In Earth as it is in Heaven: How Doing God’s Will Brings Heaven To Earth
What does this mean?
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
in earth, as it is in heaven.”
Matthew 6:11
God reigns in heaven and His will is always done. In that place, it makes perfect sense that when God’s speaks His will is instantly obeyed without question. It comes as no surprise that there is perfect order in our Lord’s kingdom because we instinctively know that everyone listens to Him and does what He says.
On Earth, conversely, we take for granted that His will is optional. It makes perfect sense to us that we can question our Lord’s will and decide whether or not to obey it. It comes as no surprise to us that we live in near perfect disorder because hardly anybody listens to what God says and that still fewer do it.
Here is a question,
“Why do we take for granted that God’s will is done in heaven but feel that it is optional to obey Him here on Earth?”
Our God is a God of order
The point of the whole salvation experience is to restore God’s order to His creation. Our Father wants to reverse the damage done in the Garden of Eden by Lucifer when he tempted Eve to sin. God’s will was done on Earth as it is in heaven before that act of disobedience. Here is a truth,
“God cannot tolerate imperfection.”
Through sin, this creation is forever tainted by imperfection. It is damaged beyond perfect repair. If something is perfect and that perfection is damaged in any way, then by definition, it cannot be made perfect again. In the Garden, there was a very real danger that God may have decided to simply judge Adam and Eve, destroy the entire universe, and start over again.
Thankfully, we serve a merciful God who does not give up so easily. Instead of wiping the slate clean and starting again, God chose at incredible personal cost, to postpone His judgment until such time as His only begotten Son could die on the cross and pay the price for mankind’s sins.
God delays judgment out of mercy
Make no mistake about it, from the moment Eve’s perfect lips touched the forbidden fruit the fate of this creation was sealed. However, God allowed that judgment to wait until all those who would choose to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior had done so. Only after God saved as many as possible would He allow the penalty for mankind’s sin to take full effect. Here is a truth,
“God gives the Holy Spirit so that believers may come back into perfect relationship with Him.”
The Holy Spirit helps us learn to trust and obey the will of our heavenly Father. The comforter aids us so we can yield to God and obey His will on earth. The truth is, being led by the Spirit is not something we do on occasion but it is meant to be the way of life here on earth just as it is in heaven.
Obedience, through the Spirit, without question
The link to God’s will in heaven and God’s will on Earth is the Holy Spirit. In heaven, all created beings obey God’s voice without question, without reserve, and instantaneously. Only as we come into alignment with the Holy Spirit (which is just God for He is a Spirit and is holy) is His will done in a similar fashion on Earth as it is in Heaven.
When you stop to think about it, everything that is not of God’s Spirit misses the mark. Anything we do through our natural minds is basically enmity with God because it is done through the knowledge of good and evil. The only thing that pleases our Father is doing His will. Everything else is either inconsequential or outright sin.
True obedience is…
Jesus Christ shows us how to live “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth and it is in heaven”. Listening to God’s Holy Spirit is not optional for Christ. Jesus obeyed His Father’s voice, even to the point of sweating great drops of blood saying, “nevertheless, not my will but thy will be done.” The Son of man trusted God’s voice rather than his own reason and emotions. Even when faced with the prospect of being eternally separated from his Father, Jesus said “Yes”.
Believers are bought with the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. We do not have a personal choice when we decide to follow Jesus Christ. Though we can make decisions ourselves, God wants us to learn to live by revelation. Like Christ, we are to submit to our heavenly Father and allow His choice to always be our choice. We are love slaves of the Most High, bound by our deep and abiding affection for our Master. Saints declare, “not our will, but thy will be done”.
Only when we do the word do we obey our Father
When God says go, we go. When God says stay, we stay. When God says speak, we speak. As God says to remain silent, we keep quiet. We are simply a reflection of God’s will here on earth.
God says,
“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”
Mark 8:35
Some of us are so busy protecting our natural lives that we are literally in danger of losing our eternal lives. We worry about what might happen on earth while we ignore what surely will happen in heaven. We fear the future because we mistakenly believe we have some control over it. However, nothing that we have now will survive death except our acts of obedience to our Father while we were here on earth.
Here is a truth,
“In the coming years what will matter most to each and everyone one of us is each other.”
Jesus says,
“Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
Matthew 12:47-50
Our true family members are those who do the will of our heavenly Father. This is who really matters and this is why we must allow God to connect us by His Spirit.
Our natural minds hold us back from giving all to God. We mistakenly believe that following His will is optional, however, it is not. Thank God for the blood of His son Jesus Christ because without that atonement there would certainly not be any hope for anyone of us.
The power of being in Him
Jesus says,
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
Mark 11:24
Insurmountable obstacles only appear to be so because we focus our eyes upon the impossible rather than the truth. Jesus gave us the earnest of our heavenly inheritance, therefore nothing on earth is impossible for us. Here is an amazing truth,
“Saints aren’t bound by the laws of this universe because they are citizens of the New Heavens and New Earth.”
Everyday miracles on earth
In that place, the act of creation is an everyday occurrence. We create by the will of the same Spirit which spoke the worlds into existence. That world contains no sickness, therefore in this world, even death has no hold in Jesus name. God moves us by His Spirit in the world to come. When we speak to the elements in the new Earth, they obey us because they obey Him. Likewise, when we speak to this physical creation, the very elements obey. We command the natural world because we stand in Him and speak with the authority of the Almighty. Therefore, nothing is impossible here in this world when we proclaim it in Jesus name.
God is allowing us to partially see what the real world is. God, by His grace and mercy, lifts the blindness from our eyes. YHWH causes our eyes (minds) to see past Strong Delusion so that we can know the truth. We will come to realize, very soon, that we do not have to be victims of circumstance. We are, in fact, more than conquerors over everything in Jesus name. Here is a truth,
“In Him, nothing is impossible”
I have been sensing lately how blessed and encouraged Jesus seems to be when we align ourselves with His will and walk in obedience to Him. And in contrast to that, it saddens me to think of how hurt He must be when we believe doing His will is optional.
This is really good: “Our natural minds hold us back from giving all to God. We mistakenly believe that following His will is optional, however, it is not.”
The natural mind is even hostile to God (Romans 8:7), and “a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, because they are foolishness to him;” (1 Corinthians 2:14), and I think that’s what holds us back. I like what you said about how listening to God’s Spirit and doing His Father’s will was not optional to Jesus.
And it seems the effects of NOT DOING God’s will are just as powerful as DOING God’s will – just in the negative. God is sovereign and doesn’t “need” us in order to get His work done on earth, but I don’t believe He just shrugs and moves on when we don’t obey Him, because great things are missed when we do. I think it grieves Him that the people He bought with His Son’s blood are making our own choices about whether or not to align our lives to His will and do what He says and speak what and when He speaks, rather than submitting ourselves to His Lordship and cooperating with Him to allow His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Good word! Thanks for sharing!
Big hugs and lots of love!