World Government, Part 2: Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven

Part one of this article was intended to establish three things: first, that Christ, not the Devil or any other pretender, is the Governor of the Earth; second, that the Bible indicates that He has dominion on the Earth as well as Heaven; and third, that much of the Church has lost sight of the concept of “building the Kingdom,” leaving the field open to the unbelieving to build their destructive alternatives.

The aim of this second part is to lay out some basic principles of how we can build the Kingdom in our generation. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” and I trust that all of us pray this, believing that God will answer. But having prayed the prayer, how do we live lives that are consistent with our prayers? I would suggest five basic principles:

1. Nothing can be done without the strength of the Spirit.

We need the Spirit. We need Him mightily. Of course, all Christians agree and pray for this, yet it is a continual temptation to recognize this truth in theory, and then try to manufacture a little “spirit” of our own. Right now, given the condition of our nations, we don’t need “a little bit” of the Spirit, but rather a mighty outpouring of the Spirit, without Whom we can do nothing.

How will this happen? First, we need to believe that the Spirit is both willing and able to transform, reform, and renew us as individuals. Second, we need to believe that He is both willing and able to transform, reform, and renew our families, churches, communities, societies, cultures, economies, nations, and even the world. Third, based on this faith, we need to ask Him to come and do it, transforming us and empowering us to go about the work of building the Kingdom.

C.H. Spurgeon once said, “The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His Holy Name that He was not able to convert the World.” We need to believe and act on this to stem the tide of apostasy and see the growth of the Kingdom in our day.

2. Worship should be the engine that drives our life.

With regard to our corporate worship of God, there are two “ditches” that we can fall into, both of which ironically have much the same end result in the paths of our lives as we follow them throughout the rest of the week. The ditch on the left hand is that of failing to recognize what is actually going on in worship, thus rendering it a mundane affair. When we worship together, it is easy to think that we are worshipping God in our immediate surroundings only. We think He is up there somewhere, and we are down here.

The truth is far more glorious than that. Hebrews 12:22 tells us that “… you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,” and Ephesians 2:6 informs us that we are seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. In other words, we are not just singing, praying, and listening in the church or hall we happen to be in, but rather, spiritually, we come into the very Throne Room of God and we worship Him together with the host of Heaven. Understanding this is bound to make a massive difference not just in our corporate worship, but in the rest of our lives as well.

The error on the right hand is where we view corporate worship as just about the only really important thing humans do before God. But the purpose of worship goes far beyond the actual time of worship itself. One of its purposes is to drive our lives. It is the engine that makes the car go. We come to God, we confess our sins, we receive forgiveness, we praise Him, we pray to Him, we call on Him to intervene in the world, we listen to His instructions, we eat at His table—and then we receive our marching orders to go back into the world to build the Kingdom of God. Worship should therefore have the effect of plugging ourselves into a recharger, invigorating and energizing us to go out and live for the glory of God in whatever sphere we find ourselves.

3. We need to start seeing the complete purpose of salvation.

What is the purpose of salvation? Many Christians see it as being primarily about “going to Heaven.” However, going to Heaven is only the final purpose of salvation. The immediate purpose is that we become new creatures, glorifying God, in the here and now, as well as in the hereafter.

The famous answer to the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This glorifying of God and enjoying Him forever does not wait until after our lives here are ended, though it is true that we will do both immeasurably more fully then. Rather, we start now. This concept is summarized in the great second chapter of Ephesians where Paul, having established that we are saved not by our works, but by grace alone through faith alone, tells us what the purpose of this salvation is: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). If we can grasp this and then run with it, great things will begin to happen, and God will use us to change the world.

4. Building the Kingdom is accomplished from the ground up.

Christians have often faced the temptation to think that Christianity can be imposed upon a people, or that if we just vote such and such in, or enact this or that program, all will be well. But Christ’s Kingdom, although having massive political ramifications, is not built primarily through top-down political or social programs. Rather, it is built from the ground up.

Our families need to be Godly, structured, loving places, but we also need to have a vision. Psalm 128 speaks of seeing Jerusalem prosper, and of seeing our children’s children and peace on Israel. If we continue to cede ground to the secularists, we will see Jerusalem collapse, and our children’s children will inherit a truly frightening and wicked culture. We need to believe that the Psalm 128 vision is a possibility, even in our lifetimes, and through faith we need to ask God to energize us so that through His power we can play our part in bringing it about.

What will this look like? It will look like fathers and mothers sacrificing themselves for their children. It will look like a lot of repentance before God and before our children. It will look like a dispensing with of every idol that prevents our families from flourishing and the taking up of a vision for the future direction of our families. Only then will we start to see the Kingdom grow.

5. We need to think as individuals, families, and churches about how we can do our part to transform the culture.

The prayer, “Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” clearly was not asking for only a few people here and there to be saved. It did not mean people obeying only in a future eternity. No, the vision it gives us is much, much bigger and broader. It asks for an earth where, as Isaiah said, the whole world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the seas. God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven affects absolutely every aspect of life on earth. That should be our prayer.

This means that every lawful pursuit can and should be used for His glory and for the building of His Kingdom. So, if you have a passion and a talent for making films, go and make God-glorifying films. If you have a talent for writing, go and write books for God’s glory. If you have an entrepreneurial gift, use it to change your part of the world. Also, encourage others who may have that same gift. If you have a particular gift for caring for others, go and adopt an orphan or find some widows to take care of. If you are a mother, go love your children with all your heart and with everything you’ve got. Whatever things you do, do them with all your might. Then we will begin to produce our own counterculture—Christ-honoring and superior in every way to the monolithic and toxic culture we see all round us.

In conclusion, we need to pray for the might of the Spirit; we need to together worship God with reverence and let that worship drive our lives; we need to see the purpose of our salvation not as deferred until after this life, but as Kingdom-building in the here and now; we need to not depend on top-down, sociopolitical programs, but look to build the Kingdom from the ground up, starting with our own households; and we need to catch a vision for reclaiming the culture and go for it. When we, the Body of Christ, really begin to think and act like this, I believe we will see answers as never before to this most prayed prayer in history: “Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

Rob Slane is the author of The God Reality: A critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. A former atheist, Slane is now a member of Emmanuel Church in Salisbury, England, where he and his family live.