….Your Kingdom Come…

 Your Kingdom Come.  We fly through this phrase so fast the words almost melt into the next line of the prayer. Thy kingdom comethywill be done

Slow down there for a second, Speedy.  What exactly are you saying?

This is the first direct request or petition in the Lord’s prayer.  Hallowed be your name is a blessing for the sanctity of God’s name and a command to us to sanctify it.  But when we say Your Kingdom Come, we are asking God to do something.  We are asking God to “Bring it on!”

What are you asking for and do you really mean that you want it?

See, the Kingdom comes on multiple levels. There is an individual/internal Kingdom and there is a universal Kingdom.

In one sense, the individual Kingdom of which Jesus spoke is already present and available.

Jesus said, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Matthew 12: 28)

Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17: 20, 21)

If you mean what you say when you say the Lord’s Prayer, you’re asking God to work on you personally from the inside.   You’re asking God to open your heart to His Kingdom presence already in and around you.   You’re asking God to change you into a Kingdom-minded person.

 Jesus made it very clear that you cannot serve 2 different masters (Luke 16: 13).  You cannot divide allegiance between 2 different Kingdoms.  So when you ask for God’s Kingdom to come in you, you are automatically also denouncing the rights and privileges of citizenship in the Earthly Kingdom.  Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man (the King of God’s Kingdom) has nowhere to lay His head.  (Luke 9: 58)

King Jesus repeatedly and deliberately chose NOT to seek or possess the comforts and wealth of this material world.  He could have, but He didn’t because the Kingdom path He walked would have been weighted down with silver and gold. 

What if God’s Kingdom in you and around you requires you to walk like Jesus did?  What if your King doesn’t order you to declare and decree your own prosperity and wealth?  What if your King orders you to leave it all and “Follow Me”?

Cause He might.  He is the King after all.

Do you still want His Kingdom to come?

In one sense, the Kingdom of God is an individual and internal state, a realignment with the work the Holy Spirit is doing in the world right now.

In another sense, God’s Kingdom is something more objective, tangible, and as yet unrevealed.  The Kingdom is a future spiritual, physical, and geopolitical condition that will be universally manifest.

At the Last Supper, the night before He was crucified, Jesus said gave bread and wine to His disciples and said, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22: 18)

The Kingdom of God has [already] come upon you.  The kingdom of God is [already] within you.   And (not “but”) the Kingdom of God is yet to come.

When Jesus described the final judgment, He spoke of the resurrected saints receiving a (new) kingdom sometime in the future.

“Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matthew 12: 27)

And of course there’s the book of Revelations.  Revelations is all about a future time/era/dispensation in which The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever! (Revelations 11: 15)

Is that what you want?  Really?  Because the streets of gold in chapter 21 come after the blood of the slain rising up four feet high in chapter 14.  The wiping-away-every-tear comes after the circuits of Death, War, Famine, & Pestilence.   The glory of the coming Kingdom only fully appears after the cataclysms of Great Tribulation.

Do you really consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us? (Romans 8:18)

I ask because Jesus said that we should.

He taught His disciples (which includes us) to ask God to make “Your Kingdom come.” 

That request encompasses changes in us and changes in the world that will not always be pleasant.  The process of transforming a planet  or of transforming a single human mindset are both sometimes disruptive and sometimes destructive. 

We have to kill of and/or die to the works of our own flesh (Romans 8: 13).  We have to be smelted like gold ore (1 Peter 1: 7), broken and reformed like pottery (Jeremiah 18), and brought through fire (1 Corinthians 3: 11-15).  These are necessary steps in the Kingdom coming individually or universally.

And Jesus taught us to ASK FOR IT.  To say to God our Father, “Bring it on!”

Don’t rush that line.

Say it clearly.  Say it like you understand what you’re really asking for.  Understand what you’re asking for.  

Say, "Your Kingdom come!"  

And mean it.

 ---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can read more on Pastor Graves's personal blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  .

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Hall Memorial CME Church

541 Seibles Road

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