“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come.”
An incredible statement of prayer — simple words in both English and Greek — yet they open to us possibilities of realms so vast and glorious! One approaches these thoughts like a little boy with a pail, standing before the fathomless seas, wondering how to fit some of it into his bucket. There is no way one can contain it all, comprehend or articulate all that God reveals. When Jesus teaches us to pray, He is not speaking of the end of the world, nor the rapture of church folk, but rather the coming of God's dominion WITHIN US NOW by the spirit.
Our Father is coming within our spirit now to reveal God’s hallowed life. Even as we pray "Thy Kingdom come," we are drawn to the reigning of a righteous spiritual life, wherein God reigns, yea, here and now accomplishing His will just as it is in heaven.
“But rather seek ye the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” Luke 12:31-32
Here it is revealed that we can participate in the things of the earth that He adds to us as we are seeking His Kingdom while living here on earth. Every follower of Christ Jesus ought to know and be assured that the Kingdom is within them. The Kingdom can grow in power and spiritual presence within our spiritual senses to the finding of the Godhead even in today’s matters.
Sons find the Kingdom of God forming a true heart within them that longs to be with others having these glorious characteristics of God. Our true spiritual habitation is the New Jerusalem order, it is a greater liberty than the religious realms of traditional church worship. We understand the Lord’s prayer teaches us God’s Kingdom does come to be found, but it is actually GIVEN to people that His will be done within them just as it is being done in the greatest of the unseen heavens.
"Thus, then, you be praying: Our Father Who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, on earth also. Our bread, our dole, be giving us today." Matthew 6:9-11 concordant
Notice first that God’s Kingdom comes, then secondly notice His will can be done in our earthly life just like it is done in heaven. In both of these short statements, the emphatic word is “THY”. Set that word in the sharpest possible contrast here. There are other dominant things now operating within our earth that are antagonistic to doing His will at every point of contact. They are rivals for the rulership of and allegiance to the same territory within us.
Our prayer for “Thy Kingdom to come” of necessity includes knowing all other kings must go. People praying “Thy Kingdom come” mean likewise, “Thy King come,” for there cannot be a kingdom without a king. A real King displaces other kings and princes. They must be replaced by the one who is the most potent King. The prayer THY WILL BE DONEThy includes by the same inference: “any other will be undone.”
God knows what needs to be corrected in our earthly being to counterbalance the workings of our own flesh. Two wills have been clashing in maturing Christians. The believing man has constantly clashed for dominance with his own fleshly characteristics, making life a real battlefield. The pitched battles between the spirit and the flesh have fought for our thought life, for the attention of our conscious and subconscious mind.
Godly truths are strongly pulling down false ideas, selfish desires, and the wrong determinations of our own will. We pray for the King to sweep aside the fleshly opposition that abides in our heart, words, and actions. We ask that He then mark out an abode within our inner being from which to resist any further opposition.
So when we pray "THY Kingdom come, THY will be done”, we expect a coming because we have already relinquished our own will, already given up on our own ways, and now want ONLY the security He gives to our life. We willingly give up governing our own affairs in order to be led by the anointed, indwelling spirit of Christ. When He leads us from within, our spiritual person is directed into knowing God as thoroughly as He has known us.
The sphere of our individual spirit was marvelously created by God! He Fathered truth in our spirit by sending His Word deep into our inner being. This planting of His Word in human hearts is among the greatest mysteries working in His people. God’s province causes us to recognize His principles. We see that God is our Father and we are His offspring. Now His King is coming to rule throughout our inner being, conquering our death process, and dominating our own soulish ways, and also to quicken our mortal body with a Godly vitality that loosens the grip of death upon it.
Praying,“Thy Kingdom come,” is not praying solely for my family, my fellowship, my city, my nation, or this world. Praying,“Thy Kingdom come,” I do not think first or foremost about stopping abortions, locking up criminals, disproving atheists, expelling Muslims, or changing the minds of voters throughout this nation. Praying, “Thy Kingdom come,” I am not content to add any of my own unpleasant suggestions about my neighbors, the Mafia, or the US government.
NO! When I pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” it is with deep conviction that my inner spirit is connected with the Spirit of our heavenly Father. I am praying that His spirit will come to rule in my spirit, so I may become more fully and powerfully established in the life and light of God. I am praying that I realize more deeply the truth He etches into the minds of His chosen people. We Christians pray He will accomplish in us now what is determined to be necessary within us. Oh, yes, this prayer is taking on a greater reference in our spiritual lives.
The problem with today’s Christians is that they have been taught the standards of men in church theology. Many are comfortably settled in church programs within the safety of hierarchical systems, but this was provided as only passing heavens. Two thousand years of church heavens are passing away out of the people’s minds for the glory they now find in being raised into the New Jerusalem order.
Men have built edifices night and day on the church plane while on earth. Their work was all wrapped up in great denominational teachings that taught them to pray for “our” church, “our” ministry, “our” elders, “our” people, “our” business, “our” enterprise, “our” church family. Those heavens help us only to a certain point with finding the Kingdom.
Jesus taught us to pray “THY Kingdom come.” When we do pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” we are asking God to COME WITHIN US, setting up His King's domain inside of and over us. We are praying that He make us completely awakened and alive to HIS will, HIS business, HIS enterprises, HIS family, HIS ministry, HIS church, HIS elders, HIS people, all the things HE is proud of, concerned with, and actively doing.
I pray my spirit will refuse my soul's cherished passions of self-serving ambition. May every bitter thought, every thoughtless word or shameful deed be displaced by the coming of THY Kingdom. “Come and dominate me”, that is what I pray for. I pray not for money, nor pleasure, nor prestige, but that nothing but His Kingdom should have any influence or power to rule over my being first of all, then that God rule through me until I have witnessed His Kingdom come and reign over all men.
I pray to be free enough to do the Father’s will, and not my own will. I pray not to conform to other people’s ideas to guide my daily life. I pray that my conscientious mind be given to Christ Jesus as one possessed of another, that my death be swallowed up in HIS VICTORY. Oh, I pray for the coming Kingdom more and more! I pray for a great effectual transformation that raises us all to behold and know God in a new, and lasting way!
Worldly minded men love their pleasures, their money, their positions of power, their religious mindsets and attainments. They love themselves too much and are not really able to sincerely love God and sincerely pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” Men show that they love themselves by building their own church kingdoms. Only the “pure in heart” see God, and will not use God to build organizations of worship on passing planes where they still sit as the king to be admired. Everyone’s work will be tried and tested as compared to the Kingdom day. Fire will yet burn up much Christian church work.
Kingdom is first and foremost — the reign of God's King in the lives of His followers. Less than this it cannot be; more than this it will not be. There is no part of our life where the Kingdom should not rule. He dominates first our inner spirit to change our mind, our affections and inner desires to love God first. The governmental truths and peace He has instituted in our life comes to be our first love. His people learn to pray “THY Kingdom Come.” They are continually asking for His control and the expansion of His government within them to its fullest potential. We are asking for the Father’s commands, to be in fellowship with HIM and to do His will perfectly.
Is it not a right thing and a possible thing, that all men should in their hearts yield allegiance to Jesus Christ? Imagine if God were trying to rule over us without first winning our allegiance. And where this allegiance is yielded, could it not necessarily result in all our other allegiances being transformed completely by any higher power of Life? The Spirit of Christ brought a whole new constitution within our inner spiritual life for us to be guided only by that Spirit inspired by God. We expect we would hence know in every situation and circumstance what is the Father’s will for us.
We all need to be subjected under the Lord’s feet, under the understanding of Jesus Christ to see how the Kingdom of God is coming. It does not require a form of church training or enlistment of scholarly help from any man or seminary institution. Religious and national leaders should be replaced from the top to the bottom unless they are now guided and motivated by the spirit of love, generosity, faithfulness, honesty, goodness, brotherly concern, righteousness, meekness, found as Kingdom qualities within the mind of Christ.
In order for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, it is not necessary for many governments or employments, or relations in life to be altered, but it is needful that WE OURSELVES BE ALTERED!
Indeed, God's Kingdom does not rule us through violence. God’s Kingdom is coming in peace to the armies of heavenly refined believers who will yet disarm the world’s armies before more dastardly wars destroy this planet with all their present technical systems of warfare. Woe to those given to change by using oppression and violence. The Kingdom of God has come to change the world by FIRST CHANGING OUR HEARTS as our spirit and our soul become enlightened followers of Christ Jesus.
Those elected to hear the call of His higher purposes and to know of these lasting places are pressing onward until we are fully changed. This change occurs not by human precepts and fleshly agreements but by divine arrangement: we are in allegiance with the Spirit of God only. Christ operates in our lives as light that dispels the darkness of our own religious character. Only Christ within us can rid us of the selfish religious characters men like to display in the church heavens.
The coming of the Kingdom imparts a greater Light of His presence into the hearts of those drawn higher now. “Thy Kingdom” imparts an anointed method of wisdom which judges justly about the righteous and merciful character of the King of God. The King is coming BY THE SPIRIT. He has come into our life to reveal Himself in just the right way. He opens the way of peace before us that ends the rule of evil thoughts, hatred of others, and other carnal minded death from controlling us.
Death is now an enemy that shall be completely dispelled by allegiance to this great King’s blessings and benefits. He is fully committed to manifesting a blessing to all the families of earth! The nations shall yet behold the glory and honor given to our sovereign Lord by the omnipotent Father. His glory shall “cover the earth as the waters cover the sea”:
"And He said, Thus is the kingdom of God: As if ever man should be casting seed on the earth, and he may be drowsing and rousing night and day, and the seed may be germinating and lengthening, as he is not aware. Spontaneously the earth is bearing fruit, first the blade, thereafter the ear, thereafter the full grain in the ear. Now whenever the fruit may be giving way, straightway he is dispatching the sickle, for present is the harvest.
And He said, How should we be likening the kingdom of God? Or by what parable may we be placing it? As a kernel of mustard, which, whenever it may be sown on the earth, is smaller than all the seeds of those on the earth, and whenever it may be sown, is coming up and becoming greater than all the greens and is making great boughs, so that, under its shade, the flying creatures of heaven are able to roost." Mark 4:26-33 concordant
Our spiritual life is no longer seen as either a seed, or a mere blade, but we now see full corn, fruit on the ear. We see fruit of a grown spiritual man, we see Christ formed within. We prayed our spirit and our soul be diligent to bring forth fruit pleasing to the King. In the center of our spirit, His Word was planted. Thank God! God is planting truth in our hearts daily. The Spirit of truth was sent to us and watered us to understand His Word.
We have grown within our inner spiritual man to awaken to an identical life of sonship as the original firstborn son. We do not claim to comprehend all the matters of our inner spiritual growth and development, but we know we are growing nevertheless. Our house is a house of prayer and we feed on the daily bread of truth given us of God. We have found that nothing can stop the increase of His governmental claim upon us. We embrace the Word of truth, the common faith of sons and daughters of God.
The spirit of Christ Jesus is sending each of us a portion of spiritual quickening that is the most important part of us. Perfection does not come just to preachers! It comes to those who grow up into the Head to become one spirit with Jesus. God's Kingdom grows by forming the fruit of God’s Spiritual nature within us. He establishes an abiding place within us of a peaceful and righteous nature. God lives within each and every one of His tabernacle people day by day. In every daily chore, we partake of the powerful spirit life found in Christ Jesus, the King of God.
If we have any questions regarding our present troubles, our trials, and tribulations, we soon are praying to our Father for the reason of these trials. Within our reasoning mind battles darkness of death that has been lurking to contest the truth within our spirit. The planting of the Father’s firstfruits requires special care! As the farmer trims and prunes his crops to produce better plants resulting in a better harvest, so the great Husbandman, the Lord of the harvest, dresses and cares for His plantings by cultivating thoughts of the true faith within us. The divinely sponsored truth grows in our heart to guide our inner life to proceed to be harvested to God’s garner. It must!
Our loving Father will weed out of us everything that curtails His production of perfect fruit. His promise is to harvest us into the state of complete maturity within our inner spiritual life. Not reducing the quality or quantity of the harvest, our all-wise Husbandman cuts and prunes us. , Thus He is removing anything in our lives that would affect proper growth that will hinder His harvest of love, peace, and joy within our inner being.
He is the vine, we are the branches growing out of Him and living by Him. His life is coming into our inner spiritual life! Honesty is coming to fill our life with the abundance of God-given fruit. Within our spirit, our Husbandman sees to it that we are always trimmed and pruned, fit to produce the sweetest fruit or to be crushed for wine in the Kingdom. Such “new wine” lifts the spirit as the time of harvest approaches.
Let it be established then that the Lord works within the individual hearts of believers, and will yet be controlling external political powers presently ruling in worldly orders. Jesus said:
‘When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and understands it not, then comes the wicked one, and catches away that which was sown in his heart. But he that receives seed into the good ground (of his heart) is he that hears the word, and understands it; which also bears fruit, and brings forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.’” Matthew 13:19,23
So it is that the Lord sows the word of His Kingdom into the hearts of His “100%” believing people, enabling them to be spiritually disciplined to bring forth Kingdom fruit produced by the Spirit of God. The seed-word of His Kingdom marriage supper has come sweetly in transforming words to sow deeply enough into our spiritual mind a grasping of His viewpoints on the matter.
The Lord of the harvest is drawing His believing people to Himself in the fullness of the Lord's Day. An everlasting gospel message is drawing all those who can hear to a complete redemption. Eventually God will save all men. He will do so by continually speaking truth into the hearts of individuals. We are praying for His Kingdom word to come, not for more churches, more church oriented ministers, more legislation, or more pulls for money, more police protection, or more prisons for criminals, but for more sons like the firstborn Son.
I am assured that the Lord’s Day has begun and the next age of restoration is now sending out His Kingdom Word and Spirit of the New Jerusalem into the hearts of His believing men and women. He is instructing us more perfectly about the things of the Kingdom: how to live as subjects of Christ, how to experience the coming Kingdom. His will is being done in our earth as it is in heaven. All that are dead shall hear His voice and shall come forth yet to victory, not by any outward literal coming, not by political nominations, or by any religious means, but WITHIN.
A new order of the Kingdom of God is established high in God’s lasting heavens. Within us is a placing into an order of sonship that is of the New Jerusalem order. We are walking out its precepts on the pathways of our life here and now. We have become the Kingdom’s new administrative tools, a priesthood who provides an excellent ministry to wonderfully advance into the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is not limited to or by any existing state of affairs. His Kingdom is ever progressive. The Kingdom of God is growing and increasing, and its government shall never cease to expand until it fills His beloved followers with oneness. The spiritual power of the King is coming to shake the governments and kingdoms of prideful men. He is coming right into the personal compartments of our private lives to shake us until the will of God is being done in us.
It is folly to conclude that we can pray the prayer, “Thy Kingdom come,” by rote, in cool detachment. The King is not dispensing a dusty antiquated Jewish dream formed in the history of centuries ago. He aims to touch us at today's vital points — by His Word and Spirit causing immediate and personal change into the image to which we belong. God’s plans for the ages have come to be revealed within us as a time-abiding strategy for redeeming every man from the pride and vanity of selfishness. Yes, His plan is to free us from the resulting darknesses of death.
God’s way to change is to conform us into the image of His first begotten Son, making us one with Him. The solemn truth is that when we pray for the coming of the Kingdom, we are not praying for some great world-wide political or economic program or event. We are not praying for the end of the world systems, or for a rapture of the church, or for a literal millennium reign, nor are we desiring blessing upon the state of Israel, or the exaltation of the United States and Great Britain. It is far, far more personal than that!
This prayer teaches us to open the gates of our own little kingdom, to discard our personal ideas to find the ways God is establishing His work, to learn the doings of the King. God is COMPLETING our salvation as His Kingdom comes. Bringing His domain within our spirit, it reveals our religious mindsets and our religious ways. We now worship Him more perfectly in the spirit of truth as we see His glorious Kingdom blessings transform the lives of those to whom His Kingdom comes.