The Lord's Prayer - Ep 5

2026.06.29 Lord's Prayer Monday

Welcome to the Lord's Prayer podcast by Bridgeway Christian Church. The Lord's Prayer has been recited by Christians around the globe for centuries, but more than a beloved tradition, this prayer invites us to live the way of Jesus, to be shaped by His priorities, to partner with His Spirit in bringing the Kingdom of God to bear on our world. Every Monday during our summer devotional series, we'll read the Lord's Prayer, and then members of our pastoral team will offer some devotional thoughts based on the text.

I'm Pastor Heather, and today I'm joined by Pastor Anthony and Pastor Brian. After I read the prayer, we'll be discussing the line, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done. Let's pray.

Matthew 6, 9 through 13. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Well, hello.

Hello, Pastor Heather. Hello, hello. Are we ready to dive in? Let's do it.

Yeah. Well, we get to talk about the part of Jesus's prayer that He teaches us, Your kingdom come, Your will be done. So how does this structure in kind of the whole Sermon on the Mount highlight the importance of that phrase, Your kingdom come, Your will be done? The kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven was central to the ministry of Jesus.

I mean, outside of the Sermon on the Mount, He speaks of the kingdom 43 times in Matthew's Gospel alone. And it's also central to the entire message of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And the way the Sermon on the Mount is organized highlights this.

In the West, we tend to save the best for last. My parents took my children to see a mystery movie recently, and my kids told me about the surprise twist at the end, right? And we love stories like that. I mean, firework shows end in a grand finale.

You don't put the grand finale in the middle and then just sort of keep going, right? And even oftentimes, speeches and sermons have some sort of closing flourish. But as we learned two weeks ago, things work differently in the ancient world. If an author or speaker really wanted to emphasize a theme or idea, they put it right in the middle.

And two weeks ago, we talked about how the Lord's Prayer is right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. And this phrase, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, is there in the middle of the prayer. It's the center of the center of the center, which serves to further bolster the idea that the kingdom of God is the primary point of emphasis for the entire sermon.

And it's really difficult to overstate the importance of this. Yes, Jesus talked about individual salvation, but the heart of his message was the kingdom of God. And yes, the Bible talks about individual salvation and what we must do to be saved.

But the heart of the message is the kingdom of God. We see kingship language all the way back in the book of Genesis when God makes humanity in his image and invites them to fill the earth and subdue it. We see promises of a coming king in places like Isaiah chapter nine.

Jesus fulfills many of those promises. And then of course, the book of Revelation ends with this picture of King Jesus returning to be with his people. The bottom line is the kingdom of God is it is the rule and reign of God advancing here on earth, bringing healing, wholeness, and all of those types of things by pushing out darkness and chaos.

And if we're going to understand the message of the Lord's prayer and the message of the Bible, we simply cannot miss that point. Yeah. Yeah.

I love the sequencing of addressing God as father, honoring his name as holy, and then essentially pledging allegiance to God's kingdom before any petitions are made. Yeah. And you know, this is quite revealing about the priorities Jesus himself lived by.

The sequence of God's kingdom first and then our needs second reminds us of what Jesus says just 23 verses later in the same chapter, Matthew 6:33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things, that's all your needs. So what, what you're going to eat, the clothes you're going to wear, all of that is going to be provided to you. Human nature is inclined to reverse this priority.

But yeah. And so, so Jesus's prayer just shows us like the true way forward in the kingdom of God. Yeah.

It's just really, really easy to lose sight of that kingdom perspective that Jesus is stressing here. I mean, I just, I feel like even, you know, kind of quote air quotes, you know, that when I'm participating in kingdom work and partnering with God, that seemed like really obviously ministry related. My perspective is still incredibly individualistic.

Yeah. Can't relate. Yeah.

I mean, it was like, I was talking with a friend recently who's preparing for her short-term mission trip, and, you know, as she shared her plans and her ideas and how their team might serve, which was all good. The thing that she kept coming back to that was amazing her was that bigger picture of just how God had orchestrated that specific team's gifts, abilities, and experiences for something far greater than they could even imagine. I mean, it was just like, she was just blown away every time by how much bigger it was than her perspective.

And, you know, we just see such a small piece of God's incredibly intricate plan. You know, it's like his work involves millions of people, countless cultures, spans of generation. It's not bound by time or space, you know, it's like his kingdom is so much bigger than my perspective.

And you know, this prayer is Jesus reminding me to keep that reality front and center. Yeah. You know, so I was just looking at the new issue of The Voice of the Martyrs magazine this morning and just looking at the faces of our brothers and sisters, you know, across the globe who are suffering for the kingdom.

And I just can't help but look at them and say, " That's my brother. That's my sister." The kingdom is this network of people across the globe.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

So this line of prayer says, your kingdom come, your will be done. What's the connection between God's kingdom and God's will? I mean, that's a huge question. It is, but they're deeply connected.

And seeing them placed together in the Lord's prayer reminds us that God does not call us simply to believe in him and wait until the afterlife. God's will is the expansion of the kingdom. And it's relevant here that the Hebrew word for kingdom is directly connected to the activity of reigning.

So we're not talking like a figurehead sort of thing here. We're talking about the actual action of reigning. And the closest English word we have for this would probably be the word rule.

So when we are praying for God's kingdom to come, we are praying for God's rule, for an expansion of God's authority, a reflection of God's character, and an honoring of God in our hearts and lives. And then this word will quite literally means desire. So we are praying that God's desires, God's wishes for humanity would come to be.

And this is important for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that we are missing the point if we think that God's kingdom is just some sort of like abstract, otherworldly concept. God's kingdom, once again, is where God's rule and reign is advancing, where there is more of his peace, more of his healing, more of his wholeness. And this is what we are praying for when we are praying for his rule and for his desires, that his desires are good, his desires are perfect, his desires are right, and his rule is all of those things as well.

Yeah, I think it's essential that every Christian grasp the biblical vision of God's will as his kingdom in operation. Emphasis on biblical, especially because it's so tempting and easy for us to baptize the idea of God's will in the waters of our preferred cultural streams, whether it's party politics, social agendas, whatever it may be, and convince ourselves that we're loyal to God's kingdom and will. But we must practice faithful, patient, and humble reading of scripture, and thereby be informed by the diversity of the body of the Messiah to put us in the best position to behold God's will for what it actually is, his kingdom in operation in our world.

Yeah. One of the things that's been kind of helping me remember this is praying scripture. I've been praying a lot more scripture recently because I know that in scripture is where I find God's heart and God's kingdom.

You know, it's like I don't have to have any doubts that Jesus has already given us a picture of what heaven breaking into earth looks like. So through his teaching and his ministry, he showed us what God's kingdom is like and what God desires for his people. And so when I pray the things that Jesus taught and demonstrated, I know that I am praying in God's will.

So I can pray with confidence, knowing that I'm partnering with God in bringing his kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. And I know that it's like super easy. I know he desires his people to live in peace with one another.

I know he wants people to experience his salvation. I know he wants us to live with meaningful community and to be encouraged by Christian friendships. And so when I pray these things, I don't have to be doubtful or tentative or like, if it's your will that I have Christian friends, you know, it's like it is his will.

I can pray with confidence because these are the desires that are clearly revealed in scripture. Yeah, it's really, it's really well said. Now, it's one thing for us to pray for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done.

Like that's one role we play in seeing these things happen. But what else can we do to bring this about? What are some practical ways we can live in to these realities of God's kingdom coming and his will being done? I have a couple of mental reminders that I practice, you know, kind of, so they're not necessarily prayers, but they're just kind of like sentences that I repeat to myself. And I really like that phrase that we say often at Bridgeway, that God is always present and at work.

I feel like that reminds me that there's a kingdom reality bigger than myself and my circumstances. It's bigger than my faith or lack thereof, you know, that it's God is already at work before I arrive. That's a really helpful kind of sentence that I repeat.

And then that second reminder that I say often is that the Holy Spirit is at work in me and through me. You know, it's that Jesus says that the Holy Spirit empowers us to be his witnesses. So for me, when I'm reminding myself of that, it means that I literally walk into a room differently because the Spirit of God is with me.

Something I try to remind myself, my kids, whether I'm at the grocery store, I'm talking with a neighbor or I'm walking into a meeting, like I literally am operating differently because I have the power of the Holy Spirit to love, to listen, to respond, to help. It's not just me showing up to a room. And am I aware of that reality? It's like, am I living into it? Kind of reminding myself that the Holy Spirit is empowering me.

It's not an easy perspective to maintain, but I have found that that mental reminder helps me live kind of more in that kingdom reality. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

You know, Jesus consistently enacted the gospel of the kingdom of God as compassion toward the less fortunate, the outsiders, the socially undesirables. And the Beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount essentially spells out this gospel ethos. Jesus says, Macarius, blessed, how fortunate are the poor, the unimportant, the hungry and thirsty for the world to be made right.

And so as citizens of the kingdom of God, we enact our allegiance to King Jesus when we enact his compassion to those in need. And this is who we're meant to be. And we connect our allegiance in simple yet impactful ways.

It doesn't have to be so grandiose. I think a lot of times we make things bigger in our minds than what they actually need to be. We can do things simply.

We, and by we I mean I, can be less in a hurry so that I can look out and be available for opportunities just to lend a helping hand to a random stranger. We can keep an eye and ear out for someone in financial need, then secretly meet that need. Don't publicize your good deeds.

Let Jesus take all the credit. In hearing both of you, a theme that kind of comes up for me is just that idea of part of living out God's will is knowing God's heart, right? Whether it's we're praying scripture, Pastor Heather, like you said, or Pastor Anthony, just like taking these words from Jesus and trying to really wrestle with what does it mean to put them into action. And when we know him, when we know his character and we know what his will is, we're more able to let him set the agenda and we're more able to participate in the work of the kingdom.

I mean, if there is one problem with sort of the extent to which I think we as Western evangelicals have so emphasized salvation by grace, which is a core Christian doctrine, don't get me wrong, it's we get so suspicious about works, right? That, oh, well, we're not saved by works. We're saved by grace. Yes, that's absolutely right.

But we have been invited into kingdom work that God has laid before us, whether that is serving those who are less fortunate, whether that's being there for a friend, whether that's practicing generosity. And it's when we participate in these practices, we're not completing some sort of heavenly chore chart. Rather, we're leaning in to kingdom living and participating in the expansion of the kingdom on earth, which is really a beautiful thing.

Yeah, absolutely. When you live it out, you just simply say, this is who I am. Yeah, I am.

Well, thanks for the conversation, guys. It's been great. And everyone, thanks for joining us.

Check out more resources in the show notes and join us on Thursday for prayer. Take care.