Living Between Prayer And Promise

Most of our lives are not lived at the beginning of a story or at the end of one. They are lived somewhere in the middle — in that long, unfinished stretch where things are still forming, still unresolved, still waiting to make sense.

We live between what has already been spoken and what has not yet come to pass. Between hope and fulfillment. Between prayer and answer. Between longing and arrival.

We wake up most mornings into a world that feels incomplete. Relationships that are still strained. Questions that remain unanswered. Circumstances that have not been healed. And if we are honest, even our faith often feels like something lived in tension — strong in conviction, yet carrying a quiet ache for something more.

That is not a failure of faith.

That is the human condition.

And it is precisely there — in that in-between space — that Jesus teaches us how to pray and how to wait.

He gives us a prayer so familiar that many of us learned it before we could read:

“Your kingdom come.

Your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.”

And He gives us a promise so vast it stretches beyond history itself:

“Surely I am coming soon.”

To which the church responds:

“Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

Those two texts stand like pillars at the edges of Christian life.

One anchors us in the present.

The other anchors us in the future.

One calls us to faithfulness now.

The other assures us of redemption then.

Yet for many believers, those two truths sit in uneasy tension.

Because some days, the Lord’s Prayer feels heavy. It sounds like responsibility. Like obedience. Like a call to live differently in a world that often punishes faithfulness rather than rewards it.

Some days, the promise of the Second Coming feels distant — abstract, delayed, almost unreal — especially when life is painful, when injustice lingers, when prayers seem to echo back unanswered.

The question before us is not whether we believe these words. Most Christians do.

The deeper question is this:

How do we live faithfully between them?

How do we pray for God’s kingdom to come now without becoming exhausted by what we cannot fix?

How do we wait for Christ to come again without disengaging from the world He still loves?

How do we live in obedience today without losing hope for tomorrow?

If we lean too hard in one direction, something essential begins to erode.

If we live only in “Your kingdom come,” faith can quietly turn into pressure — into striving, into the subtle belief that everything depends on us getting it right. Over time, that kind of faith can harden into exhaustion or resentment.

If we live only in “Come, Lord Jesus,” faith can quietly drift into distance — into withdrawal, into a passive waiting that excuses disengagement and dulls responsibility.

Jesus does not give us one without the other.

He gives us both — because we need both.

The Lord’s Prayer keeps us rooted in obedience.

The promise of His return keeps us rooted in hope.

One prevents passivity.

The other prevents despair.

One keeps us faithful in the present.

The other keeps us patient with the future.

The Christian life is not choosing between them.

It is learning how to live in the shadow of both.

That shadow is not dark.

It is protective.

It shelters us from the illusion that we must fix everything.

And it shelters us from the illusion that nothing we do matters.

It teaches us to live engaged without being frantic, to hope without denial, to obey without anxiety, and to wait without withdrawal.

When Jesus teaches us to pray “Your kingdom come,” He is not asking us to pray for God to become King. God already reigns. The prayer assumes His kingship.

What it asks for is recognition — that God’s will would be honored and trusted here, in real lives, in ordinary decisions, in the quiet places where faith is actually lived.

When Jesus promises to come again, He is not announcing the beginning of God’s reign. He is announcing its completion — the moment when what is already true becomes fully visible, when resistance ends, justice is restored, and creation itself is set free.

Between those two truths — God reigns, and God is coming — is where we live.

This is life between the prayer and the promise.

And learning how to live there — with courage, humility, patience, and hope — is the work of mature faith.

— “Your Kingdom Come”: Living Under the King Today

When Jesus teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come,” He is not asking us to pray for something distant or abstract. He is not teaching us to wait passively for a future event. He is teaching us to acknowledge a present reality.