What is your greatest desire for the year ahead (even for the day ahead)?
This next verse in the Lord’s Prayer covers two requests that strike at the heart of our most fervent and deeply held desires—and state publicly that our desire as God’s people aligns with His desire for the world to be ruled rightly by His King!
Coming straight after our request that the world know God’s name, this is a statement that we desire God to work obedience to His will, in our lives, as we live as the outpost of His kingdom in this world. Within this, there is an inherent tension that NOW, we are citizens of God’s kingdom and His King rules in our lives as God’s mob; but, NOT YET do we see the full consummation of this in all the universe.
The temptation, then, is to either take matters into our own hands and create His kingdom here… or, to throw our hands up and give up, and pursue our own desires.
Neither is a right or good expression of what these requests desire. Rather, as God answers our request here, He works the proclamation and practice of His kingdom in our lives, individually and corporately!
‘The vitality of prayer lies largely in the vision of God that prompts it. Drab thoughts of God make prayer dull’ (J.I. Packer, quoted in: K. DeYoung, The Lord’s Prayer., p.33-34)
That quote is a striking and confronting observation by Packer—and it captures the immense vision of God that opens the Lord’s Prayer. The opening address of the Lord’s Prayer approaches God personally and immanently (‘our’), approaches God communally and relationally (‘Father’), approaches God in a Trinitarian recognition (He is our Father because of the work of His Son, and this is grown in us by the Spirit), approaches God recognizing His awesome transcendence (‘in heaven’).
And this opening address leads to the natural first request: that the whole world know this God as the only God, the most significant person in all of creation in all of time (‘your name be honoured as holy’).
That is NOT a drab vision or thought of God, is it!
Prayer is a thorny topic for many of God’s mob—not because we disagree with it, not because we think it fails… but because, for something so essential and non-negotiable for God’s mob, it is something we fail to do so often! And, more often than not, when we read a book on prayer, we often finish so laden with guilt that we are even more disenchanted!
The aim of this series is to look at what Jesus said on prayer; specifically, when he was asked about ‘teaching’ his disciples to pray (Luke 11), and when he taught on what it meant to be a citizen in God’s kingdom (Matthew 6). In both instances, it is striking what Jesus does say, and what he doesn’t (perhaps the latter is more striking!).
As we spend time together, we want to be encouraged to pray more, to be more consistent in our praying, because we know that God is our Father. Moreover, we want to grasp a little more the character of the God we pray to—who he is, and what he is like. In this we want to encourage and not discourage...
