Praying for the Kingdom to Come
Whenever I announce the topic of prayer as the focus of a message or a series in our church, I find a response of keen interest from our people. We all have the sense of the disciples when they begged the Lord, “Teach us to pray.” Last summer, we published an edition of FrontLine devoted to the topic. Yesterday we published a post by our friend Thomas Overmiller, likewise dealing with the subject. Many books and articles are in our libraries, demonstrating our interest in prayer. We want to know more.
Recently, when considering the praying church in Acts 12 (Herod executed James, imprisoned Peter, and planned for him the same grisly fate), I ran across an article that opened my eyes to a new aspect of prayer I hadn’t considered before. It is new, I should say, to me. It’s been sitting there in the pages of Scripture all this time – I just hadn’t noticed.
The article, “Luke’s Theology of Prayer,” mentioned the idea that our praying Lord in Luke’s gospel is “a basic reminder that a new page has been turned in God’s dealing with man. Jesus, the anointed of the Spirit, enters as Forerunner into the Age of the Spirit, and his life of prayer manifests this act of entering in.” Our praying Lord models something for us that is new for the disciples (and seems rarely engaged by ourselves). The author goes on to say, “To Luke, Jesus’ prayers are eschatological. To Jesus himself, prayer was an eschatological activity, God’s link between the beginning of the fulfillment and its consummation in glory.” 1
What the author of the article is saying is that prayer anticipates the Last Days and calls for the Father to bring the Last Days to pass, even NOW, if He wills.
Let’s look at some Scripture and see if that perspective is correct.
When the disciples asked, “Teach us to pray,” the Lord responded, “And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.” (Lk 11.2) 2
That phrase, “thy kingdom come,” is the eschatological focus. The Kingdom is the goal of history, the hope of Israel, the Messianic Age, and the ideal time when God brings about the consummation of all the ages. What will that time be like?
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Rev 21.3-4)
The kingdom is the time prophesied by Isaiah when the rod out of the stem of Jesse will rule. In that day, the Lord says:
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (Isa 11.6-9)
We are describing an ideal age when there is no more pain, conflict, heartache, selfishness, when the world is at last, finally, at shalom – at peace.
When a loved one is sick and we pray to the Great Physician for healing, what are we praying for? Are we praying simply for relief from illness so we can carry on in this life a few more years before falling sick again? Or are we praying for a taste of the kingdom now? Are we praying for the kingdom to come now?
Sometimes we go through the rote of prayer, praying for an aged saint, knowing that healing now is very unlikely, that our loved one will likely end up passing on soon and they won’t be healed now. What are we praying when we pray for these saints? Are we praying because it is our habit to pray, but we don’t really believe the Lord will answer?
Do you think the Lord in his Sovereignty decrees all our sufferings in this life and we just need to develop a stoic endurance in order to cope? Is that what prayer is about?
What about this idea — what if we are praying for the Kingdom to come. What if we pray for our aged friends and loved ones that the Lord really would heal them. And what if they die anyway, what then? Well, aren’t they healed? Hasn’t the Kingdom truly come, for them? Are they plagued by disease and decrepitude any longer? Are they unhappy where they are?
Surely not.
God answers the prayers of his saints. Sometimes, in fact, he does give relief from suffering now. What is that but a little taste of the Kingdom to come? When those we pray for slip on into the next life, what is that but the realization of the Kingdom for them?
In this article, I’ve focused on sickness as the focus of prayer. We pray about many more things than healing. We pray about financial needs (will the Lord’s work run into shortfalls in the kingdom?); we pray about personal conflicts (will any of us exhibit selfishness in the kingdom?); we pray about political crises (will there be any of these anxieties in the kingdom?). Whatever we pray for, I believe that that little phrase, “Thy Kingdom come,” can energize our prayer life in a new way. Think about what you are asking the Lord to do when you pray.
Thy Kingdom come!
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.