In a
previous blog I wrote that the Lord's Prayer was Jesus' response to His
disciples request to be taught how to pray (Luke 11:1f). The Lord's Prayer is
so much more than just a prayer to say. This simple outline of what prayer
involves is a rich and helpful guide to our praying involving Abba prayer,
Adoration Prayer, Advancing Prayer and Asking Prayer.
In
previous blogs I looked at Abba prayer and Adoration prayer, let's now consider
Advancing Prayer.
This
praying that seeks the advance of God's priorities must precede
our Asking God for things in prayer.
Advancing
prayer is expressed in Matthews version of the Lord's Prayer as:
' Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as
it is in heaven.' (
By 'kingdom' is meant
the rule and reign of God.
This Advancing in
prayer means firstly that we accept God's Sovereign rule
"Your
kingdom" indicates that this rule and reign of God is an
established reality. This is not a prayer for God to become or to be made
king. God is forever king. Psalm 10:16 says, "The Lord is king forever and
ever". Psalm
145:13 declares, "Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your
dominion endures throughout
all generations", and in Jeremiah
10:10 we read that "the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the
everlasting King."
The sun
rises and sets. The rain waters the earth. Crops grow. We eat and drink and
survive and this is all because God is Sovereignly sustaining His creation. (See Psalm
104).
But in
this Advancing prayer we do more than just assume the sovereignty of God. We also entreat God’s Saving rule.
We pray ‘your
kingdom come' so that 'your will be done on earth as it is in heaven'.
This could be seen as a simple definition of what Jesus meant by the kingdom of
God: namely, God ruling so as to get His will done. Another way of seeing this
is as God coming to save the earth from all that is contrary to His will.
Though God
sovereignly overrules the earth in providence and sustenance, many things
happen on 'earth' that are not the 'will' or desire of God
as it is revealed in the written Word of God (see Psalm 40:8).
When we
pray ‘your kingdom come’ we are asking God to come and savingly rule the earth
so that His ‘will’ gets ‘done’.
What does
it look like when God’s will gets done? Answer, it looks like heaven! We pray 'your
will be done on earth as it is in heaven', because ‘heaven’ is the realm
in which God’s will gets perfectly and continually done. Think of heaven, where
there is no sickness, no suffering, no sin, no separation from the manifest
Presence of God. Heaven is a healthy, happy, peaceful, loving, prosperous,
God-conscious, worshipping place.
We are
given a glimpse into heaven in Revelation 21:3-4:
‘[3] And I
heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God
is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God
himself will be with them as their God. [4] He will wipe away every tear from
their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor
crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (ESV)
In this
prayer we seek the advance of God’s saving, ‘kingdom’, rule so that this ‘earth’
becomes more like ‘heaven’: more of the dwelling of God with His people, more
laughing, more health and less of things like sickness and suffering that cause
crying, pain and death.
And the
great assumption of this advancing prayer for God’s kingdom to come is that we welcome God’s Spirit rule.
When we
pray ‘your kingdom come’ we need to remember how it is that the kingdom of
God comes. In Matthew 12:28, Jesus said, ‘If it is by the Spirit of God that I
cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.’ From this verse we
learn that ‘the kingdom of God’ comes ‘by the Spirit of God’. We see the same
thing in Romans 14:17, which says that ‘the kingdom of God is ….in the Holy
Spirit’.
When we
pray for the advance of God’s saving kingdom rule, we are actually praying for
God’s Holy Spirit to ‘come’ and establish more of ‘heaven’ on earth.
What an
awesome and powerful way to pray!
