Wednesday, January 27

Begin by reading the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 (NIV)
This then is how you should pray:
Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen.
(this last phrase is actually not in the oldest manuscripts of the Bible, but was added from later tradition)

Your Kingdom come…
The announcement and inauguration of the Kingdom of God was the primary message of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The phrase “kingdom of heaven” or “kingdom of God” occurs over 100 times in the Gospels. But what is the Kingdom? Curiously, we are never given a concise definition of it. Instead we are given descriptions in metaphors, images and analogies. Most of the parables begin with the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

Essentially, the Kingdom of Heaven is a world that operates in perfect accordance with God’s will. This is the meaning of the second phrase, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We don’t have to look very far to in our world to see that His Kingdom is not yet fully realized. War, disease, disaster, corruption, oppression are all around us. It would be easy to dismiss this part of the Lord’s Prayer as a kind of spiritual wishful thinking.

But, the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed was not something that began with nations, countries, or social structures. The Kingdom of God is something that begins in the individual human heart. The kingdom of God begins with me…with you!

When you pray for His Kingdom to come, you are not just praying for wars and hunger to cease, a kind of peace on earth in a general way, you are praying for your life to operate in accordance with God’s will. You are praying for His Kingdom to rule and His will to be done in your heart!

It is often much easier to pray for God’s Kingdom to come “out there” in the world than it is to pray for it to come “in here” in my own heart.

Spend some time with your King asking Him to show you where your heart and life need some “Kingdom realignment”…

Pastor Jeff