God's Right To
Rule!
"Your kingdom come."
Matthew 6: 10
Jesus taught His disciples to pray for God’s Kingdom
to come. The disciples revealed they understood God’s
Kingdom when they asked Jesus, after His resurrection,
if He was going to “restore the kingdom to Israel”
(Acts 1:6).
They meant a kingdom of rules and boundaries like the
kingdoms of David and Solomon in the Old Testament,
or the kingdom of Rome in their own day. But it was not
Jesus’ intent to set up a physical kingdom at that time
(Acts 1:7).
What did Jesus mean, then, in the Lord’s Prayer when He
said to pray that God’s Kingdom would come—if He
didn’t
intend to establish it then? He told a parable in Luke 19
about a nobleman who was given a kingdom. He wasn’t
given geography; he was given rulership.
And first and foremost, that is what God’s Kingdom is:
God’s right to rule. Yes, it will be geographical one day
in the Millennium. For now, God’s Kingdom is within
us, or in our midst (Luke 17:21).
When you pray, pray, “Your kingdom come,”
and ask God to rule in your life until He
returns to rule the world.
Before we can pray,
“Thy kingdom come,” we must be
willing to pray, “My kingdom go.”
Alan Redpath