Matthew 6:9-10 NIVUK
[9] ‘This, then, is how you should pray: ‘ “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, [10] your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
‘Who is in charge here?’
Have you ever been in a restaurant or an office when an irate customer has thundered those words. It’s never a good thing. Often, it turns out to be for nothing. Sometimes it’s just to feel that their complaints are being taken seriously.
But occasionally, just occasionally, the customer has a point.
This section of the Lord's Prayer – or ‘The Prayer of Letting Go’ as I’m calling it - is about precisely that: who is in charge.
And it’s here we hit a massive problem.
Ever since the Fall, human beings have sought to assert their control. But, most ironically, the reality is that we are never in control.
We like to claim that we are living life on our terms, that it’s our life, our way or the highway.
But it isn’t. It really isn’t.
Ecclesiastes 8:7-8 NIVUK
[7] Since no-one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come? [8] As no-one has power over the wind to contain it, so no-one has power over the time of their death.
If we try to bring our life completely under our control, we will ultimately cause ourselves a ton of stress with absolutely nothing to show for it. It is a Sisyphean task. It cannot be done.
This prayer contains the cure for the immense stress caused by our lack of control over even the tinest part of our destiny.
Let. It. Go.
Trust God.
But the cure for this stress also has a very interesting effect.
You see, when we try to take control over our own lives, we are in effect trying to dethrone God from His rightful place. We become pretenders to His throne.
The only way we can get rid of the oversized burden of trying to run our own lives is to relinquish our pretension and hand over to God what is rightfully His.
That is precisely what Jesus is telling us to do here.
And is also precisely what makes it so challenging.
The first thing we see here is that this is about Dominion – that of the Kingdom of God.
Now, this is where we must understand this absolutely correctly.
Many commentators have pointed out that there is a group of Jews who are seeking to re-establish Israel as a nation free of outside presence or influence so that it can be ruled by the Messiah when He returns. This type of Zionist thinking is based on a distortion of Old Testament teaching and is rife throughout both Judaism and Protestant Christianity. Doomsday religious cults have often manipulated this thinking.
But the Bible doesn’t support it.
In fact, it’s not confined to Jewish or Christian religious teaching.
Islamic State tried – and failed disastrously – to do the same thing in Syria and Iraq.
The Taliban are trying to do the same thing in Afghanistan.
There is an argument that Hindu nationalists are trying to do the same thing in India.
Neither is it even confined to religion.
Socialist groups tried to do it a few centuries ago to transform the ‘dark, satanic mills’ into places where people would earn a fair wage for a fair job.
The Nazis tried to do it in the run-up to the Second World War.
The Communists tried to do it before their ideology was bankrupted in 1989.
And now, despite the clear, unequivocal witness of history that this type of utopian thinking has never worked, can never work, will never work, so-called ‘Christian nationalists’ are trying to do precisely the same thing.
Let me state this as clearly as I can: the Kingdom of God is neither political nor even physical. As Jesus told Pilate:
John 18:36 NIVUK
[36] Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’
Understand this: any and all human efforts to bring about the ‘kingdom’ God by fear, force or politics – even right politics – will always fail.
Why?
Because human beings are sinful (Romans 3:10-18, 23). They are completely and utterly incapable of making anything perfect. So any plan or design for a utopia will ultimately fail. Utterly.
No, the Kingdom of God comes about when we each, as individuals, set aside our own plans and right to rule and submit to God to obey Him. That is the point of all the parables on the Kingdom of God (Matthew 13:1-52,18:21-35, 20:1-16, 22:1-14, 25:1-30).
It is not, and never will be, about a dictatorship or a democracy.
It is about a theocracy – accepting the direct rule of God on our lives. Direct. Not through an intermediary.
And there lies the challenge. If we accept God’s rule on our lives, we must obey Him:
Luke 6:46 NIVUK
[46] ‘Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord,” and do not do what I say?
So, you see, praying for God’s Kingdom to come is proper and right and good.
But what if it came in you first? Would you let it?
Apart from dominion, we see that it is also a matter of Determination – that us, what God has determined and decided: His will.
Now we hit the north star by which the trajectory of our prayers is measured, now we hit the litmus test, now we find the spirit level of the straightness of our intentions.
This is where the rubber of our prayers hits the road.
Because this is where we find out the true nature of our prayer life.
Prayer is not about changing the mind of God; it is about us being conformed to the will of God.
Don’t believe me? Think about this:
Abraham intercedes on behalf of Sodom because his nephew Lot is there (Genesis 18:16-33). God agreed with Abraham that the city will be saved if only five righteous people are found in it, but only three are saved (Genesis 19:1-29). So despite Abraham’s pleading, God’s will is done.
Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel is often also cited as an example of how we can strong-arm God into getting what we want (Genesis 32:22-30). However, if that is what we believe, then we are forgetting one absolutely critical detail:
This was a wrestling match, not a prayer meeting.
It’s quite possible that Jacob ended up on his knees, but I think that was less because of deep prayerfulness and more to do with deep pain from his dislocated hip.
David spent a whole night fasting to try to get God to save his son, despite God’s will in the matter being clear (2 Samuel 12:13-24). His son still died. God’s will was done.
There are many such examples in Scripture.
But what about the verses that appear to say the contrary?
Proverbs 3:5-6 NIVUK
[5] Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; [6] in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 16:3 NIVUK
[3] Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.
These verses are not – as some other translations might hint – a promise that if we give the Lord an acknowledgement in the footnote of our lives then we can continue doing whatever we like. Quite the opposite: we live life on His terms, and he straightens our path; we commit ourselves to following His way, and He establishes our plans.
Psalms 37:3-6 NIVUK
[3] Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. [4] Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. [5] Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: [6] he will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.
Again, this verse is massively misunderstood. Ask yourself this: if you truly are delighting yourself in the Lord, what will be the desire of your heart?
Will it not be the Lord Himself?
If you say you are delighting in the Lord, but are actually doing so with an ulterior motive in order to get something from Him, are you truly delighting yourself in the Lord?
No. Of course not.
That is it, you see. These verses are from the book of Proverbs. Every line in that book is dedicated to encouraging us to follow the way of wisdom, which is to obey God and do His will. Not one word of it is on how you can convince God to do for you what you want.
Because prayer is not about us. It is about God. It is not about aligning His will with ours, but aligning our will with His.
But what is His will?
It’s easy for Christians – particularly young Christians – to get so hung up on this that they are paralysed by indecision.
Yet the answer is obvious: it is for us to be confirmed to the likeness of Christ:
Romans 8:29 NIVUK
[29] For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
And how does this happen?
Look at the context of the Lord’s Prayer. It is in the Sermon on the Mount, which describes perfectly how this happens:
Through obeying God. That is His will for us.
Micah 6:8 NIVUK
[8] He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
So when we pray for God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done, we can’t escape our part in this.
That’s why we now move from dominion and determination to Destination – where these things take place:
Matthew 6:9-10 NIVUK
[9] ‘This, then, is how you should pray: ‘ “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, [10] your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
There was a bit of a dichotomy in Jesus’ day, as there is now, between the sacred and the secular, between the heavenly and the earthly. Religion had its place, ‘real life’ had another.
This gave rise to incredible hypocrisies, where people of religious standing could use religion as a get-out clause for some seriously awful behaviour.
Jesus did not agree with that one bit (see Mark 7:1-23 for some examples).
Yes, God’s Kingdom was in Heaven. Yes, He rules there. Yes, His will is done there.
But we are to pray that it is done on earth too.
The Message’s paraphrasing of Romans 12:1-2 gives us a prime example of what this means:
Romans 12:1-2 MSG
[1-2] So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
God’s Kingdom coming and will being done on our earth means that He is Lord over the most mundane and earthly elements of our life.
And can change them.
For His glory.
Whenever I travel through the States, I come to believe in aliens.
But it has nothing to do with Area 51. Or the fact that, for some reason, every alien invasion movie has to take place in New York.
Especially if Texas Governor Greg Abbott has anything to do with it.
I mean because each time I pass through American immigration, I am classified as one, because I am not a US citizen or green card holder and therefore I'm classified, as English songwriter Sting so eloquently put it, as ‘a legal alien’.
This prayer divides people just as sharply as American immigration, if not more.
To pray this prayer – to really pray this prayer – you must pray for God’s dominion (His Kingdom) to come, and God’s determination (His will) to be done in the destination of earth, as it is in heaven.
Ultimately, that means that the life of the person praying this prayer has to change.
Forever.
Because it must come under the Lordship of Christ.
I once visited a nature park just outside of Vancouver. It was quite the place. But they had evidently had a bit of legal trouble in the past, because right next to the ticket office and the cable car was a huge wooden plaque listing all the terms and conditions for using the park.
And they were clear. Crystal clear. They even included a clause that said if you were injured or died as a result of their negligence, you had no right to sue.
We braved it. We went in.
We lived to tell the tale.
Here are the terms and conditions of praying this prayer. God doesn’t exactly hide them.
They are here in plain sight.
Pray this prayer and you accept Christ’s Lordship over this world, and over your life.
So tell me: can you, in all honesty, pray these words?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I don’t need things to be done my way. I accept Your rule as Lord and King. I will dedicate myself to following and obeying You. I repent of my sin and my rebellion. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit and lead me to live life Your way. Amen.
Questions
1. What does Jesus tell us to pray for here? Why?
2. Where is God’s will done perfectly? Where does Jesus pray that this will also take place? Why is this important?
3. In all honesty, can you pray these words?
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