Thy Kingdom Come!
As a child of the 80’s I well remember Belinda Carlisle singing “Heaven is a Place on Earth!” Whatever the lyric was meant to mean, I’m sure it was never intended to be taken literally. Heaven is not a place on earth.
And yet something of heaven should be found here, and now.
“The Kingdom of God is among you.”
Luke 12:21
Jesus told the (spiritually blind) Pharisees that the Kingdom had come. They may not have had eyes to see it, but it stood there in front of them in the form of King Jesus and his followers.
There are a people on earth striving in God’s grace to live under his rule and reign, according to his wisdom and his Word. There are a people in whom the Spirit of God himself dwells (1 Cor 6:19-20) And so something of heaven should be here now, in us.
Of course, we are a watching and waiting people, looking and longing for the return of our King. Only then will every knee bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Only then will the Kingdom be consummated, but it has already been inaugurated.
One Great Day God’s dwelling place will be among the people, and he will dwell with us. We will be his people, and God himself will be with us and be our God. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have has passed away. (Revelation 21)
But in the here and now, while we deal with the terrible reality of sin and sorrow, sickness and death, we cry out for his kingdom to come!
To pray that the Kingdom would come, is to pray that the world would gladly fall under the rule and reign of God. Since God is good and God is love, to know him as King is to know fullness of life. It is to know a peace and joy we cannot know in living in rebellion against God.
It is the job of the Church to show this to the world. Calvin said “the task of the Church is to make the invisible kingdom visible.”
RC Sproul says “We do that by living in such a way that we bear witness to the reality of the kingship of Christ in our jobs, our families, our schools, and even our chequebooks, because God in Christ is King over every one of these spheres of life. The only way the kingdom of God is going to be manifest in this world before Christ comes is if we manifest it by the way we live as citizens of heaven and subjects of the King.”
Thy kingdom come!