Praying God’s Will: The Heartbeat of True Prayer

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He gave them a prayer we now call The Lord’s Prayer. At its heart lies a simple but life-changing request:
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Look around our world today—violence, corruption, immorality, and selfishness dominate. This is not God’s will. Yet Jesus tells us to pray for the day when His will is perfectly done here as it is in heaven.

God’s kingdom is first the Kingdom of His Government—where He reigns in absolute authority. Prayer is not convincing God to do what we want. It’s aligning ourselves with what He wants. As 1 John 5:14–15 says, If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. The secret to answered prayer is not bending God’s will to ours, but finding His will and praying it back to Him.

How do we know His will? Adrian Rogers points to three principles:

The Surrender Principle – We cannot know God’s will until we are willing to do it. Surrender means lifting both hands to heaven and saying, “Lord, I am under Your control.” Commitment chooses what we will do for God. Surrender hands Him the authority to choose for us.
The Scripture Principle – God’s Word is the clearest revelation of His will. It is inconsistent to say we want God’s will but neglect the one Book He wrote to show it to us.
The Spirit Principle – The Holy Spirit helps us understand Scripture and pray in harmony with God’s will. True prayer begins in the heart of God, is placed into our hearts by the Spirit, and returns to heaven through the power of the cross.

God’s kingdom is also the Kingdom of His Grace. Hebrews 4:16 invites us to come boldly before the throne of grace—not a throne of cold judgment, but a place where mercy meets our weakness. Our faults don’t disqualify us from coming; they are the very reason we come.

When we pray, “Thy will be done”, we are stepping into both the authority of God’s rule and the kindness of His grace. We’re not trying to get our will done in heaven—we’re letting heaven’s will be done in us. That is the heartbeat of true prayer.

If you’d like, I can also craft a short, emotionally stirring YouTube description to pair with this rewrite so it draws more clicks.