A Request for an Invasion

"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10)

We are not merely called. We are commissioned, and the difference matters. A call can be personal and private and interior. A commission is a job. It has a task attached, someone gave it to you, and they expect it to get done. Notice what the disciples asked for: Lord, teach us to pray. They wanted a technique. They wanted words. And he gave them a kingdom.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. That is the second thing out of his mouth, right after the Father's name, and it is not a request for a rescue. It is a request for an invasion. He taught them to pray for the world to start looking like the throne room, for heaven's order to press down into this street, this house, this hour.

And a person who prays that sentence honestly, every day, for years, cannot stay uninvolved in the place where he lives. It will not let him. He will find himself building something, and he will not entirely remember deciding to. That is the design. You do not pray that prayer and stay the same, because you cannot ask God, day after day, to bring his kingdom here without eventually becoming one of the ways he answers it. Pray it, then, if you dare to, and be ready to be commandeered by your own request.