Prayer and the Will of the Father
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Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Tuesday March 10, 2020
www.wenstrom.org
Prayer Series: Prayer and the Will of the Father
Lesson # 6
A productive prayer life is based upon praying according to the will of the Father.
Prayer is asking for what the Father wants and not what we want.
1 John 5:14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know without a doubt that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know without a doubt that we have the requests, which we have asked from Him. (NASB95)
The will of God, in common usage, refers to what God desires of an individual or group in a particular situation.
Answered prayer is based upon cognizance of the will of God (1 John 5:14); unanswered prayer is a result of ignorance or disobedience to the will of God.
God—in eternity past—decreed that angels and human beings would have volition and be allowed to make decisions contrary to His sovereign will and justice.
The divine decrees are the eternal plans by which God renders certain all the events of the universe, including both angelic and human history—past, present, and future.
The decree of God is the chosen and adopted plan of all God’s works.
It is His eternal purpose, according to His will; whereby, for His own glory, He foreordains whatever comes to pass.
It is the sovereign choice of His divine will and His omniscience, by which all things are brought into being and controlled, made subject to His pleasure, and made to produce His glorification.
Thus, the divine decrees originated with God, long before any creature of any kind existed, and are objectively designed for His own glory and pleasure.
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. 29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren. (NASB95)
If the will of God for our lives is to become like Christ, and it is, then our prayers should be directed toward this specific objective as well.
This is illustrated by the prayers of the apostle Paul recorded in his epistles.
Ephesians 1:15 For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints,16 do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. (NASB95)
“Knowledge” is the noun epignosis and, in the context of Ephesians 1:17, refers to an “experiential knowledge” of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To experience means, “to personally encounter, observe, or undergo something through a process.”
Thus, Paul prayed that the Ephesian believers personally encounter the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Holy Spirit reveals Him in the pages of Scripture, through the process of experiential sanctification and fellowship with God.
To experience also means, “to have knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone.”
Thus, Paul’s prayer also requested that the Ephesian believers acquire knowledge or practical wisdom from observing and encountering the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Holy Spirit reveals Him in the Word of God.
Experience implies being affected by what or whom one meets.
Therefore, Paul prayed that the Ephesians be affected by the Holy Spirit’s revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in the pages of Scripture.
Being affected by the Holy Spirit should have motivated the Ephesians to conform to the image of Christ, and thus fulfill the Father’s will for their lives.
We fulfill the Father’s will by attaining Christ-likeness experientially.
This occurs when we are affected by the Spirit’s revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Word of God, and it changes our lives by shaping our character to the image of Christ (Ephesians 1:18-21; 3:14-19).
True prayer is not asking God for what we want, but for what He wills.
This attitude is illustrated in our Lord’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The Father’s will was for the Lord Jesus Christ to voluntarily die and be judged for the sins of the entire world.
This meant that our Lord’s human nature would lose fellowship with the Father during those last three hours on the cross.
This loss of fellowship, although temporary, was abhorrent to our Lord because it separated Him from His Father.
Yet, our Lord obediently and voluntarily executed His Father’s will (Matthew 10:37-39).
John 4:34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” (NASB95)
The answer to our Lord’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane was not what His human nature craved; nevertheless, through prayers and tears, He chose His Father’s will, and it proved to be good, pleasing, and perfect.
Luke 22:41 He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” (NASB95)
The will of God manifested itself to the humanity of Christ while He intensely prayed in the garden.
Discovering the Father’s will, through prayer, is not always easy; in fact, the truth is often difficult to bear.
Christ’s experience in the Garden of Gethsemane teaches us that prayer is not necessarily ignored when it is not answered exactly as we would wish.
Hebrews 5:7 records that our Lord’s prayers, indeed, were answered.
In our own experiences, often times it is only through tears and heartbreak that we reach a place where we can declare with all our hearts, “Yet, not as I will, but as You will” (Mat 26:39).
God the Father wants to conform us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we might adopt our Lord’s attitude towards implementing the Father’s will—no matter how uncomfortable that may be for us (Hebrews 10:5-7).
The great purpose of redemption is to allow us the freedom to accomplish the will of God, and not to be in bondage to the power of sin.
In His life on earth, Christ demonstrated what it means to live only for the will of God.
Through His death and resurrection, Christ won for us the power to live according to the will of God.
In Gethsemane, the Lord’s sacrifice, made of His own will, reached its height; what took place was a perfect expression of obedience to His Father’s will.
The fact that mankind has a freewill, which is capable of disobeying God, is not sin.
It becomes sin when man remains independent from God’s plan and clings to his own will, when it is contrary to the will of the Creator.
As a human being, the Lord Jesus had a human will and all the natural, though not sinful, desires that belong to a human nature.
In His humanity, Christ was deprived of knowing beforehand what the will of God was.
He had to be patient and be taught by God.
Nonetheless, when He began to recognize the will of His Father, He was prepared to give up His own human will and accomplish the Father’s plan.
Therefore, the Lord’s obedience constituted the perfection and value of His self-sacrifice.
He, once and for all, surrendered Himself as a man to live only in and for the will of God (John 12:27-28).