To Encourage You

Matthew 6:9-10 “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Psalm 143:10 “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God!”

Do you know the difference between passive and active voice?  In passive voice, the subject is being acted upon by someone or something else.  In the active voice, the subject is doing the acting.  So often, in my career, which involved a lot of writing, I was encouraged to use the active voice.  As one website on the subject put it “The active voice typically conveys a strong, clear tone and the passive voice is subtler and weaker. . . A good rule of thumb is to try to put the majority of your sentences in the active voice, unless you truly can’t write your sentence in any other way.” 

So, what’s that have to do with the Bible and the way things are written there?  An example appears in the verses above, which are related to one another.  Both speak of the will of God. In the first it talks about God’s will being done.  It infers the subject, God’s will, is to be acted upon or done by someone else. It’s in passive voice.  So often as I’ve read and prayed this verse, which is the opening to the Lord’s prayer, I’ve thought of it as God’s will being done by God.  However, the second verse gives us clarity in the active voice. Here we are asking that God teach us to do His will.  It’s in the active voice. 

So often in prayer we deflect the action away from ourselves.  We ask God to do this or that, and in that request, we’re so often looking outside of ourselves to provide the answer. However, as the verse from Psalm 143 above makes clear, in our asking, we should also seek to be part of the answer if God so wills. 

But is that how we pray?  In 1 John 5:13-14 we are told that “this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.” These are wonderful promises.  One of the ways we know that we are asking in God’s will, based on the verses above, is to ask that God’s will (not ours) be done, and that God would teach us to do His will.  We should ask God to help us think according to His will, to pray according to His will, and to act according to His will. 

As an example, as we pray that some person’s needs be met, we should ask if God would have us give time, money, or other resources to meet that person’s need.  If we pray for someone to be healed from a disease or injury of some type, we should be willing to perhaps visit that person or write them a note to encourage them in their recovery.  If we are praying that God would open the eyes of someone to understand the gospel and be saved, we should also be willing to be instruments to share the gospel with them. 

May God help us to pray in the active voice, willing to be a part of the answer to our prayers.  When we do this, on the authority of God’s Word, He will hear us, and He will help us to act in ways that bring glory to Him and blessings to those for whom we pray.