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[ Music ] ♪ Magnify the Lord ♪ ♪ Magnify His holy name ♪ ♪ For He is great and His mercy is boundless ♪

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♪ And His mercy endureth forever ♪ ♪ He is great ♪ ♪ And His mercy endureth forever ♪ ♪ He is great ♪

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♪ And His mercy ♪ ♪ Endures ♪ ♪ Forever ♪ ♪ And ever ♪

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♪ Magnify Him, magnify Him ♪ ♪ Magnify His holy name ♪ ♪ Forever and ever ♪ ♪ Forever and evermore ♪

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♪ Magnify Him, magnify Him ♪ ♪ Magnify His holy name ♪ ♪ Forever and ever and ever ♪ ♪ Oh, how wondrous ♪

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♪ Give His name ♪ ♪ Heaven and earth ♪ ♪ The greatness proclaim ♪ ♪ Every knee should bow ♪

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♪ And every tongue confess ♪ ♪ That Christ is Lord of all ♪ ♪ Every knee ♪ ♪ Should bow ♪

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♪ And every tongue confess ♪ ♪ That Christ is Lord of all ♪ ♪ Magnify Him, magnify Him ♪ ♪ Magnify His holy name ♪

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♪ Forever and ever ♪ ♪ Forever and evermore ♪ ♪ Magnify Him, magnify Him ♪ ♪ Magnify His holy name ♪

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♪ Forever and ever and ever ♪ ♪ Forever and ever by His holy name ♪ ♪ Forever and ever by His holy name ♪ ♪ And His life is holy ♪

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- We have been engaged in a sermon series based on the model prayer Jesus taught his disciples. disciples. We come now to consider in the gospel of Matthew, the sixth chapter, the the 10th verse, the words, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Would you repeat

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after me thy will be done in heaven as in earth. I will be done in earth I'm sorry as in heaven God forbid. This is a petition involved in this prayer. We consider thy kingdom come this Sunday,

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and today thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is a petition. "Thy will be done" is the main focus. God's will.

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To take precedence over our will. Helmut Thieleke, a renowned German evangelical pastor-theologian, was preaching from this particular text during World War II. He was preaching amid the sound of sirens and bombing raids, and those who heard him

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were listening to words concerning God's will in such a time as that. "Thy will be done." Soldiers on both sides of a war pray for victory.

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Seldom do they pray to God for His will to be done. Their immediate concern is with their safety and with victory on both sides. Each group is paying for victory and for safety.

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If both sides earnestly prayed, thy will be done, they would not be engaged in war. Because God's will is that we be at peace with one another. So let me talk a moment about my will,

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your will, our will, just for a moment. Every year I spend a great deal of time emphasizing the significance, the importance of making a will. And every year I encounter some persons who have lived their

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lives out and have gone on to report in the final judgment and and have not made a will. Some people are hesitant to make a will. They leave it to others to make,

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the government or some relative or whatever. But it's important because the will expresses our desire, It expresses our intention. It expresses our hope.

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So it is important for us to seek to know the will of God for our lives. That's a wonderful thing. really know God's will for your life. Jesus says that when we pray, we ought to say, "Thy will be done." Christian prayer is

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not a means of getting what we want. Let me say that again. Christian prayer is not a means of getting what we want. It seeks to discover and obey the will of God. I ought to be concerned about myself,

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you ought to be concerned about yourself, but our concern should not be of such a nature that we would exclude others. It ought to be inclusive. While prayer is personal and private, while I enter into my secret closet and you in your secret closet and commune

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with the Heavenly Father in secret, prayer is not meant to be parochial, just limited to ourselves. I listen to sometimes the way people pray and they limit it to just me and wife my son Joe and his wife us four no more that's the way some people limit their prayers but it ought to be inclusive prayer should be I should

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reach out to the whole world for it is our father to whom we pray our father whose will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Wesley D. Weatherhead has written an interesting book on the will of God in which he discusses God's circumstantial will, God's intentional will, and God's ultimate will.

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I'll repeat those and I'd like for you to repeat them after me since we had a little interruption from somewhere. These phases, shades of differences, would you repeat after me God's circumstantial will? God's circumstantial will. God's permissive will and God's ultimate will.

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And I want you to listen carefully please as I go through these. God's ultimate will is to save the world. That's his ultimate will, his ultimate purpose. God wills good for all.

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He wants the best for every person he has made. occur, however, which are contrary to God's will, they are the result of man's use and abuse of freedom. God does not sin misfortunes and calamities. What happened around Florida here a few days ago, that's not the work of God.

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That's not His will. Ultimately, the people should lose their homes and have their fortunes destroyed. These things occur within the circumstantial will of God. not due to his intention, it's not his intention, but they come through circumstances, the circumstantial

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will of God. They're not due to his intention, but come through circumstance. So, if anyone jumps off of a tall building, take the tallest building we may know of, and is injured, we ought not say that that was God's intention. That life that may be snuffed out by such Radical action is someone else's intention, but not the intention of God.

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God permits it. He permits it. So that if we take poison and die from that poison, that's not his intentional will, it's his permissive will. He permits us to enjoy freedom that we can misuse

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in such a way that it is detrimental to us. So God does not intend for us to sin, but he permits it. He permits us to sin.

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He permits us to be brutal. As in his permissive will, he lets it happen. And he permits us to be lustful. He permits us to be self-asserting.

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These things are not in the positive will of God. So a little girl, as it happened a few years ago, who was just four years old on 12th Street here in East Austin, after coming out of a game room,

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a man appeared and began shooting in a crowd And this little four-year-old girl was struck and died in her mother's arms. Now some would say, "Well, that's just the will of God. This is the way God intended.

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It was the will of God for it to happen that way. So honey, just accept the will of God. Well some may say that God took her, but this is not a manifestation of God's desire, his intention.

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What happened in this particular action was the handiwork of a madman and not the work of a loving God. An innocent little girl's life cut off at the tender age of four. But let us not say this is God's ultimate will. This incident is the result of circumstances. The girl was there at the time the gun was fired and God did not stop the bullets.

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Her death is due to a queer quirk of circumstance. It is within the permissive will of God. God permits it. God permits us to do that which is contrary to his purpose, he permits it.

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But he gives us the freedom and power to do it. But his ultimate will is for us to enjoy the good life. Thy will be done. This is what Jesus teaches his disciples.

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we are followers of the master, this is what he teaches us to pray, "Thy will be done." Martin Luther said this is a fearful prayer, never to pray or to say to God, "Thy will be done if you don't mean it. We should be afraid to pray for God's will to be done if we are not prepared to accept his will. Like the dear old sister who prayed to God to remove

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her handicapped and so her husband died. That was her handicap. God's will be done. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. These words call for help. This petition is only prayed when self-will has collapsed. When our selfish desires collapse, give up, we are then at the point of crying out to God, "Thy will, Thy will, Lord I know I can't

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make it. But your will be done in my life, that your will be done in this situation. Ordinarily we are prone to assert ourselves. Ordinarily all of us want to have our way. We're honest with ourselves, we like to have our way. But we should like for God to concern himself

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with satisfying our wishes. That's the way we are, that's the selfishness in our human nature. We'd like for God to satisfy our wishes.

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And many times we pray, Lord do this, Lord do that, Lord do that, Lord do that, all of it to satisfy us. But Jesus wants us to be concerned about satisfying the eternal.

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Lord, thy will be done. Now our intentions may be good many times, but we do not know what to ask for. We really do not, James says in his remark regarding prayer,

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"We have not because we ask not, "and we ask not because we ask and miss." We don't know what to ask for. So it is the spirit that must take our prayers

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and fashion them in such a way that they are acceptable to God and in keeping with his spirit and purpose. Not just our intentions. The road to hell is filled with good intentions. The world is full of people with good intentions who want only the best for themselves.

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but they do not know what is best. They don't really know what the best is. They say they want it, but they do not recognize it. They do not recognize the things

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that really pertain to their peace. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God's will is wholly and completely done in heaven.

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Wholly. No opposition in heaven to his will, but we find a great deal of opposition on earth. And we seek to direct God into certain channels

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that we want him to go. God bless America. And somebody else who may be the enemy of America is saying God bless them.

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There is fear of God's whole will. We prefer to go halfway. You know, we like to negotiate this matter with God. Go part of the way.

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Like when I was a lad, played in the neighborhood with a friend, Get ready to go, so you go peace of the way home. Amen.

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Just not all the way, but peace of the way. So God wants us to go all the way with him, not peace of the way. And we must allow God to penetrate our whole being,

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whole being, our reason, our minds, and we must be prepared to give our whole self to Him. That's why we often find ourselves short. We give half-hearted support. We fail to serve Him wholeheartedly. That's why we practice lukewarm Christianity. That's why many live lives that are spiritually mediocre.

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That's why we have halfway committed ourselves. Instead of giving the whole self, we give two thirds or less than that. We want to give God Sunday, sometimes not even that.

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But what about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday? That's why our hearts are polluted instead of being pure. Soren Kierkegaard says that purity of heart is to will one thing. Think about that.

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Purity of heart is to will one thing. Most of us are double minded, we're scattered here and scattered there. But to really have yourself together, as we put it sometimes, is to have, to will one thing. Is to will one thing.

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Well, you see the problems connected with my will and your will, but let's look a moment again at God's will. God's will is evident in the creation of the world. We see God's will at work in Genesis story of creation, we see it there. God says, "Let there be" and it was so. And God said, "That's good."

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God's ultimate will is expressed in His goodness. It may include suffering and sorrow. God's will for Jesus Christ means the cross. God's will for Jesus Christ involves humiliation. God's will for Jesus Christ involves death. And yet Jesus teaches us to pray, "Thy will be done."

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Jesus doesn't tell us that he is unwilling to do this or that. He wants us to look closely at his prayer light. and as the spotlight shines on him our Lord is in the garden of Gethsemane

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within the shadows of the cross Judas has already made a deal to sell him to his enemies. Judas the traitor is out working against him

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There are other members who are working together, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Herodians, they are all combining their forces against Jesus. Then there is Hannes the High Priest, there is Caiaphas the High Priest, they are all in concert against Jesus Christ. And in the dark night of the soul, and that time comes, it comes for every one of us, the dark night of the soul, Jesus takes disciples into the garden of Gethsemane, the garden of sorrow, and he says to them, "Now is my soul greatly troubled. Stay right here and watch and pray with me and he goes a little further and he comes back and

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They are asleep And he said cannot you watch with me for one hour? and During this time as he wrestled with the father in prayer. He said father

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If it be thy will "Let this cup pass." And then he prays and agonizes a little longer and he comes before the Father again and he says,

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"But not my will, but thy will be done." He has wrestled through the difficult situation of just wanting something to be done by God for himself, but now he has reconciled himself to the Father's will,

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whatever it is, but, but. You see, when you seek the will of God, you're able to deal with the buts in your life. And they're always there, but you can wrestle with them

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and you can grapple with them because you have discovered what the disciples were seeking, the secret of the prayer life of the master. Thy will be done.

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Really pray that. Thy will be done on the battlefield. I will be done as we celebrate this season. We have Labor Day and we still have the problems

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of jobs being outsourced and of other people getting more than they should get. One man said just this past week in an interview on television that he was not guilty

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even though he had taken $100 million. but he said he wasn't guilty. And in a world like this, Jesus is telling us to pray. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in "which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth

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"as it is in heaven." And his will will be done. Thanks be to God that his will will be done. But the important thing for us is to be in concert

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with his will so that we become channels of his will. And as the saying goes, in his will, remember this, in his will is our peace.

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I want to change the invitation hymn, if you will, I sing, I think it's hymn 220, God Will Take Care of You. - Yes Lord. - And I want us to emphasize that will.

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- Yes. - As we sing it throughout. It's in your hymn, look at it. Turn to 222.

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And as we sing this, to meditate on it, not just to say the words, but to somehow let the words become a part of our innermost being.

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God will, it doesn't matter about the forces of evil that are out there, God will, no matter how things are going in your family or what's happening on your job, God will, no matter what your health condition may be, God will take care of you. He'll do that. And as we sing, we extend the invitation to accept Him as Lord of your life.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] (piano music) ♪ See how we sway on every tide ♪ ♪ I will take care of you ♪

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♪ See this, he is our God, the body ♪ ♪ I will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ Through every day ♪

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♪ Oh, baby ♪ ♪ He will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ From you ♪

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♪ Through days of war ♪ ♪ With hearts unfilled ♪ ♪ God wills we hear ♪ ♪ From you ♪

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♪ In dangerous years ♪ ♪ Your path unspilled ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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♪ Through every day ♪ ♪ All the way ♪ ♪ He will take care of you ♪ ♪ All you ♪

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♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ All you may need ♪ ♪ He will provide ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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♪ The thing that lasts will be denied ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ Through every day ♪

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♪ Always ♪ ♪ He will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ No matter what may be the test ♪

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♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ He may rewind how long His praise ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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♪ Through every day ♪ ♪ All the way ♪ ♪ He will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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♪ There on you ♪ ♪ I'm you ♪ ♪ From you ♪ [MUSIC]

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♪ Take care of you ♪ ♪ We will be part of your kingdom ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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♪ Through everything ♪ ♪ Always ♪ ♪ He will take care of you ♪ ♪ God will take care of you ♪

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You. (soft music) [ Music ] [BLANK_AUDIO]