Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to the Kingdom Perspective!

What should we pray for right now more than anything else in these troubled times?

Certainly, we should pray for provision for our needs and protection from all our troubles—for ourselves, our family and our world. The “Lord’s Prayer” commands us to pray, “Gives us this day our daily bread…and deliver us from evil.”

Nonetheless, at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus prioritizes something deeper and more important—the coming of God’s kingdom. As we pray, “Thy kingdom come!”, we pray for the inbreaking and advance of Jesus’s reign over our lives and over every human heart.

History tells us that God often acts in times of crisis to bring both revival to his people and awakening to his world. In such times, the spiritual fog that clouds our vision is suddenly lifted and our state of spiritual need is unveiled.

And so, we should be praying that God would use our present circumstances not just to drive us to cry for temporal relief, but to hunger for Him. We should pray with the prophet Isaiah:

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence—
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
and that the nations might tremble at your presence! (Isaiah 64:1-2)

What we need most right now, more than anything else, is God. And so, we pray, “May Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven! Amen.”

Something to think about—and pray about—from The Kingdom Perspective.

“Pray, then, in this way:

‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]”

~ Matthew 6:9-13 (NASB95)