“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.” [Matthew 6:9-13]
Anybody still ‘saying’ the Lord’s Prayer, or ‘reciting’ it? If nothing else, I hope you now treat it as an act of worship to God. Picking up where we left off two weeks ago–
“…your kingdom come…“–Jesus asks us to pray to God that His kingdom come to earth, as nothing would please Him more. In fact, Jesus Himself spoke about God’s kingdom dozens of times, e.g., “The time has come, he said. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” [Mark 1:15]. Alas, this kingdom was not fully realized during Jesus’ earthly ministry. When Pilate was interrogating Jesus just before being crucified, we read: “Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now, my kingdom is from another place.‘” [John 18:36]
Fortunately, we can read from many scriptures that the kingdom of God is going to come to earth, at the end of this age. My favorite:
“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.” (Thessalonians 4:16-18]
It’s becoming obvious to me that my supposed two-week discussion of the Lord’s Prayer will be extended a bit! But as I said, since Jesus taught us how to pray, then we would do well to dive a little deeper into the meaning of each phrase in the prayer. I can only hope that you, like me, are achieving a better level of understanding of this special prayer.
Blessings,
Keith