THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE - TOTAL SURRENDER TO GOD

DAY TWO TALK ONE

BR. FRITZ MASCARENHAS

One of the most difficult truths to live out each day is total surrender to the will of God and yet it is the most effective way to combat anxiety and stress. Anxiety is not only a sin but it indicates a distinct lack of faith in God. 

Three simple prayers recited daily from our heart will guarantee our spiritual growth. Baptism immerses us in the life of the Trinity. When we allow God to be God in our life we will discover that all He desires for us is perfect happiness and this is possible only in the total surrender of our lives to His will. 

The first prayer we must pray daily over and over again is the prayer that Jesus taught us. "Father, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done." As a child of God, we must desire to perfect God's will in our life. As His children, God has an amazing plan for our life and therefore we must pray that plan may be realized. My highest good and my salvation depend on embracing the will of the Father in every area of my life.

The second prayer is to say to Jesus daily, "My Lord and my God." In John 10:27 Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice and I know them; they follow me." Four voices come to us daily – the three that will lead us astray are the world the flesh the devil but the voice that will lead us to life is the voice of Jesus. We must pray every day to be able to recognize the voice of Jesus and follow Him. "My Lord and my God teach me to hear Your voice so I may follow You all the days of my life."

The Holy Spirit makes it possible to surrender to God's will. The angel Gabriel told Mary that she would conceive through the Holy Spirit and her response was, "May it be done unto me according to Your Word." Surrender to God's will involves a firm belief that with God all things are possible. Rom 8:14 says,"All those who walk in the Spirit of God are sons and daughters of God." God is not pushy, He respects our free will, only when we consciously yield our will to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will God take over our lives. 

The Father's will is always for good, our will is concentrated on self-preservation. When we say this prayer, we must not think of what the plan may be, rather we just pray for the Father's kingdom and will to be realized in our life. Our highest good is to will God's Kingdom to come. We have two choices in life one is to live in the Father's house and the second is to be abandoned in the far off country, there is no in between. 

Jesus is our Model. Through the grace of baptism and until we die the work of God is to conform us to the image of His Son, to be Christ-like, to be like Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of Truth, He is the greatest Teacher, He will instruct us, lead us and guide us in to the Way, the Truth and the Life which is Jesus Christ. 

There are two aspects that were crucial in the life of Jesus one was His perfect, absolute surrender to the Father's will. In John 4:6 we read about Jesus being seated at the well, He is tired, hungry and thirsty. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water from the well at noon and Jesus dialogues with her. He reveals to her that He is the Messiah, she is excited and runs to the village to announce the good news to the village, in the meantime the disciples return with the food and they insist that He eats since they know he is hungry. He says to them, John 4:31 " I have had food of which you know nothing about." And in verse 34 He says, "My food is to do the will of the One who sent me and to carry out his work." As Christians, we ought to be the most satisfied people on earth and yet our souls know neither peace nor rest because we have not surrendered to the will of the Father. 

In Matthew 6:24 Jesus tells us that we cannot serve two Masters either we either hate one and love the other, or be loyal to one and despise the other. We cannot fool ourselves into believing that we can serve both God and money same time - who will we bow down to? Until and unless we experience the love of God and entrust our life in His hands and surrender to His will, only then will we be truly happy. The harvest is ready but there are very few who are willing to labor in it. We have received a divine mandate to go out to the nations and preach the Good News. We should have a great burden for souls because we know that no man can come to the Father except through Jesus. If we are honest with ourselves, we will see how much more concerned about our children's material wellbeing and show no concern at all or very little for the salvation of their souls. We are doing them a greatest disservice if we are not pointing them to the will of the Father, they will build their houses on sand and they will come crashing down. The happiness and well-being of those we love lies in Jesus alone. 

In John 6:38 Jesus says, "I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the One who sent me."

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus becomes sin. The disobedience of the world is crushing Him and He is struggling and agonizing and in his humanity. He does not want to go the Cross and is struggling to say yes to the Father. Knowing that the salvation of the human race depends on His response to the Father's will, He prays to His Father if the chalice of suffering could be taken away but He immediately qualifies that prayer by saying, "Yet, not my will but Thine be done." The angel of the Lord then comes to Him and strengthens Him and from that moment on we see Jesus embracing the will of the Father completely. 

The most powerful prayer, the most all-embracing prayer, the most divinizing prayer a creature can ever pray to God is, "Let thy Kingdom come, let thy will be done." The battle over our wills was won in the Garden when Jesus surrenders His will to the Father. Once He accepts the will of the Father He offers His life with great dignity, He is in full control as He offers Himself on the Cross as a Sacrifice to His Father. The sole purpose of the Cross was so we could experience the love of the Father. Jesus by His Incarnation, life, passion, death and resurrection has saved us from our selfish, self-seeking, self-centered, self-indulgent, self-pleasing will in order to enable us to seek the will of our Father. 

Charismatic Christians in the must remember these verses from Matthew 7:21-23 "Not everyone who says to me: Lord! Lord! will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my heavenly Father. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not speak in your name? Did we not cast out devils and perform many miracles in your name?” Then I will tell them openly: I have never known you; away from me, you evil people!"

Here are some tough questions we should ask ourselves.

What is our prayer time like? What are we looking to God for? Do we enjoy the time spent with Jesus in prayer? Do we grow more and more in love with God? Do we seek Him and are we growing in friendship with Him? Do we prefer to run around in Ministry rather than spend time alone with God seeking to know His will for our life? Are we looking for union with Jesus? Are we willing to forgive? Are we in a right relationship or are we in a strained relationship? Do we justify our sins before God? We must live in absolute surrender to the Father's will and live in total dependence on God. 

In John 5:30-31 Jesus said, "I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me." Is the Spirit of God working out God's will in our life? Have we abandoned our life to Divine Providence? Do we look to as the source of our daily bread and our sole provider? Our dependence must be on God alone and not on our external circumstances. Our daily bread comes from the Father and we must trust Him to provide for all our needs. We will collapse completely if we rely on anything other than God and we will be crushed and disappointed when it fails us.

The early Church understood the importance of surrendering to the will of the Father. In Romans 12:1-11 St. Paul says gives us a doctrinal understanding of faith. He tells us that we exist only because of the mercy of God. God has given us the freedom to say yes to Him or to reject Him. Jesus died and offered His life as an atoning sacrifice for us, we must recognize and acknowledge the cost God paid to bring us back to Himself. In the light of this sacrifice, St. Paul tells us that we must present ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. What is this living sacrifice all about? It is getting to know the Father's will and being conformed to it. The world, our will, our values, our actions and our reactions must all be transformed, conformed and aligned to the will of God. 

In Ephesians 5:14 St. Paul urges us to, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead that the light of Christ may shine on you.”

Those of us who are sleeping, are lethargic, who take God's will for granted we must awake from our slumber. He says in verse 15, "Pay attention to how you behave. Do not live as the unwise do, but as responsible persons." We must check our lifestyle and see how much time is wasted. We cannot grow in our faith if we spend time on secular pursuits. Our happiness is directly proportionate to our relationship to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We cannot walk with Jesus if we are conformed to the world. We live in a frightening world and our children are growing up in this environment. We have to be vigilant if we want to give our children a powerful witness by the lives we lead as parents. 

What hardships are we willing to embrace in order to do the will of God and save souls? When we struggle to surrender to God's will let us remember that in the Father's house there is music, fellowship, the fatted calf, a banquet, but away from Him all we receive is the food of swine, abandonment, rejection, desertion, suffering hunger and thirst. We have a distorted image of God that is why we fear Him. When we are familiar with Scripture we can have a clear picture of who God is. 

Our life comes from God. He is our Good Shepherd; our joy comes from remaining close to the Shepherd and following His will for our lives. When we surrender wholeheartedly to the will of God, we will discover that even when we struggle to say yes to Him but are prepared to gladly embrace His will for our lives, He will change our reluctant heart and enable us to say an excited yes to His will. He can do the impossible and change and transform our hearts when we take are burdens and difficulties to Him in prayer and genuinely seek to obey His will. 

We can either give way to fear and be unhappy or we can give our fears to Jesus and receive His peace. We can only be happy if we are where God wants us to be.

The more we pray for God's kingdom to come and His will to be done, our own selfish will becomes conformed and aligned to the will of God then when God asks anything of us we will readily say yes to Him. Initially when we begin to say this prayer a fear must rise as we realize that we will have to give up something, this is good since this fear is like a mountain that holds us back, it cripples us. Keeping the fear in mind and as we persist in prayer we will find that slowly but surely God will remove this mountain of fear layer by layer until it is completely demolished. He will change our heart from one of no to one of yes and as we persist in prayer. As the Prophet Zechariah 4:6-7 ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. “What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground." This is when in that prayer the Father will become Daddy to us and He embrace us as His children. Jesus will be our Savior and Good Shepherd and He will lead us. We can claim all the blessings of Psalm 23. The Holy Spirit will guide us and lead us, we will have divine appointments, and great things will happen in our lives for the glory of God.