“Prayer does not enable us to do a greater work for God. Prayer IS a greater work for God” (Thomas Chalmers). Prayer is not an optional extra to the work of the church – prayer IS the work of the church. So we all need to learn to pray which is why we are working through the Lord’s prayer which gives us a pattern for all our prayers.
We start by praying to Our Father, Abba, Daddy. We continually need to develop our relationship with God our Heavenly Father.
Who art in Heaven. This reminds of just how great God is. He is Almighty and glorious, Ever-present and All-knowing, Eternal, Holy and Righteous, Loving and yet Transcendent.
Hallowed be your name. May your holy name be honoured. Glorify your name in all the earth. And God’s name will be glorified if the next two petitions are answered.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Two requests which run in parallel and are all centred on God himself.
Some people have the wrong idea that God’s kingdom only exists where human beings acknowledge God as King and allow him to be King. That is not the way it is at all. God is always King. And the world experiences God’s Rule as King whenever God chooses and in whatever ways God chooses. God’s kingdom comes when God in his Sovereign power acts as King in his world. So what are we actually praying for when we pray, Thy Kingdom Come? We are praying for the return of Christ. “Come, O Lord!”
God is King and always has been King and always will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. God is Sovereign Ruler of All. But at present he is allowing evil to continue to exist. Sin and suffering have been defeated, but they still exist in the universe. At the moment, God is on the Throne of Heaven despite the presence of evil and all its consequences on the earth. But one day evil will be removed completely and every eye will acknowledge him as King.
This was the central hope we find in so many places in the Old Testament looking forward to God acting as King to bring His salvation to all the earth.
Isaiah 52:7-10 7 How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ 8 Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. 9 Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. 10 The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.
In Jesus’s generation the Kaddish was the prayer that Jews prayed every day to God, “Magnified and sanctified be his great name. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime, even especially at a near time”. Every Jew would bring this urgent prayer that God would bring this world to a close, to bring an end to injustice and suffering and to begin his eternal reign of peace and joy. That was the hope which Jesus picked up on when he proclaimed in his own ministry, “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” And that is the hope which underpins that phrase in the Lord’s prayer, “Your Kingdom come.”
Jesus came announcing to everybody that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, in other words that the reign of God on earth was beginning. God’s kingly rule was beginning, but it did not fully arrive in Jesus’s lifetime. Even after the decisive victory over sin and death and the devil which Jesus won on the cross, and even after his glorious resurrection from the dead, God’s Kingly Rule on earth was not fully complete. The prayer, “your Kingdom come” was not fully answered – so we are still praying forward to the return of Christ, the Second Coming.
2 Peter 3 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. 11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
Only when Jesus returns and there is a new heaven and a new earth will God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Until then we are in the Last Days, the time between Jesus’s first coming and his Second Coming. God’s Kingdom has been inaugurated, but it is not yet fully established.
So for almost 2000 years the church has been praying the same prayer, “Come, O Lord.” It is such an important prayer that the phrase is retained in the original language of Aramaic in 1 Corinthians 16:22 in the middle of the rest which is in Greek. The phrase is Marana tha – our Lord come. And the prayer is there in Revelation 22:20. He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. (So be it) Come, Lord Jesus!
God’s eternal Kingdom is not based on us acknowledging him as King. It is all about the things God does as king by his Sovereign power. We cannot do anything to bring in or to build the Kingdom of God. Only Christ can do that and he WILL do that when he returns in glory. We can’t make Jesus return – we can only pray, “Your Kingdom Come.”
But we don’t need to wait until the Second Coming of Jesus to see the beginnings of that prayer being answered. God had already begun to reveal his glorious salvation! In his earthly ministry Jesus announced, “The Kingdom has come near you” The Kingly rule of God has not completely arrived. But it certainly began as Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom in words and also in actions. In bringing healing and deliverance. In sharing table fellowship with sinners. In forgiving sins. All these were acts of love and power repairing the damage and suffering which sin has caused in the world. And all these signs of the coming Kingdom of God were repeated in the life of the Early Church, as Jesus at the end of Mark’s Gospel had commanded.
Mark 16 15 He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on people who are ill, and they will get well.’
19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. 20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
God’s Kingdom will only fully be established when Jesus returns, but God is already preparing the world for that day as his Kingly Rule in invading this present darkness. When we pray “your kingdom come” Christians are praying that God will act in sovereign power here and now to set people free from suffering and sin and evil. We are asking God to break in and transform the world and the church. We are acknowledging that we cannot build the Kingdom of God. Only God can do that. Through miracles of healing and deliverance. Only the power of the Holy Spirit, the dynamo and the dynamite of God’s power, can bring God’s Kingly Rule.
SHOW YOUR POWER, O LORD,
Demonstrate the justice of Your kingdom.
Prove Your mighty word.
Vindicate Your name Before a watching world.
Awesome are Your deeds, O Lord; Renew them for this hour.
Show Your power, O Lord, Among the people now.
In praying “your kingdom come” we are inviting God’s Holy Spirit to break into our lives. Praying for that day when God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. But that has to begin with a personal response. Beginning with me – may God’s will be done in my life.
Of course, praying “your will be done” is not about us telling God what we think should happen. The Almighty and Omniscient Creator and Redeemer doesn’t need our bright ideas for solving the problems of the universe! It is God’s will which must be done. Our task is simply to find out what God’s will is and say, “Yes Lord, do that”.
So we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” On the whole earth. By every person in every country all around the world. May every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen come Lord Jesus.