"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in
heaven." (Mat 6:10 KJV)
A few years ago I taught a series on the Life of Christ. We have
spent the last month just going through the sermon on the mount.
One week we were looking at the Lord's Prayer. As the discussion
proceeded I began to see that the key to understanding the Lord's
prayer, and thus prayer in general is not one of words or
phrases, but one of attitude and right position.
Now, when I say right position, I don't mean whether you kneel
or stand or, like myself, lie flat on my back on the living room
couch when I pray. What I mean is that we recognize our relative
position in relationship to God. Notice what we are told right at
the first: God is our father. He is in heaven (above our
circumstances). He is holy. He has plans for a kingdom. He has a
will which needs to be accomplished right here on earth. And
implied in all this is that we have a part to play in
accomplishing that will and creating that kingdom.
Only three short verses in the prayer deal with our personal
needs. We pray for our daily needs. That is a humbling experience
in and of itself. For in so doing, we recognize that we are not
the
source. We recognize that anything we have comes from the hand of
the father. The other recognizes that we are spiritually bankrupt
and in need of forgiveness, and in need of a forgiving spirit.
Finally, we are prone to temptation and need to be delivered from
the hand of the evil one.
The prayer ends by once again reminding us of God's kingdom,
power, and glory. Reading this prayer is a humbling experience and
an ennobling one. It is humbling in that we learn that we are
children in comparison with God, that our plans and our will are
subordinate to God's plans and God's will, that we depend on him
for everything, that we owe him a debt we cannot pay, and that we
are weak in dealing with temptation.
But the prayer is also ennobling because it tells us that we are
His children. It also tells us that our greatest achievement is
helping bring about his kingdom through our lives and our prayers
here on
earth. How do we do this? We do this by aligning our will with
the will of the father. You see we get it all mixed up about
prayer. We think that prayer is about bending God's will to ours.
That's not prayer, that's an attempt at magic. Rather, this prayer
says that the opposite is true. Effective prayer is not bending
God's will to mine, but by surrendering my will to God. And in so
doing, I become his instrument in creating his kingdom in my
world.
Lord, today bend me to your will and give me an opportunity to
build your kingdom in my world. Amen
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