Into the Lord’s Prayer: Your Kingdom Come

by    29th October 2008    0 responses
Part of the series

lords-prayer

Image: jessamyn @ Flickr

Jesus went to great pains to explain to his followers and critics what his father’s “kingdom” was.  There was a great expectation among the Jews of the time that God would come with an army to redeem his Chosen People and give Israel back to them.  They made a mockery of Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah, not because he spoke a load of lies but because he didn’t come in force.  How could a man of peace drive out the Romans?  How could a teacher who spoke in parables inspire an army to go to war?  Jesus’ answer was to go right back to the base of their argument and challenge the very core of what they were expecting – God’s kingdom was not what they were expecting.

However, it is not as straightforward as saying that God’s kingdom is heaven, and that one day the world will end and his believers will be in heaven, and that is what we’re praying for.  To a certain extent, yes we are praying for that final deliverance, but I believe the main thrust of this line (and indeed Jesus’ teaching elsewhere) is that God’s kingdom is here on earth.  How does that tally up?  God’s kingdom is not a physical kingdom, and yet is based on earth?

God made man from dust.  At the end of our lives our bodies return to dust.  Physically speaking, that makes our lives pretty pointless.  And that’s the point Jesus is making here.  God is not so much concerned with our physical selves as our spiritual selves.  God’s kingdom is made up of people, not bodies.  God seeks our hearts and minds, that we may be part of a family so big that ‘kingdom’ is a more adequate description.

When we pray for God’s kingdom to come, one of the main things we are asking for is that more people would come to Christ, that the body of believers would grow in number, that the people around us would come to faith and join the family.  Of course, there’s a problem there, because people don’t become Christians by magic.  Rarely do people come to faith overnight.  Who is going to give the gospel to your next door neighbour?  Who is going to tell the person sitting behind you on the bus?  Who is going to invite your work colleague to church?  You.  Me.  Our prayer, “your kingdom come”, is almost a promise.  We pray for opportunities to speak to people about God, but we need to be the ones actually taking those opportunities when God provides them.  We need to be the active component of encouraging the expansion of God’s kingdom.

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Matthew has long had a strong involvement with Christian websites. He was a keen contributor to the original Crossring site, and subsequently launched his own website, Focus On Faith. Focus On Faith was incorporated into Crossring in September 2009, and Matthew took on the role of lead writer for the site. Matthew works as a web designer, and lives in the West Country with his wife, Ellie.

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