“Not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42) As disciples, we are each to pray what Jesus prayed and we are each to become the kind of person who prays what Jesus prayed.

We should, for example, learn to pray the words, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” (Luke 11:1-4)

But we should also become the kind of person who trusts in God’s fatherly love, who seeks to honor and worship Him in everything, who seeks His rule over every part of our lives, who trusts Him to do His will in every circumstance, who trusts in Him for each day’s needs, who seeks His forgiveness and offers it to others, who asks for His help against temptation and protection against evil.

To be taught by Jesus to pray is not only to be taught words but also the heart out of which those words flow. Disciples are those who are like their teacher. “Like” not only in appearance and resemblance by some external feature, but “like” in behavior and character through closeness of relationship and intimacy. 

Yet a teacher teaching is one thing. A student learning is another. Jesus is willing to teach us to pray. But are we willing to learn from Him? Are we willing to learn Him? Are we willing to be shaped, remade, conformed, and transformed in mind and heart into His likeness and image? Are we willing to die to ourselves that He might live in us? (Galatians 2:20)

Praying “your will be done” means, “Jesus, let what you see needs to be done in me be done. Let what you want to be done in me be done. I’m not always going to see it, feel it, understand it, agree with it, or want it. But I know you love me. So I trust you to lead me. I give myself to follow you.”

Prayer is not simply the means by which Jesus leads us and shows us what to do. Prayer is the means by which we are made into the kind of disciples He can lead and who will follow. It is not simply the act of doing something. It is the act both of becoming someone new and of someone becoming new.