![]() We win when we submit to God’s will but we can only submit to that will when we believe His kingdom is better than ours! We worry that in surrendering our kingdom to God’s will we will lose! But Jesus tells us, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And this Kingdom is ultimately for my good. His Kingdom is the eternal, glorious, and beautiful one. “Thy kingdom come,” is a prayer that submits to God’s glory and vision. My values and priorities need to change, so that my own commitment to His will can change. I have a vision for a kingdom of my own and God is not willing to give me such a kingdom. As I think about my own struggles to submit to the will of the Lord, I note that it is often because God’s will does not seem to align with my desire. Verse 10, however, interests me in particular today. It ends with a plea for help in resisting temptation and protection from evil. The prayer begins with a recognition of God, who He is and the praise He is owed. Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, and his prayer establishes a helpful order for our own heart priorities. This is why Jesus’ model prayer can be so helpful: it teaches us to desire a better kingdom. In such a framework, then, to lose our kingdom becomes an understandable cause of despair. We often get to this place because our unmet expectations are more than just things we long for, they are things we convince ourselves we must have! In some sense they become our little kingdoms that we are willing to fight for. We can move from disappointment to discontentment to despair and even to destructiveness (see the helpful diagram below from Julie Ganschow). ![]() Disappointment can spiral downward, however, as our hearts cling to these unmet expectations. Disappointment is a common human experience (even for believers). When we are able to focus on God’s kingdom first then accepting His will becomes easier.Īll people live with unmet expectations in this life. ![]() Jesus teaches us to pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The order of those phrases matters. I think a partial answer to the cause of this tension is found in Jesus’ model prayer. Yet, we often struggle with accepting the Lord’s will. Generally speaking, we want to obey the Lord, and we want to desire God’s best for us. Why does the Lord’s will often seem so difficult for us to accept? Most believers are not outright obstinate and rebellious. ![]()
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