We Continue Dan’s series of short posts going through the Lord’s prayer and learning to pray the way Jesus taught us to, into our own part of the mission in Great Yarmouth and beyond.
Often we can come to prayer with a list of our wants, but the Lord’s prayer is striking in how it helps us to lift our eyes off our own issues and focus instead on God. Before anything else, he is our father, he is holy and we want everyone to know it – and before we ask for anything else, we ask this:
“Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
Matthew 6:10
When Jesus died and rose again, God the father crowned Jesus king over all the universe (Philippians 2: 6-11). He is high king over all things, yet there are other kingdoms and powers still at large in the world (Ephesians 6:12). As Jesus reigns, all his enemies are gathered under his feet and dealt with – gradually now, but suddenly and completely on the day when Jesus returns (1 Corinthians 15:20-28).
So we pray, ‘your kingdom come‘, and we’re asking that every kingdom set up against Jesus be dismantled, and for Jesus to be more and more recognised as king. Against all the evil in the world, we cry out for his kingdom of peace and righteousness and joy to take over. So too in our own lives, we see all the ways that we act as if we’re still in charge – and we cry out for Jesus to truly reign as king.
In heaven, God’s will is done perfectly. To ask, ‘your will be done on earth as it is in heaven‘ is to ask that every living thing – yourself included – would do exactly what God wants you to do all the time.
What the bible describes is not losing our free will. As we follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit changes our hearts to increasingly want to do things God’s way, and shows us that his ways are both good, and good for us. Sin is in part mankind’s belief that we know what is best for ourselves, only to find out that anything but God’s perfect will leads to death.
So we pray for his kingdom to come and his will to be done in our own lives, and across the whole face of the earth. It’s a prayer that God is answering more and more every single day as we follow him, and that he will answer completely, beautifully, and finally on the day that Jesus returns.
