i'm a little bit unraveled

but i'm ready

A sermon on the prayer Jesus taught us, Luke 11:1-4:

Even though there’s still one last sermon in our series on the Lord’s Prayer, I’m just going to go ahead and show my hand. This entire prayer Jesus teaches us is a simple prayer. A simple prayer that is by no means easy to pray…

Often we think prayer is just trying to get God to come around to our way of seeing things. In the Lord’s Prayer, though, Jesus teaches you to pray for the exact opposite! 

To pray that God would hallow God’s name. That God would give us enough to eat. That God would forgive. That God would spare us… Well, you get the idea.

The cumulative effect of this prayer is that God would bring us around to God’s way of doing things! 

Which is tough to pray for, isn’t it? I know from experience; you and I like to be the ones who are in control—the ones who are in charge.

For as difficult as all this is to pray for, though, it’s the petition I left out that’s hardest. Did you catch it?

“Your kingdom come.” Your kingdom come.

This is hard to pray for at least three reasons: 

First, it asks us to STOP trying to advance our own kingdom.

Second, and more difficult, it asks us to let God bring in the kingdom. 

Which we can’t stand this! Whenever we see a job that needs doing, we always think we’re the ones to take the helm!

Finally, and most challengingly of all, this prayer asks us to wait for God’s kingdom to come. To wait.

Of all the things we can’t imagine God asking of us, waiting has to be at the top of that list! 

But, as it turns out, this is precisely what God wants. God wants us to wait because when we wait, we do nothing. And nothing is what God works with best!

…In these three little words, “your kingdom come,” Jesus teaches you and me to set aside our blueprint for the Kingdom of God. To lay down the tools we might us try to build it. And most importantly, to tear up our timeline for its arrival! To sit still and do nothing more than pray for the kingdom. Which is hard.

When that happens, though, something unexpected occurs: God’s kingdom actually comes! God’s kingdom comes!

When we wait, which is to say, when we do nothing, God’s kingdom comes most powerfully! Most immediately! 

…We always think we need to give God a hand. We tell ourselves that if we just did this, that or the other, we could help God out. But all we ever do is get in the way. 

*Now, of course, God can work through our misguided efforts, just ask Peter or Judas. But the times when God is most active is when we are the least active!

God doesn’t need your or my help! In fact, it’s just the other way ‘round. In Jesus, God has promised to be our help!

And when that happens, when God does what God’s promised to do, God’s kingdom comes! It’s as simple as that! 

God’s kingdom comes when God’s in control. And that happens when we’re not! When all we can do is wait. And pray for God’s help.

Which, in all truth, is where we live our lives. We’re never in control! It’s just a matter of how willing we are to admit it. How quick we are to call upon God in the midst of it.

…Which, I suppose at this point, is the temptation to try and help you do.

But, that’s not actually waiting. Is it? It’s just dressing up our efforts under the guise of waiting. 

Waiting doesn’t require any techniques. Waiting is so mind-numbingly simple, we don’t need any instructions for it. Do we? Waiting is the simplest thing in the world! To sit still and do nothing! 

But nothing is the hardest thing for us to do! However, it’s also the easiest thing for God to use!

God can do so much more with your nothing, that all your misguided efforts to do everything for God!

Now, the only way you or I are going to be able to do nothing is with a lot of prayer. Isn’t it? Which is probably why Jesus taught us to pray for it!

That’s all prayer ever is, though. The folding of our hands, so we won’t do anything with them! And there, in that nothing, asking God to do everything! Commending the whole enterprise to God’s hands! Asking God to get God’s hands dirty!

Which God loves to do.

This prayer is bolder than that, though. The form of the verbs Jesus uses in this prayer is imperatives. They’re commandments!

In this prayer, you do nothing, and command GOD to do everything!

That’s pretty bold. 

The only time you and I are ever going to muster up the courage, which is to say faith, to make such a prayer, is when we’re in such dire straights that, that’s all we can do!

Faith happens, not when we do a favor for God. But when our back is against the wall, and all we can do is ask God for a favor. A favor there is no way we can ever repay!

When that happens, all your pious attempts to pray respectfully will come to nothing. So will all your sanctimonious efforts to help God. And in that nothing, Jesus will give you everything! His entire kingdom, even!

You already have everything Jesus needs to bring the kingdom. Don’t you? So do I. A whole lot of nothing to my name.

God’s kingdom is an upside-down kingdom! It comes in the last place you’d expect. In the last way you’d expect. It comes when everything else comes to nothing. And in that nothing, Jesus becomes your everything!

The kingdom is coming. Right now, even! Right now, as you sit there and do nothing. Nothing but hear these words! And hidden in them is everything Jesus has to give; his kingdom actually coming to YOU in the thick of it!

Jesus has wrapped up a promise so big and so good in these words that there’s nothing you can do but believe them!

This is how God’s kingdom comes! 

And it’s how it’ll kingdom come later, too. It will come when everything you’ve been trying to build comes to nothing. Because it happens. And when it does, these words will come ringing back to you. 

When they do, get me on the horn and ask if it’s still true. 

Whenever such a question is made, all any pastor can do is proclaim the promise we’ve been commanded to. So here it is: Yes. Yes, it’s still true.

In the nothing you’re going through, Jesus is becoming your everything! The one you can look to, to receive everything you need. 

So go ahead, hold God’s feet to the fire on this one. Command God to make good on it even. On account of God’s Son, it’s all YOURS. You don’t have to do a rotten thing to make it happen, either. 

Bowled over by it all? 

Good! Because whenever that happens, God’s kingdom comes!