“Your Kingdom Come”

Let us examine the fourth phrase in the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come.” Jesus, after making clear that the first consideration in prayer is to focus on God’s character, puts as the next issue the establishing of God’s kingdom. Any pattern of praying that does not make the kingdom a priority is not Christian praying. Our text today tells us: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” If you seek something else first, then your life will be off balance.

A newspaper report tells of a small town in Alaska where all the electric clocks were showing the wrong time. The fault, it appears, was in the local power plant. It failed to run with systematic regularity, and thus all the electric clocks were “out.” When your primary concern is for something other than the kingdom of God, then everything in your life will be “out,” too. One of the sad things about church history is that the church has never really been gripped by the vision of the kingdom of God. There are notable exceptions, of course, but by and large the church has missed its way in this matter. One theologian points out that when the church drew up its creeds—the Apostles’, the Athanasian, the Nicene—it mentioned the kingdom once in all three of them, and then only marginally. The church will never move into the dimension God has planned for it until it puts the kingdom where Jesus put it in this prayer—in a place of primary consideration and primary allegiance.

Further Study

Lk 9:51-62; Mt 5:3; Jn 3:3; James 2:5

What did Jesus teach about the kingdom?

What did Jesus say to His would-be followers?