SA Ep71 - Becoming a Prayer Warrior (Part 5)

SA EP71 - Becoming a Prayer Warrior (Part 5)

In this episode, we continue through the Lord’s Prayer by examining the phrase “Thy kingdom come.” After establishing a relationship with God as Father, recognizing His authority in heaven, and prioritizing worship, Jesus now directs believers to align themselves with the program of God.

The kingdom of God represents His rule, His authority, and His redemptive plan unfolding in the world. When believers pray “Thy kingdom come,” they are expressing a desire for God’s will to be carried out on earth and for His reign to be recognized in every area of life.

This phrase shifts the focus of prayer away from personal desires and toward God’s purposes. Instead of asking God to fit into our plans, we submit ourselves to His greater plan. It is both a present reality, as God works in the hearts of believers, and a future expectation, looking forward to the day when Christ will visibly reign.

This episode challenges listeners to examine their prayers and priorities. True prayer is not centered on building our own kingdom but on advancing God’s kingdom. When believers begin to pray this way, their lives become aligned with the purposes of God, and they participate in His work in the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelser from Iliad Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. There is a growing movement in academia and the social world today. That we are the rulers and creators of our own destiny. Our life is in our very own hands. Well, can I say if that is your thought, that you are living a sad and miserable life? If your future plans are in your own hands, hell will certainly be your home. In the next phase of becoming a prayer warrior, we must realize that we are not the creator and curator of our destiny. We must pray that God's kingdom will come. Now there is a lot of weight to that statement whenever we read this in what we call the Lord's Prayer. We know that it's the model prayer, but affectionately called the Lord's Prayer. And when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, the first thing that he taught them to do was acknowledge who, where, and what God is. He's our Father, He's in heaven, and He's hallowed. But now it's taking us and placing it, placing us into God's world. You see, these aren't two different worlds that we're dealing with. It's not like it's, you know, we're here, he's there. You know, and that's that's what a lot of people have the mindset of if God doesn't know where I'm at. No, we're we're in God's world. Now we know that Satan is the prince of the world right now, that he's given his time to reign, and that time will soon come to an end, but we are not in a separate, uh, we're not we're not separated from who and where God is, even though God is in heaven, as this prayer says, we uh we are quickly told to call those two worlds together because they belong together. And so when Jesus says, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, it moves our focus away from God being a separatist that wants nothing to do with his peasants and places us squarely inside the program of God. This idea of these next two uh phrases that we're going to look at in the next two episodes, it allows us to have a declaration of surrender. Instead of us carrying our life as some fabric egg in our hand, we we can turn ourselves over to him. Instead of thinking that it's our little world and what we do affects no one else, and and and it's it's only us. And if God somehow can just maybe look down upon us from time to time, it moves us from that that idea to knowing that we are in God's world. We are in his kingdom, we're a part of his kingdom. Now, this is a mouthful in itself to say thy kingdom come. There's more to this really than we can really discuss in the next 15 to 20 minutes. But by calling the kingdom of God, that means that we are calling his purpose, his plan, his ambition, his direction, his authorship, his ruling down into our life. That's a big thing. Because everybody tends to have their their own plans and ambitions and direction for their life. And I'll never forget I was watching the uh the show many years ago, Survivor. I haven't watched it since. Oh um I'm trying to guess what year it was. Probably somewhere in the early 2000s or so. Might have been the last time I watched it, maybe maybe 2010 in that area. Um but it but year but many years ago there was a lady, she was a uh psychologist or or some sort of that nature. I know she was a a uh something in that realm. She was a little firecracker of a lady. And I remember her when uh earlier uh in the the season, whenever she was, and she ended up winning when she was talking about uh you know one of her you know interviews, you know, one-on-one interviews, she was saying that uh you know, I I want everybody to know that you know if I win this, then I did it on my own. Nobody else helped me. Uh you know, and on and on and on. And that really that this is the idea that a lot of people have. That what we do in our every in our day-to-day life, it's us. We're doing this on our own. You know, if I get the promotion, it was me. If I earn the big paycheck, it was me. You know, if I if I find my wife or my husband and we have our family, it was it was me. I did this. And we we've got to get out of that, especially as Christians. It's not us. Every good thing comes from the Lord. Everything is got his hand upon it. When we pray for God's kingdom to come, it represents his rule and authority and active work in the world. It's not limited to physical location either. In Luke 1721, it says, For behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Now we're talking about something altogether different. Now we're talking about God's authorship, his ambitions, his direction, his lordship is dwelling now in us. Not that that makes us gods, don't believe the heresy of the secular humanist. But that that God's direction should reside in us, meaning that we should move as he directs us to move. This is this is what lordship truly is. This is what having a true a God of our life, that's what that is. Having a God of your life is not just you know when we you know deem it necessary. When we when we run across a problem, then we will. No, it's every day, it's every moment, it's every decision. I mean, there's people that won't buy a car unless they pray about it. I hope you're one of them. Revelation 11, 15 says, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. That is the essence of what we're praying for. It's almost the martyr's prayer of Revelation. They were praying, How long, O Lord? How long until you avenge our blood? And that's what we're praying for. When we say, Thy kingdom come, we're praying, God, we are ready. There's nothing in this world that I want to cling to. This world offers me nothing that I would hate to see go. I want your kingdom to be here. You see, God's kingdom is both present and future. And when we ask God's kingdom to come, we're asking Him to not only rule in our life right now, as Luke 17, 21 says, you know, to rule within within me. But we're also asking for that physical, future kingdom of God to come and come quickly. I think the Bible says that. Even so, come quickly. It changes, it should change when we when we pray this prayer, it should change the way we approach our daily decisions. And this is what being a prayer warrior truly is. We will, if we truly pray that God's kingdom to come and to reside in us, then we would make different decisions, I think. Well, I don't know about you, but I could speak for myself that there are times where I make I make rash decisions that my mind out outruns uh uh my actions outrun my mind, and I don't have time to stop and think and say, wait a minute, I need to pray about this. Thankfully, I think there's a lot of times where God, knowing all things, is up there just shaking his head and rubbing his forehead and thinking, Lord help, there's that boy again. I'm sure my parents probably did that many times themselves. Just shake their heads, oh Lord, there's that boy again. I mean, there's many times I know that as an earthly child I frustrated my parents, and I have no doubt in my mind that I'll frustrate my heavenly father as well. So I know that I can make, I could do better in making better decisions. And praying this way that God's kingdom would come is also a prayer that is a connection, a direct connection to the spiritual warfare that we're in. Because we need to be part of God's kingdom. Because we're in that, we've we've discussed this many times about the spiritual battle, where we're in the spiritual battle, and we need to make sure that what kingdom are we uh part of? Which, which, I mean, there's the battle lines are drawn. There's there's no middle ground, there's no conscientious objectors in this, in this war. And we need to make sure which side we're on. So praying that that kingdom come, it's not just a physical kingdom, it's not just a present kingdom, it's not just a future kingdom, it's also part of the spiritual war of the of the kingdoms that's going on. I think back in Isaiah 53, it talks about that the souls are the spoils of war. The souls of man is is what's at at stake here. This this prayer, this praying for God's kingdom to come should also affect how we view the world around us. And if if we start seeing things through something greater than the human lens, there's people out there in my heavens. I'm I can already I already see where my mind's running with this. This world is so enamored with affirmation. Almost to the point that I'm even even it kind of makes my stomach twinge a little bit just to say the word. I I kind of you know you know it's almost like I'm allergic to it. You know, I get this you know funny twitch in my eye, my my my neck just get this upset stomach just to say the word affirmation. We all need to be affirmed in what we're doing. No, we don't. We need God's kingdom to reside in us, and we ought to pray for his kingdom to come and reside on this earth. We don't need to be affirmed in what we're doing. We need to be submitted. That's the word we need as Christians. Submitted. And that is what this prayer does. When we pray, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, we are fully submitting. We are not looking to God and saying, God, I just need your affirmation on what decision I'm about to make. No, we make that we need to pray that we would make the decision that God would have us to make. We don't need affirmation in our decision. We need submission in our decisions. This submission will affect how we see the world around us instead of walking around wondering if the world accepts us for who we are and for you know all the personality quirks that we may have. We just give ourselves, submit ourselves to God, say, God, I'm yours. That's all I can do. I'm not worried about affirmation, I'm not worried about acceptation, I'm not worried about confirmation of the world, any other Asians. God, I just want to submit and fully surrender to you. Thy kingdom come. It's a prayer that carries responsibility. It's not enough just to speak the words, God, I want your kingdom to reside. And but maybe in the future sense. No, when we when we when we pray that God's kingdom come, if we're able to pray that, some people can't pray that because they're not they have no interest in it. They're happy with the the little world they're living in, they're happy with the job that they have uh curated for themselves and and are protecting on their own uh merit and and work. So they're happy with what they got. So they're they're not interested in God's kingdom, they're not interested in having anything to do with God right now. They're they're enamored with the day-to-day hustle and bustle. I was talking to a gentleman I know him very well, very, very wonderful man, wonderful family. He used to be a day trader, and uh just just for fun. Just for fun, it wasn't his job. He he he was a trader, he was a stock trader just because he enjoyed it. And he said, Man, I I never felt so good whenever I'd get in there and make the decision, and I'd watch a stock rise, and I could, you know, I'd sell it off or trade it to another, and you know, going constantly getting alerts and checking, you know, it just all the time. And he said, one day I realized that everything that I was doing was based on me. And I immediately got out of it. He said, I wasn't doing it because of God, I wasn't doing it to bring glory to him, I wasn't doing it to honor him. There was nothing about that that was all about him. It was all about the money and all about how smart I was and how well I kept up with the markets. He said, Every decision I was making in that moment, every decision that I was making was all about me. And he said, I've never been more happy since I gave it up. He said, I thought I was happy while I was doing it. That's praying for God's kingdom. That's praying for what God would have in your life. And now he's a he's the one of the best family men you'd ever know. He's taken all that energy and he's a smart man. And he's taken all of that, and he's he's poured it into his wife and his family and his kids and grandkids. And oh, how the Lord has has blessed that family. It's beautiful. That carries responsibility when we pray for God's kingdom to come. That praise that carries that carries some significant weight to it that we are now responsible for adhering to what God would have done in our life. So this moment of of, I guess, a little bit of a change in the prayer, going from describing God's characters and attributes to calling God down to rule with authority, it changes our stance in the prayer. It should humble us a little bit. And we are supposed to come boldly before the throne of God. I I would not disagree with that, but not boldly in ourself. And this portion of the prayer, I think, if we pray it and we truly mean it, it humbles us to be able to say, Thy kingdom, God, not my kingdom, thy kingdom. The kingdom of God is not just something we say, it ought to be something we live, it ought to be a surrender of our life, it ought to be a rejection of the world's kingdom and the world's system, and it should be a confident prayer that we have, that one day, not only are we going to live in his spiritual kingdom and have it residing in our heart, but one day we will reside in the physical kingdom of God in fullness and in glory in a new heaven and a new earth. Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval. You know our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places. I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day. And join me, Dr. Chris Spelser, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together. Until then, grace and peace to you from Seeking Approval at Gilead Baptist Church.