“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.” (Matthew 6:9-10 NIV)
In His kindness, the Lord has seen fit to bring us a few friends amidst our day-to-day ministry. Recently retired missionaries have decided to call our little church home and we are delighting in their involvement and giftings. A few months ago, they began leading intercessory prayer in the hour before Sunday service and as a result, I’m gleaning so much from this seasoned, faithful couple. Each week, they do a small teaching before we petition heaven together.
Yesterday, we sat with these verses. Our friend patiently explained how before we ask for anything, we do well to first acknowledge the holiness of God. “Hallowed be His name.” The NLT says “May Your name be kept holy.”
It’s got me thinking. Sometimes, we misplace the priority of God’s holiness. We forget that He is far above, beyond and somehow also before all things. How quickly we reduce Him to dispensary status, losing sight of the His supreme and divine authority. Forgive us, Father!
Next, our friend pointed out how the Kingdom comes first in all things. We look to to the holy God and we recall how His Kingdom is coming; a Kingdom of righteousness and truth and total restoration. (Just revel in that thought for a moment.) We speak our belief in the truth of His approaching Kingdom and we reframe our request in the light of His authority.
I’m thinking of Julian of Norwich this morning. I discovered the anchoress phenomenon a while ago, but these ladies of the church came up in my reading again yesterday. These women fascinate me: their lives totally dedicated to the presence of God, walled off from anything less. Julian’s written words were formed from her sickbed; a result of divine visions as she wrestled with death. They are haunting, really: penned by a woman who experienced and at last understood the coming Kingdom. “All is well, and all will be well, and the manner of thing shall be well.”
The woman walled herself out of the world and it seems that the word of God welled up in her. She understood how the coming Kingdom was greater, righter, purer and realer than the crumbling landscape around her. In her battle with grave illness, she laid hold of Kingdom concepts that would carry her, unscathed, from this world to the next. When our appeals are set beside the Kingdom, they are often quite petty and we can trust God to work all things out for His glory. Dare we learn these same truths sooner then later? What if we trusted the reality of the coming Kingdom long before we are laid out on our death bed? How much worry has we wasted? How hard have we wrestled for control that is simply beyond our level of clearance?
“The Lord reigns forever and ever.” (Exodus 15:18 NIV)
This is the final stanza in Moses’ song of spontaneous praise; they are the words he sang after the enemy was swept away by returning waves. He had seen the Lord’s strength and sovereignty up close and personal and God Himself hurled horse and rider in to the sea to protect His people. What if we were to live with the same surety?
“Your, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the majesty. Everything in the heavens is Yours, O Lord, and this is Your Kingdom. We adore You as the One who reigns over all things.” (1 Chronicles 29:11 NIV)
Lord, please help us live and move and pray and receive peace in the light of Your coming Kingdom. We grasp Your sovereignty on some level, but our understanding is rudimentary at best. Please deepen our comprehension. Grow our cognition of Your authority and majesty. Let the truth and grace and hope of Your coming Kingdom grow large in our frames: filling our hearts and minds with comfort-longing as we wait on the full revelation of Your sovereignty over all things. Lead us in trusting Your divine ability to make amends for it all. Amen.