help for the things that you know he wants you to do, or help in doing things and not doing the things that you know he doesn't want you to do. But anyway, I just want to say that because it's so hard for so many people, myself included. So if you're there, pray anyway. And if you need help, let me know. I will pray for you or with you or whatever you need. Um with that being said, uh, we should probably close out this episode, because it went longer than I expected.

Closing Encouragement And Final Prayer

Speaker 31:05

Next time we'll take a look at how the enemy and how our fleshly desires can work to keep us from depending on God to do his will and even discourage us from prayer altogether. I'll pray us out. Dear Father, I hope that what I taught today was clear and that people are starting to see how generous you are and how compassionate and understanding you are, that you understood from the beginning just how difficult all this would be, that there'll be times where where we can't seem to obey you, or where like sin becomes routine or like a numb practice, and where obeying you becomes so impossible, and where we become so ashamed of ourselves that we don't feel like we have the right, or that we we ought to even ask you for help, but Lord, I know the reality. The reality is you want to help us, that you want us to trust you and to depend on you. And so, God, I just ask that for everyone who has struggled to do that up to this point, that when they make this prayer, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, that they are volunteering themselves to be helped by you. They can be part of how your name is hallowed in this world, a part of how the gospel is shared, how the kingdom of God has grown, how the Holy Spirit um begins to live in one person and in the next and the next and teaches people and conforms this into the image of Jesus. Lord, I just thank you for everything that you've given in this episode, uh, everything you've given me to teach. And I just ask that this hits home for people, that they're able to maybe for the first time see you as a heavenly father who's not with his arms crossed in heaven, scowling and angry, but open arms and wanting to help, especially if we're really troubled by the fact that we can't obey you. So, God, I ask that people are able to depend on you in a very real way, and that they're able to see you working in their day-to-day life, helping them to obey your revealed will. We love you, Jesus, and we pray all these things in your mighty name. Amen.