"The Prayer
of Jesus" part 2
Your Kingdom Come...
by
Greg Hanson
Sunrise Wesleyan Church
October 25, 2009
Memory Verse:
Matthew 6:10 (NLT)
“May Your Kingdom come soon. May Your will be done on earth, as it is
in Heaven.”
****************
[Read headlines from recent newspaper - about disaster, curruption,
hopelessness, sickness...]
Our
world needs help. I don’t think there’s any denying that. Our world
needs help. And it doesn’t just need more therapy. It doesn’t need more
war. It doesn’t need more money… what it needs is the radical
intervention of God.
I think that’s the heart of what Jesus was talking about when He said…
Matthew 6:10 (NLT)
“May Your Kingdom come soon. May Your will be done on earth, as it is
in Heaven.”
You
may recognize that, of course, as coming from what we know as The
Lord’s Prayer. It’s part of a prayer that Jesus taught to His
disciples, not as a ritualistic prayer that they needed to repeat over
and over again mindlessly, but as a prayer that can serve as an example
for the rest of their prayers. There are principles presented in The
Lord’s Prayer that can greatly enrich our own personal prayer lives and
which can help us to experience a deeper communion with God. Which is
really what prayer is about… connecting with God.
Last week,
when we started this series, we looked at the first sentence of that
prayer… “Our Father in Heaven, may Your name be kept holy.” If you
happened to have grown up in the Church and memorized this prayer as a
child, you probably know it from the Old King James translation, “Our
Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”
And what we
learned is that this opening sentence was completely revolutionary for
the first Christ-followers… these early Christians who would have come
primarily from a Jewish heritage.
We talked at our LIFE Group
here on Wednesday night about how for the Jews, they wouldn’t even say
the name of God. The name of God in the Old Testament consists of four
letters, YHWH, which we pronounce as Yahweh. Sometimes you might hear
it as Yehovah or Jehovah. But for the Jews, they held the name of God
in such reverence that they wouldn’t even say it out loud.
And
then along comes Jesus. And while He tells us that the name of God is
still to be respected as holy, we can also address Him intimately as
“Father.” No one in the Old Testament ever directly addressed God as
“Father”… in fact, most prayers were done by a priest or a king or a
prophet. Most people didn’t pray directly to God. But then Jesus tells
us we can pray directly to God. And what’s more, we can call Him
“Father.” That would have been revolutionary. He’s the Transcendent God
who rules over all, and at the same time He is intimately involved in
our lives as Father.
So we talked about that last week. And we
also talked about how in addressing God as Father, in addition to the
intimacy, there’s also a spirit of submission.
He is the Father;
we are His children. And while like most kids we may have a tendency to
rebel, our relationship is healthiest when we recognize that His ways
are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts…
when we realize that the Almighty God loves us dearly and wants the
best for us… and when in response we humble ourselves before Him and
submit to His authority instead of rebelling.
And so we took a
look at the word “submission.” [PowerPoint] “Sub-Mission.” It means
that we place our mission under His mission. So right at the start of
this model prayer that Jesus gives us, we see that prayer isn’t so much
about getting God to rubber stamp our mission; it’s about us getting on
board with His mission. We don’t bring God around to our way of
thinking; prayer changes who we are and brings us around to His way of
thinking.
And that really shines through the next part of the prayer… the verse
that we’re looking at today. Read it with me…
Matthew 6:10 (NLT)
“May Your Kingdom come soon. May Your will be done on earth, as it is
in Heaven.”
Again, if you have it memorized, you know it as “Thy Kingdom come, Thy
will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”
(When I was a kid growing up, my brother offered to send me to kingdom
come a few times. But I think that was different.)
Notice
it’s “Thy Kingdom”, not “my kingdom.” It’s “Thy will,” not “my will.”
It’s not about us getting our way or promoting our own self-interest.
It’s about us getting on board with what God is doing, and
participating in the expansion of His Kingdom on this planet.
Okay,
so if you look at this verse, what do you see? It’s really a prayer for
our world, isn’t it? It’s a prayer for God’s Kingdom to grow and expand
in our world. It’s for God’s will to be done in our world. So that’s
what we’re going to talk about for the rest of this time this morning.
What does that kind of a prayer look like? How do we pray for our world?
How
Do I Pray for the World?
1.
Pray for a massive turning to Jesus
I
believe this is first and foremost what we need to be praying for in
our world. That people everywhere will hear about Jesus, about what
He’s done for them and about the forgiveness and life that He offers
them today, and that they will respond by accepting Him and entering
into a relationship with Him.
That was the very heartbeat of the
ministry of Jesus, and it needs to be our heartbeat, too. And that
means it needs to permeate into our prayers for our world.
2 Peter 3:9 (NLT)
[The Lord] does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to
repent.
It’s
His desire that every person be given the opportunity to repent and
place their faith in Him. Jesus talked with his disciples about people
who were far from God… how there were so many of them, and so few
people out there trying to point them toward God. And so He told the
disciples…
Luke 10:2 (NLT)
“The harvest is great, but the
workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest;
ask him to send more workers into his fields.”
So we need to be praying for this. But I should warn you, if you pray
this, be prepared to be part of answer.
[PowerPoint]
In the Old Testament, the city of Jerusalem was seen as the spiritual
centre of Judaism. If you were going to worship God, then you’d go to
the Temple in Jerusalem. So Jerusalem was really viewed as the
epicenter for the Kingdom of God on earth.
Well, as they were
prone to do from time to time, the Israelites turned their backs on God
and as a result God allowed the city to be conquered by an invading
army and for many of the residents to be taken away in to captivity in
what was then the Babylonian Empire, modern day Iraq.
Well,
for the Israelites taken away into exile under the Babylonians, they
stayed that way for about sixty years, while the city of Jerusalem laid
in ruins. And then the Persian Empire… Iran… conquered the Babylonians.
So you see, these nations have a looonnng history. And under Persian
rule, the Jews were permitted to go back to their homeland and the
Persians would establish their rulers there.
So many went back; many didn’t. And the ones that did, didn’t do much
to rebuild the city of Jerusalem.
Until
about 90 years later, one of the Jews still living in exile started to
reflect on the condition of the city. His name was Nehemiah. He was
actually working as a servant for the king of Persia, Artaxerxes, and
so he asked the king for a leave of absence so he could go a visit
Jerusalem. And the king granted his request.
So Nehemiah was in
Jerusalem, and he took the time to ride around on horseback and survey
the ruins. And what he saw moved him. And his heart began to swell up
for the city to be rebuilt and for its glory to be restored… for the
Kingdom of God in Jerusalem to be reestablished.
And so he
started to pray for that to happen. And he fasted. I don’t fully
understand it, but fasting seems to add a level of urgency to our
prayers which God recognizes and responds to. And many times in the
Bible, especially when praying for their nation or for their world, you
see the Israelites combining their prayer with fasting. We’re not going
to have time during this series to spend much time talking about
fasting, but it is something you should consider, especially when
praying for our world.
That’s what Nehemiah did when praying for
Jerusalem to be rebuilt. And do you know how God answered his prayer?
“Okay Nehemiah… go to it.” And so Nehemiah got permission from the
Persian king, and then he organized and led a massive rebuilding
project. God used Nehemiah to answer his own prayer.
When you
look at the ruins of this world… when you see the devastation that sin
and evil and corruption have brought… can you pray for the Kingdom of
God to come on earth as it is in Heaven? And when you pray that, are
you prepared for God to say, “Okay, go at it. I’m going to use you to
answer that prayer”? When you pray for God to send workers into the
harvest field, are you willing to be one of those workers?
And
I’m not necessarily talking about becoming a missionary, although for
some that is how God chooses to use them. No, I’m talking about you
right now where your at… in your workplace, in your school, in your
home, in your neighbourhood… Are you willing to be used by God to point
people toward Him and to expand the Kingdom of God? In the way you
live, in the conversations you have, will you allow God to use you to
answer that prayer? Pray for a massive turning to Jesus, and be
prepared for God to use you to answer that prayer.
2.
Pray for God’s values to be practiced in our society
Yes,
we’re concerned that individuals come into a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ. We want people around the world to hear about Jesus and
turn to Jesus and become followers of Jesus. We want people to
experience redemption. We want people to be reconciled to God. And we
need to be praying toward that end.
But we also need to be
praying for more than that. Because not only do we want people to be
redeemed; we want our culture to be redeemed. By that, I mean to say
that want Godly values and principles and priorities to be recognized
and practiced in our world. Jesus prayed not only that God’s Kingdom
would come, but He also added…
Matthew 6:10 (NLT)
“…May Your will be done on earth…”
We’ve spent a lot of time this year looking at material by Chuck
Colson. In his book “How Now Shall We Live?”, Chuck says…
“Understanding
Christianity as a worldview is important not only for fulfilling the
great commission but also for fulfilling the cultural commission – the
call to create a culture under the Lordship of Christ. God
cares
not only about redeeming souls but also about restoring His
creation. He calls us to be agents not only of His saving
grace
but also of His common grace. Our job is not only to build up
the
Church but also to build a society to the glory of God.”
~ Charles Colson
How Now Shall We Live?, p.33
I
think Chuck’s hit the nail on the head. I think when we pray for God’s
will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven, this is what we’re praying
for. For God’s will to be done in and through individuals, as well as
in and through our culture.
So pray, not just that individuals
would come to know Jesus, but that as a society we would value the
things God values, that we would be guided by Godly principles, that
God’s will would be done in our world as it is in Heaven.
3.
Pray for our political leaders
This
is connected to the last point, because politicians are often
responsible for what happens in our culture. So we need to be praying
for our political leaders.
But what if you vote Liberal? You’re
not going to pray for Stephen Harper, are you? Or what if you vote
Conservative? You’re not going to pray for Robert Ghiz, are you?
Or
if you support the New Democratic Party, or you support the Green
Party… or the Heritage Party, or if you watch reruns of Party of Five…
whatever party you’re involved in… How could you ever pray for Shawn
Murphy or Wayne Easter or Lawrence MacAulay or Gail Shea?
You
know, our politicians sometimes make decisions and vote for things that
I don’t agree with… even things that I think are sinful. And especially
when they are doing things and making decisions that are in conflict
with Biblical values, I think we do have a responsibility to oppose
those decisions and promote Godly values.
But opposing their
decisions does not mean opposing them. Even if you didn’t vote for them
and never would vote for them, as Christ-followers we have a
responsibility to pray for them. Not against them… for them.
Pray
for them to come to Christ personally, or to grow in their relationship
with Him, pray for them to have the insight and the foresight and the
courage to govern wisely, pray that when they do make mistakes that
they will be able to recognize them and correct them, pray that they
themselves will be guided by the eternal principles of God, pray for
their safety, pray for their integrity, pray for their health, pray for
their families… there are all kinds of ways you can pray for them, and
it has nothing to do with your political views. Praying for our leaders
is not a partisan issue.
And that's not such a novel idea...
apparently it's been around for quite some time. Almost two thousand
years ago, the apostle Paul wrote...
1 Timothy 2:1-4 (NLT)
I
urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them;
intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for
kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and
quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases
God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the
truth.
And don't forget Peter's words...
1 Peter 2:13-14, 17 (NLT)
For
the Lord’s sake, respect all human authority—whether the king as head
of state, or the officials he has appointed. For the king has sent them
to punish those who do wrong and to honor those who do right… Fear God,
and respect the king.
You and I are told to respect, honour and
pray for the authorities that rule over us. All Christ-followers are to
do that. Praying for our governing officials is not a partisan issue
and it does not depend on who you voted for last time or who you will
vote for next time. And it doesn’t even matter if you agree with
everything they say or do. Pray for your leaders. That is our
responsibility as believers. To pray… not only for the Prime Minister,
but also for our Premier, our Members of Parliament, our mayor, Members
of the Legislative Assembly, city councillors, and whoever else is in a
position of authority in our government. Pray for them.
And why
stop there? Pray for other world leaders, too, even when you disagree
with their policies. Cut back on the criticism, stop the character
assassination, and learn to pray for and support your leaders.
And
listen… Even when there are world leaders who you think are evil, you
can still pray for them. Pray for the power and presence of God to be
realized in their lives, pray that God will soften their hearts and
make them sensitive to His promptings, and pray for their personal
needs for faith, security, trustworthy advisors, and for the health and
welfare of their families.
Can you do that? Will you pray for
your leaders on a regular basis? Maybe daily, maybe weekly, maybe
monthly? Will you commit yourself to praying for them?
I brought
with me this morning eight letters: one to Prime Minister Stephen
Harper, one to Premier Robert Ghiz, one to MP Shawn Murphy, one to each
of the four Senators from PEI, and one to Mayor Clifford Lee. If you
will commit to praying for them, then I want you to sign your name at
the bottom of each letter. And then I’m going to mail it to them. Just
to let them know that as Christ-followers, even though we may not agree
with everything they say or do, we are praying for them.
And
number four… when you pray for the world, pray for those who most need
God’s intervention in respect to the conditions they live in.
4.
Pray for the lost, the least, and the lonely
VIDEO – JUAN’S STORY (from the Operation Christmas Child promo DVD
2009, Canada)
Okay,
obviously that video is an advertisement to encourage people to fill a
box for Operation Christmas Child. And I hope you do that.
But I
wanted you to hear Juan’s story. And I wanted you to hear how God used
the Warkentin family to make a difference in Juan’s life.
Juan
would have been someone you would consider to be among the lost, the
least, the lonely of this world. And then along comes a shoebox full of
gifts, followed by a visit by the Warkentin family.
Now, that
video didn’t really talk about what motivated the Warkentin family to
get involved. Why did they visit the orphanage? Why were they willing
to spend the time and the money to get there? Why were they willing to
give of themselves that way?
The video doesn’t really say, but
I’m pretty confident that there would have been a lot of prayer
involved. I don’t think all that happened on a whim; I think the
Warkentin’s had spent considerable time praying for the lost, the
least, and the lonely of this world… and through that time in prayer,
God worked in their lives and led them to do something about it.
Our
world… even our city… is full of people who would be considered by many
to be the lost, the least, and the lonely. But they are each precious
in God’s sight. And as we pray for them… pray for their needs to be
met… pray for them to discover the richness of a relationship with
Christ… God enables us to begin to see them through His eyes. And
there’s no telling the difference that God can make through us. But it
all begins with prayer.
Will you pray for the lost, the least, and the lonely?
Okay,
that’s what I wanted to talk about here this morning. And just as I
finish up and before we sing a few more songs, I have three things to
mention…
First, if you weren’t here last week, then to go along
with this series I handed out a rree book on prayer. If you didn’t get
your copy, you can pick it up this morning.
Second, we talked earlier about praying for our leaders. I have those
letters here for you to sign this morning.
And
third, when we’re done there this morning, we’re not done yet. I want
to encourage you when we’re done to go for a prayer drive. I have some
booklets here, and you can take one with you. It suggests a number of
locations across our city where you could go and pray. For example, you
can go to one of the schools and pray for children and teens in our
city. Or you can go to city hall and pray for our local government.
There are different ideas like that.
Choose, say, three places where
you can go right after we’re done here. Perhaps you’d like to carpool
with someone else, and go and pray in those locations. Maybe you can do
more than three, maybe you won’t even get that far. And maybe you’ll
want to do all of them over the course of the week. The choice is yours.
And then at 1:00, we have the party room at the Magic Wok reserved and
you’re welcome to join us there for lunch. Okay?
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