This month, I want to spend a little time visiting with you about the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer: "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

I’ve often thought that it would be interesting to stop several people after Sunday-morning worship and ask, "What did you mean when in the Lord’s Prayer you said the words of the Third Petition? What were you asking God to do here?"

You might want to pause for just a moment and ask yourself that same question.

If you were to take our synodical Catechism and turn to the Third Petition, you would find the Catechism focusing on two different "wills," each very much in opposition to the other. One is the will of God. The other is the will of what is sometimes called the "Unholy Three."

If you were to ask yourself, "What is God’s will for me?," I have a suspicion several kinds of answers would surface.

God’s ultimate will is that I come to faith in Jesus Christ, remain in the faith and be saved. One thinks of the passage in 1 Timothy where we are told that God would have all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. So that would certainly be our number-one answer.

There would also be other answers. Without a doubt, it is also God’s will that we who have come to faith in Jesus Christ lead a holy and God-pleasing life, showing forth in our lives that saving faith found in our hearts. Another answer we could certainly list is that we who have come to know Christ as Savior would share this good news with the world around us. Still another would be that we might someday be with our Lord and all true believers forever in life everlasting. All this is included in God’s will for you and for me.

But having said this, the Catechism goes on to say that fighting against this good and gracious will of God is. . . the Unholy Three. They are the devil, the world and our own sinful flesh. No matter in what sequence you list these three, they have but one goal: to lead us away from Christ. To state it in a slightly different manner, it is to destroy that saving faith that has been worked in our hearts in Jesus Christ and carry us into everlasting death in hell, forever to be separated from our Lord.

Who of us could not find one example after another in our own lives, and also in the lives of others, where we see this will of the Unholy Three rearing its ugly head and too often being victorious?

Consequently, when in this petition we pray, "Thy will be done," we are asking our heavenly Father that in His goodness and mercy He would daily cause His holy will to be done in our lives; even as we know that His holy will is always — always — done in heaven.

Now that does not mean that we expect God to somehow change this wicked world and suddenly make it a heaven on earth. But this we do humbly pray here: "God, through the power of your holy Spirit at work in Word and Sacrament, both in our lives and in the lives of others, cause Your holy will to be done here on earth in my own life and that of my loved ones, even as Your holy will is always done in heaven. For this, God, we also pray."

There is yet one more dimension to this that repeatedly tends to surface in my own prayer life whenever I pray these words. It is that which I am here praying for in my own life and certainly in the lives of my family. This! would likewise ask God to bring about in the lives of others all around the world. That is what I like to call the "extended global effect" of the Lord’s Prayer.

Included in this picture are, of course, my fellow believers in the congregation where Jean and! belong. But it is not limited to that. Rapidly, the picture continues to expand to include the members of our entire Synod, to all Christians, even the world at large. Here also we pray: "Thy will be done here on earth, even as it is in heaven."

As many of you already know, earlier this year! was asked by our Synod to make an extended trip into Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltic states. The purpose was basically to establish friendship ties between ourselves and fellow Lutherans, even fellow Christians, in this section of the world. I need to tell you that as I traveled, I again and again found myself turning to God to thank Him that at long last — after many years during which the will of unholy atheistic leaders had seemed to prevail — His saving will was now prevailing in the lives of so many all across these lands. As I talked with men and women who were finally able to return to their churches, hear God’s Word, and even confirm their faith in Christ, I could not help but think of these words: "Thy will be done."

I visited with young people who had been raised on a solid diet of atheistic communism, only now to see them turning in goodly numbers to Christ. Again,! could not help but hear the words, "Thy will be done."

I talked to church leaders, who for years had been in prison for their faith; with young couples who could now, unencumbered by fear, bring their children to Christ in Baptism. The list could go on and on. As all this happened repeatedly, I heard in my mind, in an ever increasing crescendo, the words, "Thy will be done."

Yes, Lord, Thy will be done!

Thy will be done, Oh God, in our lives, as well as in the lives of others all around this world, and that even as Your holy will is always done in heaven. For this also, Oh God, we daily pray.

God bless!

A.L. Barry

Jude 24-25