My Kingdom or Your Kingdom Come?

When we read, recite, or pray the Lord’s Prayer we come across the sentences, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10). Do we really mean those words when we pray them? Or are we masking another agenda fearing that if we express our inner longing it may expose that latent self-absorption that really drives us? Perhaps Dr. Alan Redpath is more correct than we wish to admit when he wrote, “Before we can pray ‘Thy kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray, ‘My kingdom go.’”

After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there was a tremendous amount of rejoicing and relief in the hearts and minds of the disciples. “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19) had been resurrected! “Certainly,” the disciples may have thought, “now something big is really going to happen!” However, for the next 40 days before Christ ascended into heaven, he spent his time carefully instructing his disciples in many truths “pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Toward the end of that “discipleship institute” his followers asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (1:6). Jesus’ response was a general statement, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority” (1:7). He is not denying that there would be an earthly kingdom. He just indicated it was not now and they had something else to focus upon – being witnesses of the resurrected King and enlisting people for the kingdom (Acts 1:8).

Perhaps all this kingdom-talk had excited their kingdom aspirations. For years they had envisioned a certain kind of kingdom and they were growing impatient for its formation. This kingdom-excitement had been expressed earlier when the disciples jockeyed for position in the kingdom they thought Jesus would establish (see Mark 10:35-45). They were seeing a kingdom formed after their passions and measured by specifications of the “rulers over the Gentiles” (10:42). Jesus directed them to see a different model – the one he had been modeling – a servant (10:45).

If we pulled off our masks and prayed honestly, would it sound more like, “My kingdom come?”Humans are kingdom builders. The kingdom we are choosing to build, however, may not be fashioned like the one for which Christ had challenged his disciples to pray. The kingdom we want is more likely designed to match our expectations and looking like how we envision a perfect world – a world meeting my aspirations, providing fulfillment, making me significant, and shrouding me in a cocoon of peace and security.

Chris Tiegreen asks a significant question and offers some solid advice. He writes in his book, Wonder of the Cross, “What kingdom have you been expecting? Whatever it is, stop striving for it. Live instead for the agenda of Jesus’ Kingdom. Be His witness, live in the Spirit, seek His will on earth as it is in heaven. One day you will notice a startling phenomenon. In abandoning your own idea of the Kingdom for His, you’ll find that His includes everything you deeply desired anyway… The real kingdom will be much more fulfilling than your own.”

What would result if we aspired to follow God’s Kingdom agenda and not our own? Families would be transformed as husbands loved their wife as Christ loved the church, wives reverenced their husbands, children were respected, and parents were obeyed. Churches would be places of unity with the common goal of glorifying Christ and not promoting personal agendas and pursuing trivial pursuits. Non-Christians would look at churches not as social clubs but as places where “imitators of Christ” gather to be equipped to reenter a world as agents change and servants who lovingly minister to a needy world. Government would not be looked at as the sole provider for the needs of people because people driven by the agenda of Jesus’ Kingdom are “esteeming others better than himself” and looking “out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3, 4). People then who are living without hope in a hard world would see in followers of Jesus Christ good news that reveals their hungry souls can have hope in this world and for all eternity. This hope comes as they receive “the gift of God which is eternal life through Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:23).

Lord, your kingdom come! It will when I am willing to say to my Heavenly Father the same thing His Son prayed, “Not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).