We often pray ‘thy will be done’, which strikes me as an odd one when we know that God’s will will be done regardless. What, exactly, are we asking for here?
We probably have to think about the kind of will we are talking about here. God’s decretive will is the one that will always happen. Praying for his decretive will to be done is a tautology, because it will be done regardless.
But praying that God’s preceptive and dispositonal will be done, that makes more sense. God’s preceptive will is that which he commands and his dispositional will is that which makes him happy. Whilst his decretive will cannot and will not be frustrated, both his preceptive and dispositional wills may not always be done.
When we pray ‘thy will be done’, it seems to me we aren’t just praying ‘Lord, do what you want’. His decretive will certainly will happen and the Lord needs no invitation from us. Rather, we are praying something closer to, ‘Lord, may your commands be followed and may what pleases you and makes you happy be done both on earth and in heaven’. These are things that are not necessarily going to happen, but that the Lord wants and would be pleased by.
Ultimately, the fulfilment of such a prayer will be realised in glory. When we are made perfect, we will perfectly keep God’s commands and we will do nothing other than what makes him happy. This is in line with the prayer for God’s kingdom to come; the point at which these things will be a full reality. In the meantime, we pray ‘your will be done’ – we want his commands to be kept and what makes him happy to be done – both in our own lives, in the lives of other believers and for non-believers to acknowledge Jesus as Lord so that they, too, obey his precepts and do what makes him happy.
How do you understand the Lord’s Prayer in Gethsemane, ‘not my will but yours be done?’
A plea for grace to strengthen Him to face God’s decreed will with courage and submission?
Sometimes when we pray ‘Your will be done’ that’s what we are asking: That God would help us accept His decreed will with the a Christian graces that please and honour Him. And that the circumstances we face may sanctify and mature us.
I take it he’s saying there is one will in God, so ‘not my human will, but our divine will be done’. I think it is referring to God’s preceptive and dispositional will as understood in the pactum salutis. In other words, my human will is not particularly looking forward to what I know we have planned, but give me the strength and grace to do what we planned in eternity.