How to Pray (Part 3)

I want to be honest this morning: I have wrestled with whether or not to abandon this sermon series and preach on topics or passages that seem to deal more directly with what we are going through as a country.

There may be a time where we do that, as we already have a few times throughout this year.

However, for now, I believe God would have us keep working our way through the Sermon on the Mount.

Why?

Our world is in quite a frenzy right now, isn’t it?

The mudslinging is in full force on all sides as we approach the elections in November, and battle lines are being drawn.

Christians across the country are looking at all the issues, platforms, and candidates. They are prayerfully weighing who seems best, and many are having a difficult time.

Students and parents are worrying about whether or not to go back to school or if they should keep staying in dorms.

There is a lot of discussion about what the economy is going to do, and that is creating fear.

Add onto that all the “normal” issues of life like health problems, relationship tension, fears of messing up your kids for life, etc., and it can get overwhelming.

I wish I had all the answers for you, but as we turn aside from the news and turn our attention back to God’s Word this morning, I want to pull us out of the fray for a moment and remind you of what kingdom you are a part of.

If you are saved this morning, someone who has been drawn into a relationship with God by placing your trust in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, then I want you to remember that your primary citizenship and allegiance is to the kingdom of God, to which Jesus returns our thoughts this morning.

We are called by God to live like our lives have been changed and that we are no longer living for this world’s priorities.

There is no better time for us to step up and show the hope, the joy, the love, and the goodness that God calls us to display than when everything around us is falling apart.

Perhaps one of the greatest ways we show that we are citizens of heaven is through prayer.

If you are not a Christian, prayer seems weird and pointless.

However, as we are seeing, prayer is one of the most crucial disciplines we can develop.

We have spent the last two weeks looking at what Jesus has to teach us about prayer in this section of the Sermon on the Mount.

Over the past several months of looking at this message by Jesus, we have said that Jesus has been outlining the heart and habits of those who are a part of the kingdom of God.

As we will see this morning, that has tremendous impact on the way that we pray.

We have seen that prayer is something that isn’t a show and doesn’t have to use lots of big words.

Last week, Jesus began giving us a model prayer that teaches us the kinds of things we are to pray.

Start with me in Matthew 6:9 and let’s read through this prayer.

As we begin our times of prayer, we start by recognizing and respecting that we are praying to the God who we have the privilege of calling our Father.

Today, as we look at verse 10, we build on what Jesus has just said.

He is our Father, the one in heaven, and we want to see his name honored.

The next two requests build on the first, so let’s take some time to break them apart this morning.

As we pray, we will pray for God’s kingdom to come, and for his will to be done.

Let’s take a look at each statement in depth...

1) Pray for God’s kingdom to be completed.

Jesus calls us to pray that “[God’s] kingdom come.”

We have talked about this off and on throughout our series, but remember that the kingdom of God is God exerting his rule over all creation and fulfilling all the promises he has made.

To understand it all, let’s go back to the very beginning.

God created the universe and everything in it. We were created to love, serve, and honor him.

However, we pushed him away and rejected his authority over us by choosing to do what we wanted instead of what God created us to do.

That put us and all of creation under the curse of sin and separated us from God.

Hear this clearly: God never lost control of the events of history, and he is still king over all.

However, there is a separation between us and God that wasn’t there before.

We don’t naturally honor him or even want him around. We want to be our own gods, and we reject his authority over us.

Not only that, but we don’t enjoy the close relationship with God that we were created to have.

Isaiah sums it up this way:

Isaiah 59:2 CSB

But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen.

That’s what changed when Jesus came.

Do you remember the prophecy that was fulfilled when Jesus was born?

Matthew 1:22–23 CSB

Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”

When Jesus came, that was the start of a new phase in God bringing his kingdom to earth.

Suddenly, God was back with us. This time, he came as God in the flesh, as a baby born and laid in a feeding trough.

Jesus, that baby, would grow up and teach people how to follow God and do miracles that demonstrated God’s power over the effects of sin like disease and death.

He even demonstrated God’s power over demons, showing that he truly is the king over it all.

That’s why Jesus’ message generally sounded like this:

Mark 1:15 CSB

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

He brought the rule and reign of God back to earth in a practical, tangible way.

Then, Jesus went far enough to die on the cross in our place and be raised from the dead.

He proved that he has the right to rule and reign over creation, and through his sacrifice, he can open the doors of the kingdom to anyone who will trust in him.

Now, he sits at the right hand of God the Father, and the work of the kingdom of God on earth is carried out by the Holy Spirit, who lives in every person who has trusted in Christ for eternal life.

So, with God as our king, ruling and reigning over our hearts, we are citizens of the kingdom of God.

So, does that mean that the kingdom of God is fully realized?

Does everyone around us honor God as their king, or do we still see ourselves and others living selfish, sinful lives?

That’s why we describe this time of history as the “already but not yet” part of the kingdom of God.

On the one hand, Jesus has brought the kingdom of God near and demonstrated God’s rule and reign. God is ruling and reigning in the hearts of his people at this moment, and we are enjoying the benefits of knowing him as our king.

However, his kingdom is not yet fully realized, which is why Jesus teaches us to pray for God’s kingdom to come.

Part of our prayer is for God to hurry up and finally fulfill all his promises and bring his kingdom to earth in all its power and glory.

The promises of what that will be like are incredible:

Revelation 21:3–4 CSB

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.

Man, how awesome will that be?

So a part of our prayer is that God will return quickly to complete the work that Jesus started.

This request isn’t just for God to bring about the end of time as we know it, though.

We are also praying for God’s kingdom to come now in greater ways.

If the kingdom of God is about hearts submitting to his rule and his reign, then we are to pray regularly for God to expand his kingdom.

We are praying for God to draw more people to himself so they will come into his kingdom and live their lives like he is in charge.

That means we are also praying for us to live our lives more submitted and more responsive to him. We are praying for God to make us better ambassadors for his kingdom with greater impact in the world around us.

Before we move on, let’s take a quick look at your life this past week: if I looked at your to-do lists, your bank statement, your calendar, your texts for the last week, and your Facebook page, what kingdom would I think you lived for?

Would I see you prioritizing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, meekness, and other characteristics of kingdom citizens, or would I see someone whose life is caught up in chasing the American dream or fighting over things that won’t matter in eternity?

We know that the message of the gospel is offensive—that the only way for you to come into a relationship with God is by acknowledging you are messed up and have sinned and you are crying out to God for forgive you. But have you lived a life of such love and grace this week that others would want to follow the God you claim to serve?

We need to pray for God’s kingdom to come in greater ways in our own hearts, and in the lives around us.

That leads to naturally to the second part of this verse...

2) Pray for God’s desires to be carried out.

If God is good, just, loving, gracious, and all that we saw last week, and he is in charge, then it would make sense that we should do what he tells us to do.

That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

See, the angels around the throne in heaven see God for who he is. They know and honor him as their king, and they do what he says.

As we have said, that isn’t the same way on earth.

Our prayers, then, are to be for God’s will to be carried out as completely on earth as it is in heaven.

Although there is a lot of discussion about the will of God, in this instance, let’s think of it as what God desires for us to be and do.

We are asking God to work in such a way that people do what he would want us to do.

Jesus positions this request in a very strategic part of the model prayer.

Right after this, we are going to shift to asking God to do things on our behalf.

Before we do, though, Jesus wants us to acknowledge that ultimately, God is the one who is in charge.

Our responsibility is to ask God to give us the strength and wisdom to carry out what he would want in a given situation.

Praying this way forces us to face the fact that what I want and what God wants may not be the same thing.

If you have been a Christian very long, then you have had a prayer that God didn’t answer the way you wanted him to.

I remember praying when I was in high school and in college that God would maybe work for me to be able to fall in love with this girl or that girl.

Little did I know the incredible woman God had waiting for me when I moved to Memphis for seminary!

I know that I had desires and a design for how I thought things should work, but that wasn’t God’s desire at all!

As we pray, then, we pray with the acknowledgement that we don’t always know what is best, and we are praying for what God desires to be carried out as he sees is best.

Sometimes, though, it may feel like we are hedging our bets.

“God, do something different if you want,” can become a way to guard ourselves against disappointment.

When you pray this, you do need to allow God to check your heart attitudes.

However, we have a great example of what it looks like to pray this way.

On the night Jesus was going to be arrested and eventually die a horrific death while carrying the weight of the sins of the world, he prayed something like this three different times:

Luke 22:42 CSB

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Jesus asked the Father to do whatever he desired and knew to be best, even if that wasn’t what he wanted.

If it was okay for Jesus to pray that way, then isn’t it good for us to do the same?

Look at what Jesus has taught us to pray so far.

Before we ever make a request for ourselves, for our friends, or for anything going on around us, he calls us to remember that we are praying to our Father who is near but also sits enthroned in heaven.

We are to ask that both kingdom citizens and all of creation would honor his name as he so rightly deserves.

We are to pray for God to complete the work of bringing his kingdom to earth fully, and that he would start that work in us and in those around us.

From there, we are to ask that we and even the rest of the world would carry out his desires, just like the angels in heaven do.

Prayer, then, isn’t first and foremost about me spewing out a grocery list of needs to God.

As we will see, there is a time and place to pray for ourselves and the people and situations around us.

However, those requests come after we first remember who we are praying to and seeking that his kingdom and his interests are put above our own.

Is that how you pray? If you struggle with that, then let me give you a challenge: spend time this week, perhaps once a day, only focusing on these first three requests we make. During those times, don’t ask God for anything specific for yourself or the world around you; just take some time and seek him.

If you are here, though, and you haven’t come into a relationship with God, let me remind you of the reason Jesus prayed for the cup to be taken from him...