Advancing Prayer

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.' (Matthew 6:10)

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!