Sunday message · If My People (A Call to Prayer) series
Listen to the message
Message Summary
In the fourth message of the If My People series on prayer, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to Matthew 6:10. Having just celebrated his birthday, Phil shares that it is also the date in 1995 when he gave his life to Christ, finally finding an answer to the question that nagged him: what on earth am I here for? Even Tom Brady, in an old clip, wondered why, with three Super Bowl rings, he still thought there was something greater. Being stuck in Twin Cities traffic, sensing that things are not as they should be, points to a longing God created in us for a world where wrongs are made right, brokenness is healed and anxiousness gives way to rest. The Lord’s Prayer captures that longing.
What do we mean when we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done”? Is it a far-off dream or something we can experience now? A Bible Project video explains that in Jesus’ day, with Israel under Rome, God’s kingdom seemed nowhere to be seen, until Jesus went to the poor, sick and powerless and announced that it was beginning with them. Drawing on N.T. Wright’s book Simply Jesus and Jesus’ words in Luke 17 that the kingdom is in your midst, Phil explains that the kingdom is already here but not yet fully come.
That matters because this prayer is first about what God does in our hearts, not just our circumstances. “This is a prayer not about a change of circumstances, but a change of lives,” Phil says. Praying for healing is good, but he urges us to pray like the psalmist, asking God to search our hearts. Quoting Charles Spurgeon, he says sin may fight for control of a Christian’s heart but cannot sit on its throne. Jesus modeled this surrender in the garden, asking the Father to take the cup away, yet praying, “not my will, but yours be done.”
God’s ultimate will, Phil says, is summed up in 2 Peter 3:9: the Lord is patient, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. Written to people already saved, it reminds believers that they are commissioned to take part in that mission. Phil cites scholars who say praying for the kingdom means praying for more people to enter it, and a commentary warning that too many believers live for the weekends and not for Christ’s kingdom.
He asks the church to pray this week for wisdom to repurpose its rhythms and live for more than the weekends, as it gathers that evening for a listening session to discern God’s direction together. He longs to see people baptized and disciples made, as Matthew 28 instructs. “We can’t change the whole world, but we can change the world we’re in,” he says. The climate toward Christians is hard, but not the worst they have faced, so he calls for a church that knows why it believes and loves like Jesus, inviting others to come and see. He closes in prayer: your kingdom come, your will be done.
