Your Kingdom Come: The Way You Pray Changes the Way You Live
Your Kingdom Come
What do you think about when you think about Heaven?
What is life like in heaven?
Learning to Drive
Earlier this year our son turned 15. Which means, he now has his driver’s permit. So now my wife and I have a mission. Over the next year, we have to teach him how to drive, which, by the way, has been really good for our prayer life!
This is part of what it means to be a parent and what it means to be a kid. There is always something to be learned and something to be taught.
Here in the state of Texas, when you get your drivers permit you have to complete a 32 hour theory course. Then you have to complete 14 hours of observation. After that, you need an additional 30 hours of driving before you can get your license.
Before he even turned 15, Will would come to me and ask me, “Dad will you teach me how to drive?”
He knew before he ever started driving that he needed someone to teach him HOW to drive.
Teaching Comes before Doing
A few years ago I got to go with my kids down to the Life Safety Park here in Coppell.
It’s a really neat place and one of the things they let the kids do is drive these go-carts around this little town. They have streets, stop signs, stop lights, all the things. It’s like a little town. The only problem is that the children driving these go-carts have had little to no instruction about how to drive much less what the street signs mean.
So it’s literally a crazy town watching the cars run all over the roads. Adults are trying to get the go carts back on course. Half the kids are crying on the side of the road. The other half are going way over the speed limit and running over the curb.
There’s a reason we wait until people turn 16, make them complete a written test and a driving test BEFORE we give them a driver’s license.
There’s a reason we teach people how to drive before we send them out to drive.
Why did they ask to learn HOW to PRAY?
In the same way, before Jesus SENT his disciples to go into the world, he spent three years INSTRUCTING them how to LIVE and how to PRAY.
What’s interesting to me is that one of Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them HOW to pray. Just like my son asked me to teach him how to drive, this disciple wanted Jesus to teach them how to pray.
WHY?
I think it’s important to ask this question… WHY did Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them how to pray?
For one thing, as a disciple of Jesus, there is ALWAYS something to be taught and something to be learned.
But WHY did a disciple specifically ask Jesus about prayer?
If you’ve ever read the gospel of Luke from cover to cover, one thing you’ll realize is that Jesus PRAYS a lot!
Luke says,
“But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.” Luke 5.16
“One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.” Luke 6.12
“One day Jesus left the crowds to pray alone.” Luke 9.18
… just to give three examples. You can find many more references to the prayer life of Jesus in Luke’s gospel.
And this made an impression on Jesus’ disciples. They understood that the way Jesus LIVED was a direct result of the way Jesus PRAYED. That his life and ministry and power flowed from his prayer life.
Our Father, Your Kingdom Come
So Jesus began with these words we talked about in my previous post:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
Jesus started by changing their image of God and in so doing he changes their relationship to God. When you IMAGE God as your Father it changes your relationship to God. Now you are His son, His daughter!
But changing your relationship to God and your image of God does not change what is unchanging: the holiness of God. He is still God. He is still the great I AM. But in His great compassion He welcomes you and invites you to call Him, “Father.”
And then, Jesus makes his second move. He teaches his disciples to pray:
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
What does it mean to pray this way?
What is Heaven Like?
First, we have to find a way to answer the question, “What is heaven like?” Because when we do then we can start imagining how we can both PRAY and PARTICIPATE in making things on earth as they are in heaven.
I think when Jesus taught his disciples to pray this way, he was using a line from his own prayer life. Something I’m sure he prayed often when talking to our Father.
Jesus knew what life is like in Heaven. He came from heaven to earth. And he came with a burning desire to make things here on earth as they are in heaven. He came with a mission to set the world right and bring people back to God.
This is what made Jesus different from anyone they had ever met before, what made him different than any other religious leader that came before him or would ever come after him, was that he was somehow linked to a deep power outside of this world.
And they wanted this same kind of power in their lives.
And don’t misunderstand… they didn’t want power to do miracles for miracles sake. They weren’t looking for power to overpower their enemies or to prop themselves up as better than everyone else. They weren’t looking for that because that’s NOT what Jesus was doing.
That’s not how He was using this power that He had that they knew came from His prayer life.
Jesus was using his power to MAKE THINGS ON EARTH AS THEY ARE IN HEAVEN.
Jesus used his power, the power he received in PRAYER, to love the unlovable. To love His enemies. To be gracious and kind. To never be in a hurry. To have a non-anxious presence. To be a person of peace and to be a peacemaker. What they wanted was to possess the same ability Jesus possessed to disarm an angry crowd, to take a trick question from an ill-intended adversary and turn it into a teaching moment for everyone there.
What his disciples wanted was to live the life Jesus was living in front of them, and they knew that the way Jesus LIVED came from the way Jesus PRAYED. So they came and they asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Two Kigdoms
So Jesus says, pray this way:
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Can we be honest for a moment? More often than not, we spend a lot of time praying about OUR KINGDOMS.
I think this is what a lot of us do but I’ll let you take a moment to take an inventory of your own prayer life. I think what happens for a lot of us, myself included, is that we spend a whole lot of time praying for our own success.
We pray for the kingdoms we’re building. For the careers we’re building. We pray for the lives we’re building. For God to bless our efforts. For God to give us the house, the contract, the business, the car, the degree, the college we want, the money, the fortune, the favor, all of it.
And the reality is… If you’re praying for your kingdom to come, then you’re living for your will to be done. And I would suggest you’re praying and you’re living for too small a thing.
But… if your praying for God’s kingdom to come, then you’re living for his will to be done!
When we pray for our kingdoms, our success, our careers, even our own families… what ends up happening is we start looking to God as a FIXER. And we’ve talked about this before but I’ll just mention it again. Out of all the names we have for God revealed in scripture, Fixer is not one of them. Yet if you look at our prayer lives most of the time what we’re asking God to do is FIX things that affect the kingdoms we’re striving to build.
But this isn’t the way Jesus PRAYED and it’s not the way Jesus LIVED.
And if you need proof, then may I suggest you fast forward to the end of Jesus’ life.
Not My Will
He has just finished the Passover meal with his disciples. He takes them to the Mount of Olives to worship. They’ve sung a song together and now they are going to spend some time in prayer. They’ve done this before with Jesus. And they’re not at all surprised to see Jesus go off on his own to pray by himself.
Most of the time, when Jesus withdraws to a place by himself to pray we have no idea what he’s praying. But this time we do. In fact, all four of the gospel writers tell us what Jesus prayed when he withdrew to be alone to pray in this moment. This is the moment right before he’s arrested. Right before he’s falsely tried three times, beaten within an inch of his life, and then crucified at mid-day on Friday, hung on cross, naked, for all the world to see.
Do you want to know what Jesus prayed for in the garden right before all of that happened?
What would you have prayed for?
I might have prayed for an escape route! I might have prayed for deliverance. For protection from my enemies. I might have stopped praying and taken matters into my own hands and started running for my life. This is what a lot of us do, right? When things get hard we stop praying and we start fighting for self preservation. But not Jesus.
With the cross before Him, with soldiers on the way to arrest him, three of the gospel writers tell us that Jesus knelt and prayed these words..
“…not my will be done but yours be done.” – Luke 22.42
Sounds a lot like… your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Driving on 121
What would it look like for you to pray that prayer?
For a lot of us, we never learned to pray this way before we started trying to live as disciples of Jesus. So we’ve spent much of our Christian life frustrated.
We were taught to pray a certain way, to pray for God’s favor over our plans, for God’s blessings over our success, for God to help us achieve our goals.
Listen, God cares about you and God cares about what you care about. But as long as we’re praying for God to bless our mission instead of asking God to bless his mission we’re going to feel frustrated sometimes. As long as we’re asking God to help us achieve our goals instead of asking God to help us achieve His goals, we’re going to have difficulty.
So a few weeks ago I hurt my back and I told my son Will, “Ok bud, you’re going to have drive. Not just down the street, but on Highway 121.”
Up to this point, he had never driven on Highway 121. He had driven in our neighborhood. Even on Denton Tap Road, a major road in our little town which… that’s an accomplishment within itself. But now, I needed him to do something he had never done before.
And he did great because he had taken the time to LEARN how to drive.
Praying Your Kingdom Come
What happens for so many of us is that we’re scared to do what God is calling us to do. We live in fear of what might happen if. We’re terrified of failure. We’re much more comfortable with the status quo. We’re simply unwilling to step out in faith.
I would suggest the reason for this is because most of never learned to pray, and if we did, we didn’t learn to pray from Jesus.
And then, when there is an opportunity before us to make things on earth as they are in heaven, to step out in faith, we don’t do it. We’ve spent too many years praying for our kingdom to come. We don’t even know what it looks like to pray or participate in God’s kingdom.
BUT… what would happen if we took time to learn how to PRAY?
And what if we learned to pray… YOUR kingdom come, NOT my kingdom. NOT my success. NOT my career. NOT my fortune. NOT my family. Not my life. YOURS!
I think this could change everything for us. Because…
The way you PRAY changes the way you LIVE.
When we pray for our kingdom we live for our kingdom. But when we pray for HIS KINGDOM we live different. We live for HIM, we live for HIS Kingdom.
And now we, too, have the power to forgive. Now we, too, have the power to love our enemies, to pray for those who hurt us, to have compassion for those around us. Now, we, too, are filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Why? Because we’re no longer praying for our kingdom to come, we’re praying for HIS kingdom to come, for His will to be done. And now we get to participate in making things on earth as they are in heaven.
In fact, what if this week this was your prayer:
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
A Little Bit of Heaven Down Here
What do you think about when you think about heaven?
I don’t know about you but I don’t think anyone in heaven is holding a grudge. I don’t think anyone walking the streets of gold right now is complaining about anything. I don’t think anyone is worried or afraid or upset.
So what if we prayed for a little bit of that to make its way down here? And what if we could be a part of making that a reality?
Jesus came from heaven to earth with a mission to set the world right and bring people back to God. Then, before returning to our Father, he passed that mission on to his disciples.
Today, this is our mission and this is our prayer. Our Father, may Your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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