Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
Martin Luther told children to get into conversation with God. “He wants to entice us,” the reformer wrote in explaining the address of the prayer that Jesus taught us, to believe “that he is truly our Father and we are truly his children in order that we may ask him boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving Father.” That is sometimes easier said than done.
Our Creator is a God of conversation and community. He enjoyed conversing with Adam and Eve in Eden. When they did not show up for chatting in the evening, he went looking for them. “Where are you?” he called out, the first model of parenting in the history of humankind. Like all other parents, God likes to know where his children are because he loves to be conversing with them. Adam and Eve did not want to talk that evening. Sometimes we do not want to talk with God ourselves. At other times we just do not know what to say, out of embarrassment, out of fear, out of weariness, out of the impression that he is not around anymore anyway and would not really care if he were.
We come with empty hands into his vicinity, nothing to offer to entice him into listening to us. We come with empty heads, just not quite sure how to begin or what we really want to lay on the Lord’s heart. The apostle Paul reminds us that we come to Jesus groaning, with the rest of creation, as part of the harvest of the Holy Spirit, who gives us the words we could not find. He prompts us with the sigh, “Abba,” “Dad,” to begin the exchange (Rom. 5:14-23). Jesus himself gave us words to say when no other words occur. Indeed, he tells us to begin with “Our Father,” and to go on with a plea for the honor of God’s name, the acknowledgement that he is Lord of all.
Luther summed up our longing for God’s identity to be clear among us and for his rule to extend to all corners of his creation with “may your will be done.” He accomplishes that, the reformer explained, by “breaking and hindering every evil scheme and will--as are present in the will of the devil, the world, and our flesh--that would not allow us to hallow God's name and would prevent the coming of his kingdom.” Instead we are pleading with God to give us strength and to maintain our faithfulness to his Word for the rest of our life when we say to him, “your will be done.”
Christ’s people have been repeating these words to him for two millennia. Our fragile whisper joins the whispers and shouts of millions of others from all corners of the earth in turning to Jesus with the words he gave us.
“Jesus” means “the one who saves,” as the angel explained to Joseph (Matt. 1:21), and he is Immanuel, “God with us.” The Greek word Matthew uses to repeat the angel’s Aramaic message means to do more than deliver or liberate, as the title Messiah proclaims. Salvation embraces the health and welfare, spiritual and physical, of those being saved. The angel pointedly said that his salvation delivers us from sin, from our own brokenness, the most dramatic is sullenness in God’s face, our own despair and rebellion. Jesus frees us to place our lives—once lived according to the motto, “I did it my way,” a motto of death—into the will of God. We come in awe-filled silence once he has lifted us from our weariness and wariness about coming into his presence. We wait upon the Spirit to be listening as the whimpering and babbling of the little child wells up out of us. Whether fearful and confused or excited and relieved that we have finally found the Father’s embrace again, we turn to him in trust.
We are confident that he will be faithful to his promise to be our God and let his will finally rule in our lives. The Hebrew stem “amn” which has given us our pledge of faithfulness at the end of our prayers to him, also embraces his fundamental attitude toward us. We can rely on his promise to be our God, to be with us through thick and sin, to make good on the death and resurrection of Jesus by burying our sins in his tomb and raising us up—again and again—to walk in his footsteps, in peace and obedience. That means that what Paul assured us in Romans 8:28 is true and the all-embracing message God gives us in his incarnate Word: that in the end all things will work together for our good—even if some of those things have been evil and nothing else but evil. When we pray “your will be done,” we are praying that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers of any kind, not height nor depth, or anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39).
For as the prophet Jeremiah quoted God (29:11-14), “I know what I have willed for you,” that is, “the plans I have for you, plans for well-being and not evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will restore your fortunes and all the places where I have driven you, and I will bring you back” to the place where you belong.” What can we say to God when he says such things except “Your will be done!”