This concluding doxology chimes in exactly with the message of the prayer as a whole: God's kingdom, God's power, and God's glory are what it's all about. To pray this prayer is to pray that God's kingdom may be seen in all the world as they see the glory of Jesus the Messiah. It is because God is King, and has become King in Jesus, that we can pray this prayer with confidence.
From testing in the desert to the agonizing plea in Gethsemane, Jesus demonstrated obedience to the Father's will in the face of evil. It's no wonder that now Jesus teaches his followers to pray that God would deliver them from the power of Evil. And we can pray this prayer with confidence because Jesus has met that power and has defeated it once and for all. To pray this prayer is to ask God to enable us to be his kingdom-people who realize the reality of evil and pain in this world, yet live knowing that Jesus has won the victory over it all.
Followers of Jesus are kingdom-people who know that they have been forgiven for their sins. Therefore, God's kingdom-people must live out forgiveness to others, otherwise they are denying the very basis of their own existence! Followers of Jesus breathe in true divine forgiveness day by day. Once that life-giving air from God fills us, we can't help but breathe it out. As we learn what it is like to be forgiven, we begin to discover that it is possible, and indeed joyful, to forgive others.
Daily needs and desires point beyond themselves to God's promise of the kingdom in which death and sorrow will be no more. The promise of the kingdom includes our daily needs and desires, and this prayer asks for our desires to be satisfied in God's way and God's time. This prayer urges us to pray with the wider Christian family, and human family, standing alongside the hungry and praying on their behalf. It is a prayer for the complete fulfillment of God's kingdom: for God's people to be rescued from hunger, guilt and fear.
The second main petition of the Lord's Prayer rules out any idea that the Kingdom of God is a purely heavenly reality. "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." When we pray this Kingdom-prayer we are praying, as Jesus was praying and acting, for the redemption of the world; for the radical defeat of evil; for heaven and earth to be married at last; for God to be all in all. We pray this for the world, and we pray this for the church.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name...
Join us as we look into how Jesus taught his followers to pray, starting with the invitation to approach the glorious and majestic God of the universe as our Dad.
