Romans 1:9-10 “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, (10) making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.”
The second prayer that I have quoted above was where the will of God was not known. This prayer is a record of Paul praying to God, asking Him if He could make it possible for Paul to minister to the church in Rome. And so in effect Paul was praying “Lord if it be Your will”, and in this instance Paul prayed correctly by asking “Lord if it be Your will”. The reason that he was praying correctly was because Paul did not know the Lord’s will regarding his request, for there is no verse of scripture in the bible that dealt with his request. Scripture reveals to us that Paul only preached the gospel where the Holy Spirit led him to go and preach (2 Corinthians 1:17), and so Paul had also not received any guidance from the Holy Spirit telling him to go to Rome to minister. If he had he could have prayed in faith for God to open the way for him to preach in Rome and God would have answered his prayer because God watches over His word (both written and of the Spirit) to perform it. And so because Paul did not know God’s will in this instance the paraphrase of Paul’s prayer was, “Lord I would really like to go to Rome to minister there. And so Lord, if you can find a way of fitting Rome into your will for my life I would really appreciate it.” As it happened Rome was on the list of cities that our Lord had planned for him to minister in, although Paul didn’t know it at the time. And so Paul received his request from the Lord. But the point that I wanted to make here is that if we are asking something from the Lord where His will has not been revealed to us, then it is correct to pray “Lord if it be Your will”, for there is no element of doubt where the will of God is unknown.
Michael E.B. Maher
Comments