THE LORD’S PRAYER: REFLECTIONS FOR LENT (Reflection 3)

 Reflection 3:  2^nd Petition: Your kingdom come!

[See Feb. 22, 2026 for translation and Reflection 1.] 

The first three petitions put us in a right relationship with God.  They are made on God’s behalf.  Praying them puts us in our rightful place, in submission to God.  When prayed consistently, the first petition sets the primary desire of our hearts on seeing the holiness of God revealed to the world through our lives.

The second petition, unfortunately, reveals how the gospel (“good news”) has almost been forgotten in our pop-Christian culture.  If I were to ask the average person – maybe even a church-goer – “What was Jesus’ main message?”  I imagine most people would say “love.” Maybe some would say “the Beatitudes.”  However, in the Gospel of Mark, the first and most important words out of Jesus’ mouth would have been quite shocking to his audience:

The [appointed]¹ time is fulfilled.  The Kingdom of God has approached.  Repent and believe in the gospel! (Mark 1:15).

The presence of the Kingdom of God is what Jesus proclaimed and what Jesus sent his disciples out to preach.²  Moreover, Jesus’ signs and wonders provided the proof that this divinely appointed time had indeed come.

We need to understand the background.  Many Jews of Jesus’ day believed theologically that they were living in an imperfect age of chaos but that, at the appointed time, God would begin a new age.  This would be an age of God’s perfect rule, the age of the Kingdom of God.  Many of them believed that God’s Messiah (Anointed One) would usher in this age in one great, complete movement.  Jesus shockingly announced that with his presence, that age had now arrived.  However, through his teachings, Jesus taught something different about the coming of this new age.  He taught that God’s Kingdom, which was initiated with his presence, would not be fully completed until he died and came again, a message virtually incomprehensible to his disciples.³
      Therefore, in his prayer, Jesus instructed his followers to pray for the kingdom, or reign of God to become increasingly realized in the present.  That is our second petition.  This is to be another consuming desire of our hearts.  Once again, though, God turns the onus back on us.  This is where “love” comes in.  By our love people will know we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:34-35).  Our character will display the marks of the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3-10).  We will be practicing righteousness (Matt 25:31-46).  Through the Holy Spirit, we will do even greater works than Jesus did (John 14:12).  You and I are to reveal God’s reign, God’s Kingdom to the world.⁴  This commission is what we accepting when we pray, “Your kingdom come!” 

This petition influences my prayers.  Early each day I pray, “Jesus, what are you doing around me today in Your Kingdom?  I would like to be a part of it.”  I am trying to think and live as a kingdom person.  I am slowly learning and slowly being reoriented.
      This petition also confronts the Church.  The 8^th century prophets in the Old Testament had to warn the people of God about praying for the “Day of the LORD” to come as if God would come to eliminate their so-called ungodly enemies.  Rather, the prophets announced that God’s righteous justice would first be applied to the people of God.  God would first address their failure to obey, their ungodly behavior.  Is the Church ready?  Are you and I really ready for the completion of the Kingdom of God when Christ comes again?

Journal Reflections

1. How does thinking about Jesus’ gospel as the proclamation of the presence of the Kingdom of God influence how you see yourself as a Christian?
2. Are there aspects of how you approach life that do not fit with proclaiming the Kingdom of God?
3. This week try praying something like the prayer mentioned above, asking what is happening in the Kingdom of God around you so that you can participate in it and be of service.
4. During Lent, we are reminded that our King was willing to suffer for us His servants.

Prayer quote:

Is it not strange that in spite of our conviction of its [prayer] privilege and necessity, we are all plagued with a subtle aversion to praying?  We do not naturally delight in drawing near to God.  We pay lip-service to its value and potency and yet so often fail to pray.  ‘When I go to pray,’ confessed on eminent Christian, ‘I find my hear so loath to go to God, and when it is with Him so loath to stay.’  Is it here that self-discipline comes in… Here is an area in which we can avail ourselves of the Spirit’s promised assistance in our weakness. (J. Oswald Sanders, Effective Prayer, pp.8-9)

Notes:

1. “Appointed” has been added to the translation because the idiom here shows that Jesus is referring to a divinely anticipated event in history.
2. If you have access to a concordance, you might like to look up the many references to “kingdom” and “gospel” in the Gospels.
3. For an example, see the “Parable of the Weeds” and its explanation in Matt 13:24-30, 36-43.
4. Perhaps a note of caution should be added to avoid a misunderstanding that has taken place throughout Christian history.  Jesus made it clear before Pilate that his kingdom is in this world but not of it; that is, God’s rule does not come about by human powers or governments.  Followers of Jesus do not lord themselves over people; they get under them as servants and care for them (Mark 10:42-45).

Historical note: One reason that our culture may have lost sight of the gospel in terms of the Kingdom of God is because that frame of thinking was particularly Jewish.  As Christianity spread to a Gentile audience, that language shifted to that of participating in the eternal of life of God in the present.  We can see this shift taking place in John’s presentation of Jesus’s dialogue with Nicodemus (John 3:1-16).