Have you ever
driven yourselves crazy asking what is the Trinity’s will for me.
What does God want me to do with the life he gave me? Did you walk
away a bit disillusioned with no clear distinct answer? Or at some
point, as is the case with most ministers, did you settle into the
notion that you are definitely called to a specific task that's going
to take considerable preparation and therefore set out on that
journey? Or did you just figure you would do what you want, be a
good person, a good citizen of a Christian nation, and do good and
not trouble yourself with the will of a God who's not involved in our
lives until we're standing before him on judgement day?
God’s
will—what is it? That is a big question and I would just as soon
answer it with I haven’t got a clue. There have been times when I
thought I knew what the Trinity’s will for me was. I was where I
was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing, things
were going good and then out of left field comes a zinger that
changes everything. I find that the topic of God’s will gets
highly speculative when we deal with it as some sort of specific
step-by-step plan that God has for our lives that if we figure it out
and follow it we will have a most wonderful life. I am a bit
suspicious of that way of looking at the Trinity's will mostly
because it sounds more like ancient pagan notions of fate rather than
anything biblical. If we take the Bible in its entirety we find that
God does have a grand scheme plan for history that includes my life
that ultimately ends with our becoming like Christ Jesus, united to
him by his incarnation and by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit we
share in his relationship wit the Father. The specific step-by-steps
of that plan are not for us to know though we can and do get hunches
of it from time to time. But, what is most important for us is that
we be God’s people, we be the children of God who reflect his image
in the creation. Therefore, the Trinity's will is more about who we
are and how we live than about specifics that have to happen. We are
Christ’s disciples, beloved children of the Father as he is, and it
is the Trinity's will that we increasing grow up into him.
Let
me say a little more about this, the Trinity does have a specific
plan for history. It is that the Good News of Salvation in Christ is
to go out into all the world until the Father calls things to an end
with Jesus' return, and then the resurrection of the dead, the final
judgement, and God’s establishing his kingdom where we serve and
worship God in eternal bliss. Within that plan the Trinity calls
people to specific tasks and these people seem to have no doubt as to
their calling. The called ones are who we are. We bear the task of
proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ and living under his
commandment to love one another so that we in our life together are
living proof of what is to come.
Our
individual tasks in this calling are varied yet there is one calling,
one invitation, common to us all and it is that we all know salvation
in Jesus Christ, that we all come to know and share in the steadfast
love and faithfulness of God the Father as Jesus the Son himself does
in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is an actuality in
our lives now due to Jesus' presence in our lives changing us,
healing us, transforming us through the work of the Holy Spirit from
the sin and death of our broken humanity to be more and more like
him. Salvation is that in Jesus Christ God did, is, and will
reconcile the world to himself and has made it possible for us to
have an intimate and being-changing relationship with God the Father
through Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit. The Trinity’s will for
us each and us together is that we all be saved, that we all be in
this transforming relationship with him. Salvation essentially is
that the Trinity in through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the
Holy Spirit has brought us into himself, into this new form of human
being the Bible calls “in Christ” and is transforming us to
become the image of Christ in living union with him.
Therefore,
I conclude, that ultimately the Trinity’s will is that we all
become like Christ Jesus, which is that we be humans who are indwelt
by God partaking of his nature. It is our task, our calling, to let
that happen. The Trinity’s will is that we become like Jesus
Christ. St. Athanasius of Alexandria the key theologian behind the
Nicene Creed said, “He became what we are so that he might make us
what he is.” St. Irenaeus of Lyons the dominant theologian of the
3rd
Century in his work “Against Heresies” wrote: “our Lord Jesus
Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are,
that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” John Calvin
also gets in on this line of thinking writing; “This
is the wondrous exchange made by his boundless goodness. Having
become with us the Son of Man, he has made us with himself sons of
God.”
Having set
that stage I must go on to say that when we are talking about the
Trinity’s will and how it applies to our lives we are really
talking about a struggle of wills—the Trinity’s will with our
own. To be like Jesus is to have two wills—the will of the Trinity
and a human will. Jesus kept his fallen human will fully in line
with the will of the Father and that is our goal. There is one
problem though, our wills are corrupted, bent by sin to be
self-oriented rather than God-oriented. The problem is complicated
by the harsh reality that there is nothing that we can do to change
our wills outside of praying. Indeed, Jesus himself prayed
ceaselessly. Prayer is the one thing necessary that we do in the
pursuit of knowing and living the Trinity's will for us. In prayer
is where our human spirit and will unite with the Holy Spirit so that
the Trinity’s will for us to become the image of Christ can be done
here on earth as it is in heaven. God’s will for each
of us is that we be united with Christ so that we can become like
Christ and prayer is the primary setting where this happens. It is
when we are in prayer, sitting at Jesus’ feet in the presence of
the Holy Spirit that God’s kingdom begins to come.
Now, if prayer
is the place where the Trinity works most powerfully in us, then the
prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray is of utmost
importance. The purpose of the Lord’s Prayer as best as I can
determine it is to make us like Christ. Praying the Lord’s Prayer
continually from the heart opens us up so that the transforming power
of God in the Holy Spirit can work mightily in us---mightily!
Praying the Lord’s Prayer will help us to know God as Jesus does,
as loving Father. Being in that relationship is where we are saved.
Praying this Prayer will open us up to God’s kingdom coming into us
now and God’s will being worked in and through us. To ask for our
daily bread is to increase our faith in God’s provision for our
needs and make us less reliant on material things and our own
sufficiency. To ask God to forgive our debts as we forgive our
debtors forces us to accept our own sinfulness as well as to bear the
cross of being forgiving. Praying for God not to lead us into times
of trial where we are tempted to deny Christ and rather deliver us
from the evil one makes us aware that God does not tempt us to sin
and when we feel temptation we know to resist it and God will deliver
us from Satan.
The
Trinity calls each of us to be continuously in prayer. Paul says
“Pray without ceasing.” Yet, a constant state of prayer is not
something that we can achieve on our own. It is a gift from the
Trinity that feels like a constant awareness of God’s presence in
our lives. Praying the Lord’s Prayer constantly throughout the day
when our minds would otherwise be occupied by worry and what not is
particularly rewarding. In time we find ourselves changing,
transforming in our goals and desires for life. We find ourselves
hungering and thirsting more for the presence of the Lord in our
lives. We find ourselves “wanting to want to love God” as St.
Teresa of Avila once said. The discipline of prayer actually changes
the way the brain chemically works. It forges new neural pathways.
If you know anything about the brain chemistry of addiction, prayer
is the only way around the “stinking thinking” that feeds
addiction. AA has been telling us that from day one. When Jesus’
disciple’s asked him to teach them how to pray as John the Baptist
taught his disciples they were wanting just this—a disciplined way
of praying that would draw them closer to the Father and change them.
So, Jesus taught them this prayer. Therefore, my friends, pray it.
Pray it ceaselessly and from the heart and you will find yourselves
changed. Amen.
