Our Father 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 forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Mathew 6:9-13
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?
John 3:1-9
I drove to work that morning praying the Lord’s Prayer. I was completely oblivious as to what was about to happen. Looking back I can see that the Lord had prepared me for what he was about to do by making me more available to him. He did this in two distinct ways.
The first thing he did was free me from ministry obligations within my church. I had served as a teacher within my church for over 14 years when I was asked to step aside to allow others to teach the youth group and Sunday school class. In addition, a retired minister had joined our congregation and I was no longer needed to fill in for my pastor during our Sunday morning or mid-week services. In his kindness God had prepared me for this sudden change by telling me in prayer a year earlier that I would not always be teaching my Sunday school class. When that happens he had told me, don’t look within the church for another position to fill, but look outside the church for ministry.
I first asked God if he wanted to me start up some home Bible studies as I had often done in the past, but the Lord said no. Then I suggested writing a book or doing something on the Internet, but again the Lord said no. Very clearly I felt him tell me not to focus on educating people who were already Christian but to minister to those who were not yet his followers. To be honest I didn’t have a clue how to do this, nor did I know anyone else who did. I then felt the Lord direct me to take a look at what my brother’s and sisters outside my denomination were doing to reach the lost.
The second thing God did to make me more available to him was to deepen my commitment. If you knew me at that time you would probably say I was already committed to Christ. I know I certainly thought so. Does it seem odd to you that God would remove responsibility and obligation from off my shoulders and then ask for an even greater commitment? Yet that is exactly what happened.
While relaxing one evening before bed I picked a book at random from my bookshelf, opened it to the middle and began to read. The book had been given to me as a Christmas gift some years before but I had never gotten around to reading it. The author described our relationship to Christ as falling within one of three broad categories. We could be whole heartedly sold out to God with Jesus sitting solidly on the throne of our life, we could be without Christ with Self sitting solidly on the thrown of our life, or we could be trying to serve two masters in some sort of unworkable compromise where Christ and Self share or compete for the throne of our life.
Now, clearly I had to be the first type of person who had Christ solidly enthroned in their heart. Nevertheless, I felt God asking if there wasn’t anything in the other descriptions that I could identify with. I had to admit that maybe I wasn’t absolutely sold out. I mean I certainly gave my life to God, but I have always had a project I was working on whether it was a hobby or a dream of starting my own business – that diverted my emotional energy and competed for my time. I had two wills – mine and the Lords, and I was submitting mine to his but not always successfully. So I made a radical commitment. I prayed that his will would become my will, so we would have only one will to work with. I set down my hobbies and my dream of resurrecting a failed business venture. He now had my time, my will, my emotion and my mind. That commitment would be tested.
In fear of revealing too much immaturity I will admit that having made this “radical commitment” I expected God to respond in kind by giving me some great awesome work to do in his name. You can imagine my disappointment when God instead directed me to passages of scripture that instructed me to rest in him, and that he is the one who does the work. I was his project, and not the other way around. Instead of feeling joy and relief at these scriptures I can actually remember feeling frustrated because I wanted something to do. I the teacher clearly had a lot to learn.
And so I was driving to work one morning praying the Lord’s Prayer. As I did, I became fixated on “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done…” I prayed that God’s Kingdom would come to those who don’t know him. I asked why our church hadn’t grown above the 50-70 member size it has always been, and I asked what I could do to help make it grow. I prayed that God’s will would be done and his Kingdom would come, and not our own wills. I told God that I wanted to build his Kingdom and I asked him what he wanted me to do.
Then God answered me. He answered with this question. “Whose Kingdom are you building?” What? What? Whose Kingdom was I building? I was totally unprepared for what God began to show me within my own heart and within Scripture. Indeed, I was entering a tempest.
Nicodemus recognized Jesus as a teacher from God and came to acknowledge him. But he was totally unprepared for the complete change in thinking required to understand Jesus’ message. Nicodemus was a well-respected Bible teacher and a leader in the religious organization of his day. He had given his life to God and no doubt thought he was already advancing the Kingdom of God. But from Jesus’ point of view however, Nicodemus didn’t even know what the Kingdom of God was and he hadn’t yet entered it himself.
Like Nicodemus many of us know the Bible and are leaders within our churches. We believe we are building the Kingdom and advancing the cause of Christ. Like Nicodemus however, Jesus showed me that many of us have lost sight of what the Kingdom of God really is and therefore much of our efforts have more to do with building our own kingdoms than they do His. This is a hard saying to accept, and it caused no small amount of turmoil within my own heart.
