Volume 45   Number 1                                                                                    September 2002

Tragedy strikes. A loved one is taken from us. Disease wreaks havoc with our bodies and spirits. And the question often rings in our ears: How could God allow this to happen? Or we reduce death to a fatalism as we pine that it was their time to go and God took them away. And our minds are filled with the question: How could this be the Will of God? Often the waiting rooms of hospitals, the mortuary’s chapel and the hearts of men are filled with such questions when we are most in need of His comfort. Questions that require us to better understand the workings of the Will of God. Questions which require thought, lest we begin blaming God for things He did not cause, did not want, and were not His Will.

Jesus, as He instructs His disciple how to pray, includes the phrase that God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). It is important to understand that this is a pleading not an acknowledgment. A pleading that His Will would be done, not an acknowledgment that His Will would inevitably be done. Why would this be such an important component of Christ’s instruction? Why would the disciples be instructed to pray that “God’s Will be done”? Isn’t God’s Will always done? We often confirm this thought with such phrases as: “If it’s God’s Will, it will happen” or “Since it happened, it must have been God’s Will”.

Jesus’ inclusion of this request, that God’s Will be done, should, however, give us an insight often missed as it regards God’s Will on earth and in our lives. The answer to the question of “Is God’s Will Always Done?” rests in whether by “Will” we mean actions or processes.

In the area of actions, God’s Will is simply not always done. In fact, God’s Will is usually not done. Now when I assert this, I am not challenging the power nor the sovereignty of our Almighty God. His power is absolute. In fact, I believe that in realizing that His Will is not always done, rather than challenging God’s sovereign power, His power and sovereignty is validated! For only an all-powerful God would have the power, only an all-wise God would have the wisdom, and only a supremely confident God would have the assuredness to allow man’s will to sometimes thwart His Will.

God, in His infinite wisdom, designed us in this world we live in with the freedom to contraindicate His Will, or make choices that go against His will. For instance, 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God is “not willing that any would perish, but that all would come to repentance”. That is God’s Will for all men. And yet the scriptures clearly tell us that most men won’t come to repentance. “Narrow is the way... And few there be that find it.” (Matt 7:14) How could that happen if it is not God’s Will? The answer lies not in the weakness of God but in His strength. God will not force the will of man even though He has the power to do so. God’s Will that all men be saved is only matched by His Will that all men choose Him voluntarily, because God knows that only voluntary love and obedience have any value.

Every time we perform the action of sin, is that God’s Will? Of course not. It was God’s Will that man live without the curse of sin, death and disease, but we know that man’s rebellion changed that in Genesis 3. God from the beginning of time has set limits on the insertion of His Will into our lives. God won’t impose Himself where He is not wanted; therefore He chooses to give man a choice, though our choices and actions often result in His Will not being done.

In the area of process, however, God’s Will is always done. By that I mean it is God’s Will that we have freewill. And when we exercise that freewill by making free choices that is God’s Will for the process, thus upholding His sovereignty, even though the specific choice or action man often makes may go against His Will. The fact that man has choice to serve or not to serve God is God’s Will, but those specific choices man makes are often not His Will and bring with them harsh consequences.

When our bodies or the bodies of loved ones are twisted and pained with disease and death, that was not God’s Will, but rather the consequence of man’s initial sinfulness in the beginning. It may sometimes be the result of our abusing our bodies in ways that displease God and that He warns us against, but often it is rather the result of Adam’s sin and the curse of physical death and disease for all mankind that resulted. When death or pain knocks at our door, that was not God’s Will. It was God’s Will that man live in eternal bliss. But man’s actions thwarted that will.

So when tragedy strikes, when sorrow pours into our lives and pain rears its ugly head, then and especially then, we must always remember that is not God’s Will for us. God’s will is that man be free from those things. That’s why He gave Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden and that’s why He’s given you and me the hope of Heaven.