Praying Differently, Not Necessarily More
As we begin a new year and think about things we need to work on, a lot of us want to work on our relationship with God. If that’s you and you want to grow in your relationship with God, you have to grow in prayer. Growing Christians are praying Christians.
During the month of January, we’re studying the most famous prayer ever prayed: the Lord’s Prayer. This ancient prayer has taught believers how to pray for thousands of years.
In giving us this model prayer, Jesus’s goal isn’t that we repeat the words like a parrot. Rather, he wants to remake the way we pray, and in so doing remake us. The Lord’s Prayer shows us that it’s not about praying more but about praying differently.
Our Petitions Begin with God’s Priorities
But how does prayer work? To grow in prayer you need to know how it works. What materials is prayer built out of? Last week we saw that prayer begins and ends with God, that prayer starts with praise. Today we’re going to see that prayer continues with petitions.
But even in our petitions, or requests, there’s an order that Jesus teaches us. He says that our petitions should begin with God. The first three petitions of the prayer are about God and the second three are about us. Jesus says we start with God’s praise, focusing on who God is (“Our Father in heaven”), then we move to God’s priorities: his name, kingdom, and will. Jesus is teaching us to put God’s goals first in our prayers.
Last week we looked at verse 9 and the first petition, “hallowed be your name.” Today we’ll look at verse 10 and the second and third petitions, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The main point of verse 10 is that our petitions begin with God’s priorities. Jesus tells us to pray for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on the earth.
Why does Jesus put God’s kingdom in the heart of his model prayer? Because the kingdom of God was the heart of his ministry. Since this part of the prayer is focused on the kingdom of God, we need to get our biblical bearings about the kingdom.
Our points to consider today are: What is the kingdom of God? Why should we pray for it to come? And where is it now?
What is the Kingdom of God?
The kingdom of God was the central theme of Jesus’ ministry. Mark tells us that after Jesus was baptized and tempted in the wilderness, he went into Galilee preaching the gospel, saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” (1:15).
Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t define what he means by “kingdom of God” anywhere, but he and his original Jewish audience would’ve understood what he meant based on the Old Testament.
In the Old Testament, God promised his people that he’d save them and defeat their enemies. The kingdom of God would come when God’s people were saved and their enemies judged. The kingdom of God was anticipated as a future event.
For first century Jews, the kingdom was something that would come later. This is one reason why Jesus tells his disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come.”
Remarkably, Jesus says that he’s the king who’ll decide who enters the kingdom (Mt. 25:31-46). He says that his return will begin the end-time kingdom of God (Mt. 26:64). He understands his role as central in the coming kingdom of God.
For Jesus, the kingdom of God will indeed come one day, and as God’s king he’ll oversee its establishment on the earth.
Kingdom of God is Present
But, in a surprising plot twist, Jesus goes even further and says that the kingdom of God has already come to the earth, that it’s a present reality that people can experience now. For example, he says in Matthew 12:28, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” He’s saying that his exorcisms are a sign that the future kingdom of God has broken into history. Unlike Adam, Jesus doesn’t fail to kick the snake out of the garden. God’s promised victory over evil has arrived in him.
And in Luke 17:20-21, it says, “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There!” for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.’”
Jesus says that the Pharisees are wrong when they say that the kingdom of God can be forecasted by watching for signs. Rather, it’s already standing right in front of them in the person of Jesus. Such a concept was mystifying for Jesus’ enemies and even his followers. They couldn’t understand how the future kingdom of God could be present in Jesus.
But Jesus says plainly that the kingdom is present with him and made visible through his work. Yes, he believed it was coming in the future too. But in a move no one expected, he says that it’s already here.
As New Testament scholar Tom Schreiner says, the kingdom of God is present in Jesus “in that the saving promises of the kingdom…had dawned with his coming.”[1] Jesus’s coming was the dawning of the kingdom of God on the earth.
The Dawning of Salvation
In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (the movie), just before the battle at Helms Deep, there’s a scene where Gandalf says to Aragorn, “Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day. At dawn, look to the East.”
Then when the battle at Helms Deep is not going well and it looks like the evil Orcs are going to win, with the rising of the sun Gandalf suddenly arrives with a great army. The dawn brought salvation for the men of Middle Earth.
In the same way, Jesus’ arrival on the earth was the dawning of the end-time kingdom of God, meaning that salvation had come for the people of God. But just as Gandalf’s appearance didn’t completely destroy the enemy (it wouldn’t be till Frodo throws the ring into the fires of Mount Doom that evil is completely destroyed), so also Jesus’ first appearance was only the beginning of the end. At his second coming, he’ll throw the ring into the fire so to speak and all evil will be destroyed. In Jesus, the kingdom of God has already been inaugurated but not yet consummated.
So what is the kingdom of God? It’s about the fulfillment of God’s promises to save his people and defeat their enemies. It’s where Jesus’ kingly rule is humbly acknowledged and joyfully followed.
Why Should We Pray for the Kingdom of God to Come?
In Jesus, God started moving, if you will, from heaven back to earth. His kingdom began to come. But if the kingdom of God is present in Jesus, why does Jesus tell us to pray for it to come? Why do we pray for its arrival if it already arrived?
The answer is two-fold. First, we pray for the spreading of the kingdom now. And second, we pray for coming of the kingdom soon.
The Spreading of the Kingdom Now
Let’s take these one at a time. Jesus is king of the universe, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him (Mt. 28:18). He’s reigning over all things: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Ps. 103:19).
God reigns over the whole universe, but his rule isn’t visible to all. So we’re to pray that his visible rule would expand across the world and in our hearts.
- I. Packer says God’s kingdom is more about a relationship than a place. It’s wherever Jesus is enthroned as Lord over people’s lives.
The problem is that we like to be king. This is why Jesus says to Nicodemus that no one can see or enter the kingdom without being radically transformed from the inside out (Jn. 3:3). He says we need the Spirit to show us the kingdom, but we must not be too proud to ask for it or refuse to be changed in whatever ways the King says is necessary.
This means that, as Packer says, when we pray “your kingdom come,” we need to be ready to add “and start with me, make me your fully obedient subject.”[2]
The next petition, “your will be done,” is getting at the same thing. Jesus wants us to bring our wills, goals, desires, and plans under his. Jesus practiced what he preached here. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Mt. 26:39).
Jesus was facing mind-blowing horror, with every kind of pain staring him down, especially the prospect of bearing our sins and being forsaken by the Father. Yet he humbly prayed, “not as I will, but as you will.” Do you have that kind of posture before the Lord?
It’s not hard to repeat the words “your will be done,” but to mean them will test the genuineness of our faith. John Stott says it this way:
“To pray (these words) with sincerity…has revolutionary implications, for it expresses the priorities of a Christian. We are constantly under pressure to conform to the self-centeredness of secular culture. When that happens we become concerned about our own little name (defending it when it is attacked), about our own little empire (bossing, ‘influencing’ and manipulating people to boost our ego), and about our own silly little will (always wanting our own way and getting upset when it is frustrated). But in the Christian counter-culture our top priority concern is not our name, kingdom and will, but God’s. Whether we can pray these petitions with integrity is a searching test of the reality and depth of our Christian profession.”[3]
Praying “your will be done” with integrity means accepting life on God’s terms, and that can be scary. But remember where the Lord’s Prayer began, “Our Father.” If we’re certain that God is our Father, we can humbly accept whatever comes. If we believe that God is a good Father, we can trust his will for our lives.
The Coming of the Kingdom Soon
The second reason we pray for the kingdom to come is because we want Jesus to return and bring his kingdom fully to the earth. With the apostle John, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20) The kingdom has been inaugurated, but the Lord’s people long for the consummation.
God promised to set up his kingdom on the earth, but that doesn’t mean we don’t pray for it to happen. Matthew Henry says that God’s promises are what we must pray for, that he gives us promises to quicken our prayers. The promise is God’s goal. Our prayers are God’s means of accomplishing his goals.
Jesus is teaching us that prayer begins with God, first in praise and then in petitions. Our own needs don’t dominate prayer. The first things we ask for are about God and about our relationship with him.
This way of praying can literally change our lives. We’re all self-centered, meaning we’re all curved in our ourselves, distorting our vision of God and others. But Jesus teaches us to pray God-centered prayers, and as we do, he starts to heal our self-centeredness, untwisting our selfish hearts and making them more like his.
Where is the Kingdom of God Now?
The kingdom of God is where Jesus’s kingly rule is accepted and enjoyed. But if the kingdom of God came with Jesus and is present now, where is it?
Put simply, the kingdom of God is found wherever Jesus is king. Where is Jesus king? Where is his rule today? Wherever his will is done “on earth as it is in heaven.” Where’s that? In local churches that acknowledge his rule and live out his word. Gospel-preaching local churches are where we see Jesus’ landless, borderless kingdom on the earth.
Citizens of Heaven
In his book Church Membership, Jonathan Leeman says that we should think of church members as citizens of God’s kingdom. Philippians 3:20, “Our citizenship is in heaven.” The church isn’t the kingdom, but it is an outpost, or embassy, of the kingdom. An embassy cannot make anyone a citizen, but it can officially affirm someone’s citizenship. An embassy represents one nation in another nation.
In the same way, the church represents a place from the future. Our home country isn’t this earth. We’re strangers and aliens (1 Pet. 2:11). But there’s a place on earth where the citizens of heaven can find asylum: the local church. Churches represent Christ’s rule on the earth now. A church member is someone who is officially recognized as a citizen of God’s kingdom, meaning that they can now, as Jonathan Leeman says, “enjoy many of the rights, benefits, and obligations of citizenship even though living in a foreign land.”[4] This doesn’t mean that churches always get it right, but it’s their job to identify and affirm those who belong to the kingdom and those who don’t.
Membership in the New Testament is never viewed as a formal matter of paperwork. Being a member of a church means being a representative of Jesus’ kingdom on the earth. This tells us that church membership is a high honor and great responsibility.
How do you view church membership? Consider this illustration. Think of these four people and their attitudes toward church: Jerry follows Jesus but isn’t into “organized religion.” He feels he worships best by going for a hike on Sunday. Leann is a church hopper. She’s here for a while, there for a while. She worships somewhere pretty much every Sunday, but never really “lands” in a church. Natasha found a great singles group. She’s always at the singles group and shows up at church in the morning when the sermon seems like it’ll be interesting. Jose loves the preaching at his church, but he tends to slip out right after the service. He never really talks to anyone and has never really thought about joining.
What do all these people have in common? They all see themselves as Christians, but they all see the church as unrelated to their faith. They all see no connection between being a citizen of heaven and being a member in one of heaven’s embassies or outposts, a local church.
Affirming Citizens of the Kingdom
Churches that take membership seriously will also take church discipline seriously because they want the church to look like the kingdom as much as possible. So sometimes, when church members live in outward, serious, and unrepentant sin, the church must remove them from membership. People inevitably ask, “By whose authority are you doing this?” Or, “You’re not God, who gives you the right to do this?”
Simply put, Jesus gives the church the authority to do this. He gives the church the “keys of the kingdom” (Mt. 16:19, 18:18), or the authority to consider someone’s confession and their life and make a judgment on heaven’s behalf. The church is given the task of affirming who on earth is a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. We do this when we receive or dismiss members.
Because churches are outposts of the kingdom of God, we must pray and work to make our church as much like heaven as possible. We can’t call Jesus our King and not do his will. So we pray for him to rule us and that in everything we’d be ruled by him.
What part of your life needs to come under Jesus’ rule? What area of our church’s life needs to look more like heaven?
Because of the prevalence of Satan’s will, the earth looks more like hell than heaven. So Jesus teaches us to pray that God’s will would be done in our hearts, families, church, and the world so that the world will look more like heaven. Our prayers can literally change the world.
The Kingdom Has Dawned on the Earth
Verse 10 teaches us that our petitions begin with God’s priorities, and at the heart of his priorities is his kingdom, so we pray for it to expand and spread across the earth and in our hearts..
When Jesus came, the kingdom of God dawned on the earth. Now, through our prayers, Jesus wants to expand the warmth and beauty and light of his kingdom on the earth.
Only those who’ve been “born again” can see the light of God’s kingdom (Jn. 3:3). If the light of his kingdom has dawned in your heart, you’ll want to join him in this work through prayer.
Have you seen the light of his kingdom? Do you want to see it? If you’ll accept Jesus as your King, you will.
[1]Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 54.
[2]J. I. Packer, Growing in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), 200.
[3]John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978), 147-8.
[4]Jonathan Leeman, Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 29.