20. On Earth as it is in Heaven

“Pray then like this Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” [Matthew 6:9-10]

Can you imagine a world where God’s name is treated as holy (that’s what hallowed means), where His kingdom is established and His will is carried out? It would be a world where God is seen as He truly is—a world where all of His creation calls Him by name and honors, trusts and follows Him as a good Father. It would be a world where we all live in His kingdom—a beautiful and unsoiled world where everyone looks out for the good of each other, where relationships are continually deepened and strengthened, where all is made right. And finally, it would be a place where His perfect will is carried out—a place free from slavery and oppression, death and divorce, loneliness and anxiety, vanity and greed, a place where everything is exactly as it was always supposed to be. Can you imagine it?

This is what Jesus is inviting us to imagine and pray for when He teaches us to pray, “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We start by asking God to help us to see Him as He truly is—as holy. Then we begin asking Him to establish His kingdom here. Notice that He doesn’t teach us to ask to be taken to Heaven. He teaches us to pray for heaven to come down to earth. We are not praying about a future kingdom that we enter after we die. We are praying that the Lord would use us to help establish His kingdom here on earth, right now. Finally, He teaches us to pray for His will to be done. His will, not ours. His will is perfect. It’s not tainted by selfishness or pride, by blindspots or bias. His will is that we would be healed and whole, drawing ever nearer to Him and to each other, in complete peace and joy.

These are huge prayers and maybe just a little overwhelming—to pray for the whole earth to be set right. But there is a part of the earth that we all have the power to pray over, and it’s a great place to start. In Genesis 2:7, we read that God formed man out of dust. The word used there is the same word as earth. We are made of earth. Before we are ready to pray that the Lord would make all things right in the whole earth, we have to start by asking Him to make all of this true in the earth of our own flesh. We can ask Him to help us see Him as He truly is, that His kingdom would come and that His will would be done in the earth of our own hearts as in His kingdom. This is a prayer of invitation, a cry out to the living God that His kingdom and rule would invade our broken flesh and claim us as His own.

When we ask the Lord to make His name, “hallowed” in our own hearts, we are asking that God would show Himself holy in our lives. When we understand God’s holiness, we understand that we are called to be holy like He is holy. We have the opportunity to live holy lives—set apart from the world around us, so that the watching world will understand that our God is holy. Similarly, when we invite God’s kingdom to come into our earth as in heaven, we are proclaiming our citizenship in a new kingdom. We recognize the authority of a new ruler, and a new set of rules that we’re choosing to live by. We are making the choice to stop building our own empires and to become kingdom builders. This means that we will allow the Lord to use all of the talents and resources He’s given us to work toward bringing the reality of heaven here to earth. Finally, when we ask the Lord’s will to be done in our lives, we are falling on our knees besides Jesus and praying with Him His prayer of Gethsemane, “Lord, not my will but Your will be done.”

Once we have invited the kingdom of heaven to plant a flag in our own lives, once we hand over control and allow Jesus to sit on the throne of our hearts, we are ready to begin to pray this over the broken world around us. Jesus is entrusting us with the privilege of participating with Him in bringing heaven to earth. God will plant seeds and cultivate new life in us in a way that can’t help but grow and spread outward like a vine, taking territory in the lives around us. As heaven invades earth, we will watch as broken lives are made whole, addictions are overcome, darkness is made light and lies are defeated. Imagine a world where everyone understands the holiness of God, where His kingdom is established and His perfect will is carried out. Imagine it, and pray that it would begin to be true, in your life and on the whole earth.