“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” Matthew 6:10
Have you ever been driving down the road and noticed your car veering to the right or left?
It’s funny how this happens, isn’t it? One minute your car is driving perfectly fine; the next thing you know, there’s a problem with the alignment.
Our hearts are a little like our cars. They can very easily get out of alignment with the kingdom of God. Sometimes, this is a consequence of choices we’ve made. Other times, it happens gradually and inadvertently, resulting from the everyday twists and turns on the road of life.
Over the years, I’ve learned to pay attention to the warning signs that my heart is out of alignment.
Here are a few signs I’ve noticed:
• Centering life around me instead of Jesus
• Neglecting to pray about decisions, both big and small
• Getting upset with the Lord when life doesn’t go according to my will
• Declining to follow the godly, biblical counsel of others
• Stubbornly refusing to surrender my so-called ‘authority’ and yield to the authority of His Word.
How do you relate to these warning signs?
In this portion of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us how to pray so that we are continuously realigning our hearts with His.
“Thy kingdom come…”
Right off the bat, this reminds us that there is a King, and we are not it. The Lord sits on the throne of the universe and governs all things according to His sovereign plan. He doesn’t exist to serve our ‘kingdom’; we exist to serve His. As Alan Redpath puts it, “Before we can pray, ‘Lord, Thy kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray, ‘My kingdom go.’”
“Thy will be done”
The natural inclination of our selfish, sinful hearts is to pursue our will, not His. As such, these words are radically counterintuitive and counter-cultural. But a heart transformed by His grace seeks His will above all else, even when it contradicts our will. In difficult situations…when we don’t understand what the Lord is doing…we echo the heart of Jesus, who prayed similar words in the Garden of Gethsemane on the way to the cross (Matthew 26:39).
“On earth, as it is in heaven”
Until the King returns, we are called to manifest His kingdom on earth. Each of us has a role to play, a God-given assignment right where we live, work, and play. We are called to herald the Good News of the Kingdom, demonstrate the character of the King, and show the world that we live under His authority.
If you’re like me, you need to pray these words over and over again. Daily. Hourly. Even moment by moment.
Take some time to do so right now and realign your heart with His.
“The attention and the beginning of these petitions is on God and His concerns. In the initial phrases of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus fixes our gaze not on ourselves, but on God.” R.C. Sproul
Written by Jonathan Munson, Executive Director, RFTH
WANNA LEARN MORE?– Check out “What Does It Mean To Pray, ‘Thy Kingdom Come?'” on GotQuestions.org
