After we pray in the Our Father for God’s Kingdom to become a true reality in our lives, we pray: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Unfortunately I have found that these words are often mistakenly understood. This petition is at the very center of the prayer and has to be the central desire of Christians. The whole purpose of prayer, the very purpose of man’s life, is to do the will of God. This is what Jesus prayed and did. This is what we, His followers, must pray and do. There is but one purpose in life, namely to strive to grow in the likeness of Jesus, thus leading to Theosis, (deification) and divine sonship with Christ.

The only thing that God demands of us is that we sincerely give ourselves to personal transformation. This is keeping inviolate the image we possess by nature. Clothed thus in the radiant garment of the Spirit, we abide in God and He in us; through grace we become gods and children of God and are illumined by the light of His knowledge.

To pray Thy will be done, according to the spiritual teachers, is a daring and dangerous act. This is so, first of all, because when one prays this he must be ready, like Jesus, to embrace all the challenges that life presents, believing that life will only present those challenges that can help us to spiritually grow.

It is my contention that Thy will be done doesn’t mean that God wills disease, pain and suffering. They are just a part of life, especially as we modern people live it. What God wills is that we make the most of the challenges that life presents, using them to personally change our behaviors and attitudes. God does not will the individual struggles that each of us are confronted with and He surely doesn’t will that the individual challenges be punishments for the way that we behave.

I realize that this may be very difficult for some to truly understand. For centuries we humans have believed that the only way to shape human behavior is through some sort of punishment. I totally reject this idea. God does not act in the ways that we humans do. As a psychologist I also reject the idea that we can only shape human behavior through punishment. It really doesn’t work.

To do God’s will, therefore, is to be a human who strives to be in the likeness of Jesus. Jesus is the true prototype of what humans were created to be. Think about this!