Praying With Jesus: Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done Series

PRAYING LIKE JESUS: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven

Read Matthew 6:9-13.

Have you ever observed a tired toddler, crying and carrying on, for no apparent reason? His mother asks, “What do you want?” He doesn’t know what he wants; he needs her help! He needs a nap, he needs a hug, he needs someone to help him control his emotions, and he needs life to be better. But he doesn’t know what he wants!

Some adults don’t know what they want either!

“I just want to be happy.” But what would make you happy—really?

“I want to be healthy…successful…appreciated.” “I want enough money to enjoy life.” “I want the people I love and care about to thrive.”

God wants those things for us as well! He invites us to ask him for what we need most. Jesus said to his disciples, in Luke 11:9, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

I don’t think Jesus was talking asking for a boat, a luxury vehicle, or the latest electronics. Maybe we should ask Santa for those instead. I think he was talking about asking for good things: healing for a friend, wisdom for a child, resolution in a situation at work, justice in our world. Our most passionate prayers are for good things like that, and Jesus invites us to ask and believe that God hears and responds to our requests.

When we know what we want and think we know what God should do, we might rush into our urgent requests, without thinking much about God and what he wants for us and the world. Jesus teaches us a better way to pray.

The Lord’s Prayer begins, not with asking for things, but with defining our relationship with God. We pray to “Our Father…,” who loves us and wants the best for us.

Then we recognize how awesome God is, and we pray that everyone will give God the respect due him: “Hallowed be your name.” Revering God is the foundation for making the world right.

Then Jesus tells us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Maybe by now we are getting anxious. When do we get to ask for what we want? But Jesus tells us to want God’s kingdom first of all. He explained in Matthew 6:33, [Your Father knows that you need the necessities of life.] “…But seek first HIS KINGDOM and his righteousness, and ALL THESE THINGS [all you need] will be given to you as well.”

WHAT IS GOD’S KINGDOM?

The kingdom of God is not a country—a place on the face of the earth. It is the reign of God, when he is recognized as King and everything submits to his rule. The Lord’s Prayer explains it.

Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer on at least two occasions. In Luke 11, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he gave them the condensed version:

“Father,

Hallowed be your name,

Your kingdom come…”

In Matthew 6, Jesus was teaching a larger group of disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, and he gave a longer version of the prayer:

“Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be your name,

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

The expanded version of the prayer explains that THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WHEN GOD’S WILL IS DONE.

God’s will is always done in heaven. On earth, however, not everything is in accordance with God’s will.

This gets a little tricky, because we believe in the sovereignty of God over all creation. God reigns over the entire universe, and he has the power to control everything that happens on face of the earth. God could enforce his will, but he chose to create a universe open to evil and misfortune. Hurricanes happen. Sickness strikes. People are cruel. Evil powers gain control. Death comes.

God’s will is for us to live in a world like that now, but his ultimate will is for us is to live in a kingdom where he reigns over a perfect realm—a realm like heaven.

Since we don’t live in heaven, Jesus tells us to pray that God will bring his heavenly reign to the earth. Some people talk about “all hell breaking loose,” but we pray that “all heaven will break in.” We want the kingdom of heaven to break into the realm of the earth.

Before we go on, we should clarify what we mean by “the kingdom of heaven.” In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus speaks often of “the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew’s Jewish readers understood heaven as God’s throne, so the kingdom of heaven refers to the reign of God, whether in heaven or earth. Mark and Luke wrote for gentiles, who might think the kingdom of heaven referred only to God’s reign in heaven. To make clear that God’s kingdom is not restricted to heaven, they translated the Jewish idiom as “the kingdom of God.”