Wherever King Jesus is readily acknowledged, his reign in rule is more firmly felt and entrenched in our lives and in our world, and so mainly that will exist in the church. There we have his kingdom coming. What more important things could we pray about in our day?
We think about the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, you have that petition, “your kingdom come” and to understand that you do have to connect it with the next one, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. So obviously all of those are getting at the same sort of idea that just as God’s will of desire, that is what he wants, his commands, his way of doing things. Just as that happens perfectly in heaven, so may become more and more on earth. So all of those petitions are related, and yet your will be done, your kingdom come are not exactly identical. So we need to understand what is the kingdom? We use kingdom language all the time. And sometimes, we’re not as careful as we should be.
Entering the Kingdom
We sometimes talk about building and extending the kingdom. And I’ve used that language before, and I know what people mean. But it’s interesting when you look at the actual verbs in the New Testament; that’s not how the kingdom is described. It’s receiving the kingdom; it’s entering the kingdom. So we must be careful that the kingdom is not something we go out by our hard work and ingenuity and we get hammer and nails, and there we are. We built something called the kingdom. The kingdom is, the kingdom exists.
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