RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Kingdom Praying
Sammy Tippit: I’ve been so blessed by just sharing with you, Dave. It has been such a blessing to be able to talk about prayer, encourage people in prayer, and encourage one another to pray.
Dave Butts: That’s right. It has been a joy.
Sammy: Yeah. It’s really great. I want us to continue… In our last time of talking, we were talking about focusing on God and worship. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he opened the door with the focus on God, but then he quickly went to the world. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”
Dave: That’s right.
Sammy: Let’s talk about that. What does it mean when he teaches his disciples (and us) to pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth…”?
Dave: You know, I really believe that’s the heart of what we call the Lord’s Prayer. It’s praying the kingdom. That was the message of Jesus everywhere he went. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand. God is walking in your midst. The King is here.” It is ultimately about the rule of Jesus. That’s what the kingdom is. It isn’t about this political sort of thing. It isn’t even about someday, somewhere. It is even now the rule of Jesus in the lives of individuals.
Someday, of course, that will take over whole nations, but right now it’s the rule of Jesus here on planet earth. We’re invited…no, commanded…to pray a kingdom kind of prayer. All too often, our prayers are about us instead of the kingdom, the rule of God. When people start asking, “Well, how do you pray, ‘Your kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven’?” My question is, “What do you think is going on in heaven? I mean, that’s ultimately what Jesus said we ought to pray.
Sammy: Right.
Dave: “Your kingdom happen here now like it’s happening in heaven.” Well, in heaven, absolutely everyone is in a right relationship with the Father. Everyone there is. There is no rebellion in heaven. Everyone is in a right relationship with him. To me, part of what we pray when we’re praying for the kingdom is that everyone we see, everyone who is on this planet, would come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord.
That’s what moves them into a right relationship with the Father. Kingdom praying has to do with praying evangelism, but the second thing is… I find from what we see in the glimpses in Revelation and other places that everyone in heaven is busy doing that which the Father has set them to do. Every angel has his task and is involved in doing it. They’re all lined up according to the purposes of the Father. You know, if I were pastoring a local church and every person in that church were doing exactly what they were gifted and called to do, I would call that revival.
Sammy: Yeah.
Dave: I would call that an amazing move of God that had so awakened an often sleeping body of Christians. Now they’re all involved doing exactly what the Father calls them to do. So I would say praying for revival is another important aspect of what it means to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done right now.”
Sammy: Okay. Let me break this down just a little bit, okay?
Dave: Sure.
Sammy: So the first part of what you were saying… I want to make sure I’m understanding correctly. It’s that you’re praying that people (every person, every human being) would come to know the rule and reign of Christ in their hearts.
Dave: Absolutely.
Sammy: So whoever is listening to this or watching this… If they’ve never opened their hearts and allowed Christ to come and take control of their lives, that’s what you’re praying for. Is that right?
Dave: Absolutely. That’s the reign of God on planet earth, and it happens individual by individual as Jesus Christ becomes Savior and Lord.
Sammy: Okay. Then the second thing you’re talking about is that God would just work in those who know Christ in such a way that their lives would be ordered so he could take them and use him, so his glory would fill their lives, and so they would be an honor, praise, and glory to the world around them. Is that right?
Dave: Yes. Instead of being observers just kind of watching, kind of vaguely interested in the kingdom, saying, “Hmm, I wonder what’s going on,” we are now participants in what God is doing on planet earth. There’s an awakening in us and through us that impacts and changes cultures. That’s revival.
Sammy: Yeah.
Dave: So to me, when we start praying, “Your kingdom come,” in a practical way, we need to understand we’re talking about something that’s huge. It’s something that’s going to change lives, millions of lives…not only the lives of those who don’t know Jesus but the lives of those who even now have known him but have been observers rather than participants.
Sammy: Or they’re discouraged.
Dave: Right.
Sammy: Or maybe they’re away from him and they’ll come back to him. One thing about this kingdom praying… When I first read that passage, I mulled over it. I lived in Germany, where they have kings. In the United States (where we live right now), we don’t have a history of kings.
Dave: No.
Sammy: But in Europe, there were kings, and in the Middle East, there are kings. In most places in the world, there were kings.
Dave: Right.
Sammy: The difference between King Jesus and those kings is he is a compassionate king.
Dave: That’s right.
Sammy: He is a loving king. It goes back to the very first thing you stated. When God’s rule comes, his kingdom comes in our hearts, we automatically begin to love people. We begin to love in ways we have never loved before. I’ll give you an illustration. I have a friend who was killed in a motorcycle accident. He and his wife loved Jesus.
They were great people of prayer who traveled with me. They wanted to adopt some children, street kids in Africa, because of their love for those kids. They had the compassionate king living in their hearts. Well, when he died, she was a widow. She was a poor widow and didn’t have much, but her heart still loved those kids. She would pray for those kids, and she would say to God, “Lord, just get them out of that situation on the streets!”
The Lord spoke to her and said, “Okay, I will. I’ll do it through you. I’m going to establish my kingdom through you.” She ended up starting an orphanage. Those kids are now graduating as top students. They didn’t have food, clothing, or housing. They have all of that. They’re going to school, and now they’re in colleges. It’s because she prayed and saw the heart of God. That’s what I think kingdom praying is. It’s seeing what’s on God’s heart and our hearts being captured with what’s on his heart. We begin to pray his heart onto earth.
Dave: Exactly. It is a radical sort of praying. It not only changes circumstances outside of us, but it changes things inside of us. The woman you were sharing about, the widow… The answer is, “You do it. I have something I want you to do to help my love become real in the lives of these children.”
When we start praying, “Your kingdom come,” we’ll not only see changes in the lives of others or maybe even people on the other side of the planet, but we’ll see a change in our lives because our lives are now lined up with the love of a King who’s so different, like you said, from other kings. He does not demand our allegiance at this point in time. He invites us to be subjects of his kingdom, and that’s an amazing, amazing privilege we have at this particular point in history.
Sammy: You know, one of the great criticisms of Christianity has been our lack of social involvement and so forth, but if you look at the great revivals, the times when the kingdom has come, times when there has been a move of the Spirit of God, you see there are great social movements that have taken place at those times.
Dave: That’s right. Oh…
Sammy: Because as God, Jesus, begins to rule in the hearts of people, people care about people because they have his heart. I think of the abolitionist movement and slavery. I think of Wesley and Wilberforce and how they met the needs and got the slaves freed because they experienced the kingdom of God in their lives.
One of the most powerful kinds of praying you’ll ever do is praying, “God, your kingdom come, your will be done in my heart as it is in heaven. Father, your kingdom come, your will be done in my family’s life, my neighbor’s life, my city, and my nation as it is in heaven.” God will do extraordinary things.