How do you approach God as your Father with requests? The Lord’s prayer gives us the model to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

As Christians we all want to pray with fervency, boldness and belief. Some of this starts in the heart, whether we trust the Father’s love for us. If you were to say to your earthly father, “Dad, I know you love me and want to help me with anything that life may throw at me, but I’m not sure you are able to help me.” That would be sad, but understandable under certain circumstances. We could however balance that in our minds, knowing the limits of our earthly father.

On the other hand if you were to say, “Dad I know you can do this and have influence in my situation but I’m not positive you will because your love is so allusive and unsure.” This situation represents a far worse scenario since actual love is in question.
God Himself had to explain this in Scripture.

Look at Luke 5:12-13
While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.[a] When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.
Here the leper begs Jesus with the words “if you are willing.” Why is it that we wonder whether God our Father is willing? He is a good Father. It was not His will for Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit and bring sin into the world, yet it happened. He did not want His creation to have to suffer the eternal consequences of sin (which would be forever separation from God) so He sent Jesus to bridge that gap.

God is willing. The factors at play have more to do with the fallen state of the world and the evils that we are wrestling against. Sometimes there is a supernatural, divine intervention, and sometimes we have to live with knowing the battle is not over yet. We know the final outcome, that God will win. But in the present moment sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.

Perhaps it has more to do with focus. Are we focused on wondering whether He is willing, looking for certain outcomes and struggling with unbelief? Or are we focused on the promises? Like the promise of Jeremiah 29:13 “Seek me and you will find me, I will show you great and unsearchable things when you seek me with all your heart.”
How much of our prayers or lack there of is because we aren’t truly convinced that God is willing? This is not a question for me to answer for you, but one for you to bring to the Father Himself and wrestle with.

Father, sometimes I struggle to believe whether it is Your will to answer my prayers. Open my heart to understand how you taught us to pray, to believe and understand what it means to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

This article I wrote based off some notes from CRM late founder Walter Irwin.

Naomi
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