When we pray to God and bring our petitions before him, and then say in earnest “thy will be done,” how should we expect God to respond? Is asking God to overrule our will with his own admitting that he may actually bring us harm?
Jesus answers when he asks rhetorically, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Luke 11:11-12). The confidence we have in our human fathers is the confidence we can have in our divine Father. “I tell you,” he says, “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (verse 9).
What will God give to those who ask? Tim Keller gives just the right answer: “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.” Thus, to say “thy will be done” is to willingly and confidently admit that because of our limited knowledge and sinful desires, God must sometimes overrule us if he is ultimately to give us what is for our good and for his glory.
