Your Kingdom come...

Anyone who has ever been even remotely associated with Christians or Christianity will certainly recognize the phrase serving as the title for this entry. In fact, many Christians have probably said those words countless times without really thinking about them, until finally the words are completely stripped of meaning. (As a side note, constant repetition of pretty much any word or words will eventually make you wonder what things mean. It works especially well, I find, with multi-syllable words. For example, just try saying something like "telephone" or "salami" over and over and over. Eventually, you'll be like, "who thought of this word?" and then "what does this word even mean?" until it finally ends up with something like "who am I?"...) Anyway, strange forms of amusement invented by only children aside, I think there's real danger in saying some things without caring about their meaning. Specifically, I'm talking about things with real spiritual significance, e.g. the Lord's prayer.

What are we really saying when we say "your kingdom come" ? Well, first of all, God's kingdom when fully revealed will be the place of ultimate peace. There won't be any more war, or death, or hurt or crying or anything like that. Sickness will be a thing of the past, as will poverty, racism and any other forces you can think of that are currently killing people. The entire old world order of things will be repealed (Revelation 21:4). So obviously that's what we should be hoping for when we ask God to bring his kingdom.

But, there's another whole side to this kingdom thing. We really like the loving and comforting part (as well we should), so it's easy to get stuck there. On the other hand, here's what got me thinking about this whole kingdom issue in the first place:

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 'Woe to me!' I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Isaiah 6:1-5)

The other thing we're talking about when we ask for God's kingdom, whether we know it or not, is his majesty and power. This is why just saying the words is potentially dangerous. We need, as Psalm 34 says, to be taught the fear of the Lord.

Think about it like this: Imagine that you lived sometime in the Middle Ages, and you were a swordsmith (because that would be a pretty sweet job). One day, the king of the whole land shows up at your shop with his heavily armed royal bodyguards and tells you to make him a royal sword. What would you do? I have a feeling you would drop what you were doing and make it as soon as you could. There wouldn't be any other choice. You wouldn't, I imagine, be saying anything like, "Well, I have a lot of other work coming in... busiest season of the year, you know... and I really should be taking some time to myself to relax, if that will even be possible with all the housework I have to do... but I would like to help, so maybe I can fit it in around the end of the month" or anything else like that. You'd be firing up the furnace and asking for the specifications. See where I'm going with this?

It's funny that we have to go back so far to the Middle Ages to conjure up an image of a king with that kind of power. In that day, you just didn't argue with royalty. I wonder why we think God would be any different than that. Why in the world do we think we have any choice in the matter of what he tells us to do? This is THE King we're talking about, the Lord Almighty, from whom angels hide their faces. Angels whose voices shake the earth. Imagine what happens when the King himself speaks! No wonder Isaiah said he was ruined. I bet he was pretty sure he had no right to live.

The next thing that happened to him, though, is that God cleansed him from guilt and blessed him. Here's the thing: that same mighty, fearsome King is the one who loves us. And, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment" (1 John 4:18). So where does the fear of the Lord come in? I know we get all excited about the coming blessings of the kingdom, but God doesn't change (James 1:17). He is still the King, high and exalted, seated on the throne as well. How can we reconcile these things and relate to him in the proper way?

I see it something like this. If you think back to my swordsmith analogy, I said that he didn't have any choice about following the king's orders. The king holds the power of life and death, so obviously arguing with him is a bad idea. But, good kings don't derive their power from threats. They are respected for their wise and caring rule and hold the power of command by virtue of that. If it was a good king in my analogy, he probably wouldn't have killed the poor ridiculous swordsmith if he turned down the king's request. He would, however, have taken the huge pile of gold he was waiting to give the swordsmith for the sword and taken it to someone who would do his will.

So, what does it mean to fear the Lord? If he loves us perfectly as his children (which he does, in case you were wondering), it's not a question of punishment, like if the king had his bodyguards kill the recalcitrant sword maker. God just doesn't sit in Heaven with lightning bolts waiting to zap us. Thing is, he doesn't want or need to. Psalm 37:17 says that "the Lord upholds the righteous." If he is constantly holding our world together with his hand of blessing, I think that's a position worthy of respect. But, he gives us the freedom to turn him down. As much as it breaks his heart, he will let us push his blessings away by refusing the mission and call that he has for us. What we find, as we turn our backs on the blessings by taking control for ourselves, is that we have plenty enough problems without God shooting lightning at us. All the chaos and confusion we let in will ruin us pretty quickly. God allows it, through his tears, for the purpose of bringing us running back to his hand of blessing. This is discipline, yet another way he loves us.

The fear of God for us as his children, then, is something more like reverence. (For his enemies, it's a whole different story.) For us, it's not so much that we have to worry about being smited (and yes, I know the correct word is smitten) but that we have great respect for the all-powerful force of blessing that runs our lives. It would obviously be idiotic for us to attempt to live in the dangerous land outside that protection, but it's still something we tend to do. We give the King, the Lord Almighty, all kinds of reasons why his blessing isn't quite as good or important as the other things we've got going on. And, he respects our wishes with what I can only imagine is some type of sorrowful disbelief. "You want what instead of me?"

Incidentally, this attitude on our parts probably has a lot to do with why non-Christians look at us and don't especially want what we have. If we spend our time actively running away from the blessings we are offering, why would anyone else want them? If we won't live like there's a living King in the land, why would anyone else believe it? I mean, if God is real and he is the all-powerful force of blessing we say he is, then we owe him everything. Everything. All of it, all the time, no matter what. Time, money, jobs, relationships; all his. All subject to his leading, every moment spent in his service. If we lived like that instead of like The World Lite™, then maybe more people would realize the truth. In fact, it would be impossible for them to avoid.

So, let's not be naïve when we pray "your kingdom come." We definitely want and should ask for the blessings that are part of God's kingdom: tears being dried, healing from sickness, etc. But why do we think we should just pray about something we're supposed to have a part in doing? How do we expect to gain the blessings of the kingdom without submitting to God's rule? If we want God's kingdom to come, maybe we should think about living like he is the King.

Entertainment vs. Glory

As it turns out, my thoughts on video games (see previous entry) were only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The larger category, I'm coming to see, is the idea of entertainment in general. We have so many ways as a society to distract our minds and keep ourselves from having to think meaningful thoughts. It seems like we are endlessly trying to amuse ourselves. We run from silence like the plague and constantly need more and more activities to fill up our "leisure time."

Why?

Before I get there, let me take a step back and talk about my personal journey a bit. Up until last week, for the past year or so I'd been feeling this nameless frustration in my spirit. The best way I can think of to describe it is that my soul, if you could hear it, would sound like a car trying to start but failing. Some real churning was going on, but it seemed that no progress was being made, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this was happening. It was like a fire was burning inside me, but it was only getting barely enough oxygen to keep burning. Ever felt like that?

Anyway, I tried to pray about it a little, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. So, probably because a lot of aspects of my life were still going well, I basically just tried to put it out of my mind. That's where video games come in, because they have been my trademark method of putting things out of my mind for pretty much my whole life. In essence I just closed my ears and eyes and ran to entertainment, which had always been enough to distract me in the past.

This time, though, it wasn't working. I couldn't distract myself with schoolwork, with sports, or with entertainment. The more I tried, the more I was left thinking that my life didn't really make sense. Everything kind of came to a boiling point once I graduated from college this spring. Suddenly I had all this free time and no idea what to fill it with. What I ended up filling it with was pretty much nothing, at least nothing of real value.

Finally, the Lord just blew through all of my crap and spoke to me. I was at a baseball game in Chicago with my parents, and God drew my attention to a few middle-aged guys who were sitting around us. Each of them had downed like six beers (at $6.50 a pop, I might add) and they were sitting there in a semi-incoherent state, alternating between watching the game and watching two fairly inappropriately dressed women sitting near them. God just said, "Is that who you want to be?"

The next day, we got home from Chicago in time for me to go to the Saturday night service at the Cleveland House of Prayer (also known as C-hop. If you've never been there, you really should check it out: http://www.clevelandhop.org/ ). Anyway, the message and worship were all about seeing the beauty and glory of the Lord, how God is surpassingly great, the best thing we could chase after. It was all stuff I thought I had heard before, but this time God really made me hear it and revealed himself to me in a new way. He challenged a lot of how I had been spending my time, and he showed me a much better plan.

See, here's why my life wasn't making any sense: I had been saying that God was awesome and glorious and great, but I was spending my time on so much other stuff. I said the right things, but my life showed that I was looking for glory in the wrong places. That night, though, God showed me a glimpse of His glory. To be honest, it made all the things I had entertained myself with look really pathetic in comparison. I felt like so much of my life had been a total waste. I understood in a much deeper way this thing the apostle Paul said: "Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." (Philippians 3:7-9).

Knowing Jesus was the one thing that held any satisfaction whatsoever for Paul. The rest, he was ready to toss out the window. It's kind of like how Mary sat at Jesus feet and Jesus said that was the "one thing" that was needed. It's a lot like how David said, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). In fact, it's exactly like that.

So, back to the question of entertainment and distraction. The question, as you may remember, was "why?" The answer, as far as I can tell from these verses, is that we haven't seen enough of the glory of the Lord. What did David want? To see, to gaze at, the glory of God! As he did that, it became the only thing he had any desire for. As a friend of mine said to me recently, God is God and we're just creatures, so life is obviously about him, not us. So basically, if we still have this insatiable desire for our own entertainment, it just means we haven't seen enough of God's glory yet.

Why entertainment? Because we haven't had a revelation of the glory of God.

The thing is, we can't make it happen. A revelation has to be revealed. God has to show us his glory, and we can't force him to. But, he does promise this: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). If we make him our "one thing," he promises that we will see his glory in a way that makes everything else pale in comparison.

It's not a one time deal either: God revealed himself to me through the teaching and worship that night at C-hop, but even though it was a turning point for me, that one night won't be enough to keep me going for the rest of my life. I need "to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord," to stare at it, burn it into my eyes, and just overall to keep on looking at it. That's what will make my life make sense and keep me going, not entertainment or any other pursuit except Jesus and knowing him more. And for that to happen, I need God to reveal it to me. I sure didn't find him, because I was looking in the wrong places. He found me. That's why He is the one thing I ask for, that I would meet him where his glory dwells.

Will you ask God to reveal his all-surpassing glory to you? If he does (and he will), you'll never ask for anything else.