Lenten Devotion – Day 21

Friday, March 13, 2015

Today’s Scripture: Matthew 6:9-13       Part 2

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:10)

“Christ makes Heaven the standard for God's will be done on Earth. What a high ideal is this! What power it would take to bring such a thing about! Nothing short of the Kingdom of God pulling down strongholds, overthrowing bastions of deeply entrenched sin, and then conquering this present world in such a way as to establish righteousness – nothing short of such things as these can meet the standard that Christ sets before us.” ― Geoff Banister

  The Lord's Prayer teaches us to strive first for the kingdom of God and to pray that God's will be accomplished in our lives. The Lord in turn, gives us what we need to live each day for his glory. Do you pray to the Father with confidence that he will show you his will and give you what you need to follow him?

  To be in the kingdom is to do the will of God. Immediately we see that the kingdom is not something which primarily has to do with the nations and people and countries. It is something which has to do with each one of us. The kingdom demands the submission of my will, my heart, and my life. It is only when each one of us makes his personal decision and submission that the kingdom comes.

  "Your will be done" is what we are saying. We are asking God to be God. We are not asking God to respond to our wants and needs. We are asking God to allow us to conform to God’s will and what God wants. We are asking God to make manifest the holiness that is now mostly hidden, to set free in all its terrible splendor the devastating power that is now mostly under restraint. "Your kingdom come . . . on earth" is what we are saying. And if that were suddenly to happen, what then? What would stand and what would fall? Who would be welcomed in and who would be thrown into the darkness of hell? Which if any of our most precious visions of what God is and of what human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would turn out to be phony as three-dollar bills? To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.

  Placing ourselves squarely in the hands of God is difficult because it is so hard for us to give up control of our choices. And we know that submitting to God's will can be a hard and perilous thing! But without our willing submission to him and a ready conference with his will through prayer and meditation, all of our choices fall at last to dust.

  Our future Christian hope and expectation shape our present action. We give ourselves totally to the service of God in commitment to Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to work for justice, peace, and righteousness because to do so is to seek God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Put another way,

  “The kingdom of God is both the foundation of the church and the goal of the world. Therefore, we have and we hope; we give thanks and we sigh for more. Living in the tension of such a posture, we cannot be religious dropouts with an idle faith and a passive hope. The hope of the kingdom is an invitation to work while it is day, to be active in love, to sow the seeds of the world and spread the flame of the Spirit.” - Carl E. Braaten, The Flaming Center: A Theology of Christian Mission (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977, p. 43)

  To commit ourselves to doing God’s will is our commitment to be on God’s side and not merely claim that God is on ours. We commit ourselves to obedience to live out the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." It therefore, improves our lives together, not simply our personal, individual lives.

  Jim Wallis speaks to the Lord’s Prayer ability to call us to the common good for all of us, when he says, “Our life together can be better. Ours is a shallow and selfish age, and we are in need of conversion - from looking out just for ourselves to also looking out for one another. It’s time to hear and heed a call to a different way of life, to reclaim a very old idea called the common good. Jesus issues that call and announced the kingdom of God – a new order of living in sharp contrast to all the political and religious kingdoms of the world. That better way of life was meant to benefit not only his followers but everybody else too. And that is the point of it.” - Willis, Jim, “On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good”, Brazon Press, 2013, p. 3.

Today’s Lectionary Readings
Morning: Psalms 22; 148
Evening: Psalms 105; 130
Jeremiah 11:1–8, 14–17
Romans 6:1–11
John 8:33–47