CKB on Prayer

CKB on Prayer March 30, 2017

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I think we have given the sentimentalists much too free a reign to ruin
half of our first Christian words and phrases. Think what they have made of love—
something so feeble and sugary that a preacher hesitates to use the word. Think what
they have made of patience—“a little more folding of the hands to rest” (as the Bible
says about something quite different). They have had at this phrase too—“thy will be
done.” Such is the state of things that we begin to think of pious resignation, of folded
hands and blank despair. The phrase as it is commonly used is blasphemy. Some awful
possibility lies before us; we do everything in our power to avert it; we fail, and we
finally say, having exhausted every other possibility, ‘thy will be done.’ To say this implies
at least two horrible presuppositions—first it means that God’s will is a dreadful
thing to be avoided at all costs. And second it means we’ve tried everything we know
to get our own will, and only when all that has failed we say, “Well God, I can’t have
my way. I suppose you better have yours.

No, that is not what our Lord taught us to ask for, to come to God as a last resort,
and say, “alright, have it your own way.” He lived and taught in the spirit of the man
in the Psalms who cried out, “I delight to do thy will, O my God.” He means that you
should say, “I know that what you will is the finest and best thing I can possibly do.
And for that reason, and because I love you, I want to do it. May it be done!” “Thy will
be done” is never a phrase to sit down on, it is a phrase to stand up to. But I have taken
long enough about this.”


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