When I'm Really Myself

[HKHaugan]

Thy Kingdom Come

In the last section on ‘will’ I got ahead of myself as I was delving into Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Actually, ‘kingdom’ comes before ‘will’ so let’s get into that word now. Perhaps in a way it was good to have covered ‘will’ first because the purpose of God’s will is intimacy and God’s Kingdom is a kingdom of intimacy. Sin prevents intimacy, which is why Jesus went to the Cross and sacrificed His life to cancel the power of sin so that each of us could have intimacy with God restored in a personal relationship with Him. Salvation is the recovery of intimacy with God. We are being saved for intimacy with God, which leads to reconciliation and restored intimacy among people. God’s intimacy in the Trinity is His plan for us. That’s why we pray for His Kingdom to come on earth because that’s what already exists in heaven.

While what is traditionally known as the Lord’s Prayer is His brilliant lead-in to personal prayer, it also inspires us to search out Jesus’ other prayers. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane recorded in John 17 helps us to capture intimacy in detail. For there, in that Garden, the heart of Jesus is open for all to see, an open book of personal prayer. Yes, He prays that He may be glorified, but why? It’s that His Father will be glorified. He is praying that His life and all that He has done to show who His Father is may glorify His Father. Right there in His last living hours He has opened to us the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven.

There in the Garden He is on the verge of death and what’s His deepest concern?---His Father, His disciples and all who will become believers. That’s the nature of the Kingdom of God, the heart of God, the temple that awaits us, an open yielding of the heart for others. That is the glory of the Kingdom, the glory of God, the glory of the Cross, the glory of Jesus as Savior and Lord. Have we ever prayed like that, that the glory He gives us may fulfill the purpose of God receiving the glory? He prays for all to see Him glorifying the Father, for protection for His disciples and for all who will come to faith in Him to have an interpersonal intimate unity. All of Jesus’ teaching is centered in revealing the nature of God so that we know who He is and what He is really like. It is in that revelation that His desire to relate to us, to open His heart to us and restore the intimacy with Him, becomes a reality.

What I personally like about taking scriptural passages and writing about them is that my mind is intimately engaged with God through the Holy Spirit. It’s my deep connection with Him. But I do not presume to declare what I write is perfect or even close. Only Scripture is holy and perfect. What I do declare is that as I write I sense His presence and blessing, therefore I pray that it will glorify Him, help others to see and glorify Him. I pray that that part of the Kingdom He has given me, that intimacy He has shown me, be shared right where I am on this earth because that is what allows a morsel of His eternal Heaven to be seen.

In spite of my weaknesses, my sin and my limitations I find that the continual yielding to write in the Spirit allows me to understand what Paul meant when He said that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. I pray that my sinful nature be driven into the background and that my spiritually born nature is blessed, glorified if you will, to give God the glory, to be a blessing to those who read. If there is a memory, a legacy to leave, it will be that my weaknesses, my inadequacies, my fallen history will be forgotten so that Jesus will have been lifted up, thought about in a different but spiritually consistent way and those I have known turn to Him, stay with Him and glorify Him.

For me the Kingdom is that personal relationship between God and His people, the Holy Spirit bringing us all together in mind, heart and spirit in conscious adoration of God and thankfulness for one another as we share, pray and worship. It is so far beyond religion, denominations, buildings, programs, budgets, vestments and structures. Jesus, the King of the Kingdom, meets us wherever we are and is always there in our hearts and we in His. Again, we just need to remember, His Kingdom is within as He told us. It’s not the cross I wear around my neck, carry in my pocket or put on my mantelpiece. It’s the cross of belief in my mind, the cross of trust in my heart and the cross of faith in my spirit, these He has called me to carry every next moment. I pray however as the Kingdom has been embraced in you, it will be prepared, shared, declared and then realized in the lives of others.