Devotion - 25 February - Thy Will be Done

A brief prayer is offered that you can add to your daily prayers this week. The scripture is from our Sunday Service Bulletin for today.  Today we continue a Lenten sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. The devotion theme was inspired by Grant Osbourne’s “Commentary on Matthew”, 2010.

When Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.

2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers[a] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

In our New Testament text today, you can see some doubt, even from John the Baptizer, that Jesus’ ministry is not corresponding to the Jewish Messianic expectations. Jesus is sending him a message back that with all these miracles and signs, their Messiah is indeed here. The new Kingdom has come Transitioning now to the Lord’s prayer segment: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.” Makes the claim that the new kingdom is here and that we are children of God. This means that we will be forgiven but says God’s will, not our will, be done. In other words, God’s word as written in the bible should guide us regarding God’s will. God’s will is that we worship, repent, be baptized, confess our sins, and make disciples. There really is quite a bit of Christian responsibility in those brief and simple phrases. The time of Lent is a great opportunity to think about what those phrases can really mean when we say the Lord’s prayer.