In the sixth chapter of Matthew's Gospel is the prayer known as the Lord's prayer.
There we can discover some deep truths in what seems to be a simple teaching. Some would call it the disciple's prayer, because the disciples asked the Lord how to pray and He gave them this prayer.
Some say that the true Lord's prayer is in John 17, where our Lord prayed to the Father. But the prayer in Matthew 6 is very much the Kingdom prayer.
The apostle Matthew was raised with the Jewish concept about the Messiah who would set up the Kingdom. In his Gospel, he constantly points toward the Kingdom.
The book of Matthew yields many treasures to us. It seems inexhaustible, because it is deep, and there is much revelation in it.
No human wisdom can probe deeply enough to really uncover its truths. But further revelation will come as the seals are taken off the Book, and people will discover hidden truths in the Scriptures as they seek the Lord.
God is leading His people into a deep dedication to the revelation from the Word. This is in contrast to doctrinal interpretation and the process of trying to discover its fine points only by reason, by analysis, and by scholarship.
From the written Word today, God is causing revelation to burst forth like fountains. Unless the Word is revealed it remains concealed, no matter what human wisdom tries to do with it.
The book of Matthew reveals many Kingdom truths. Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 6:9-15, "Pray, then, in this way: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, Give us this day our daily bread" (the margin reads: "our bread for the coming day"). "And forgive us our debts..."
Jesus was speaking of more than just moral debts, the transgression of things that we should not have done. These are the obligations that we have in which we have failed; in other words, hamartia, which is the Greek word for sin meaning, "missing the mark."
We should say, "Forgive us, Lord, for every time we missed the mark of what we should have been." "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."
This means not only forgiving someone who committed a gross sin against you, but forgiving everyone who has fallen short in an expected relationship for service or dealings that you anticipated from them. Forgive them.
Forgive them of any debt they owe you because of their shortcomings in their relationship to you. That covers a great many areas. People often forgive sinners down the street for all their gross sins, and yet do not forgive members of their own family who fail to measure up to their expectations.
"And do not lead us into temptations, but deliver us from evil" (the evil one). "For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen." Then Jesus said, "For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."
The minute that you close your heart to a neighbor, you build a wall that the floods of mercy cannot penetrate. If there is no forgiveness in your heart for your brother, you build up a wall against him. That wall also becomes a wall to God; then God cannot get through to you.
That is what you create by having an unforgiving spirit. If you put up a wall of unforgiveness against an enemy, no matter what he has done against you, you are only shutting yourself off from the blessing of the Lord.
The Lord says that you must forgive even your enemy in order to keep the wall down so that the blessing of the Lord will continually flow to you. (Don't worry; God will deal with the enemy.) "But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."
The prayer begins by dealings in the heavens, the highest spiritual realm. It is saying, "O Father who dwells in the heavens, we want Your perfect will as it is done in heaven."
This is where He rules uncontested. This is where He has the power and the glory. This prayer of the Kingdom is to bring it down: "Thy will be done- Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, it is Your rule that we bring down."
This concept of bringing it down is very important. The Kingdom of God is not worked up. It is not disseminated from God's people. In every case the Kingdom of God comes progressively because God's people appropriate it over and over, bringing it down, bringing it down, bringing it down, again and again.
Then it comes down to a present release where the Kingdom of God had not formerly prevailed.
In the Kingdom, every man will sit under his own fig tree (Micah 4:4). Isaiah prophesied, "They will not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain" (Isaiah 65:25).
We read also that Satan will be bound for the time prescribed (Revelation 20:2). Then we will not know what it is to be agitated and aggravated by demonic assault and harassment, temptation, lies, and deception.
At the present time of transition, we pray and believe for the Kingdom of God to come, for His will to come down from the heavens into the earth, on the same level as it is in the heavens.
We also pray for our bread- which is a symbolic term- referring not only to the bread that goes into the stomach, but to the food that feeds the mind, that which feeds the spirit. and that which feeds the soul.
When you come to the house of God, remember that you do not come to recite repetitious prayers, but you would be wise to kneel and say, "O Lord, give me this day the bread for tomorrow; the daily bread, the bread that is needful." Why?
You come to the house of the Lord to feed upon the fellowship, to feed upon the Word, to feed upon that which should give release to your emotions and to your spirit. You feed upon the Lord. You feed upon the grace that is ministered from the Lord through your brothers and sisters in the house of the Lord.
That is even more important than natural bread. We read in John 6:27, Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life... In Deuteronomy 8:3 we read that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
Therefore we should pray, "O God, give me bread to feed me for whatever I need. Forgive me my debts where I have fallen short, where I have not been able to meet the obligation that You would lay upon me." (This means much more than we could even express.) "Do not lead me into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one." (In other words, at the present time, do not bring an encounter to my flesh for which I am not prepared.)
We may know that our spirit is to rule with God, but we are also aware that we cannot take too much pressure. There is not to be an open door for Satan to hit us with anything that he can.
God deliver us from temptation. Until we can reach a high spiritual level, God deliver us from the wicked one, from the evil one who would victimize us.
God show us how to be alert. We want to encounter Satan wholeheartedly in the spirit level, but we would choose the are of conflict. Let it be the will of God that the area of conflict not be in temptations to the flesh or to the human nature. We do not want to be defeated by anything that remains untouched in our own nature.
We cannot prevail if the battle depends upon our moral strength and our human ability to meet temptations of Satan. Only in one area do we battle him: "Thus saith the Lord God..." We want the battle to be on the Word, because we can prevail if we hold onto the Word.
Say in your own heart: "Deliver me from the evil one. Do not let me be led into temptation. Take me out of the conflicts of deception, lies, emotional disturbances, the invasion of my mind, that which sets off my basic instincts and drives, the hungers and the lusts of my body. God deliver me from encounters there!"
Let us battle only on the ground where the Word of God says He provided it all for us. He has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. There we are winners, because we overcome by that Word and by our testimony and by the blood of the Lamb.
The Kingdom of God must be brought down from above; we cannot generate it. An earthly, develish wisdom is generated below, but God's wisdom comes down (James 3:15).
If we are risen with Christ, we set ourselves in the heavenly places. We must position ourselves in the spiritual realm of victory, in the heavens where the Father is. Our Father who art in heaven- that must be our abiding place.
This is what Christ prayed, "I will that they be with Me where I am" (John 17:24). This does not mean that we first die and then go off to many mansions. It means that we live on the same spiritual level, the same abiding place where He is. We are drawn up.
In John 14:2-3, Christ said to His disciples, I go to prepare a place for you...that where I am (seated at the right hand of the Father), there ye may be also. This Paul emphasized when he said that we are raised with Christ to be seated in the heavenly places with Him. That is the place of victory and authority.
Revelation 12:9 tells us that Satan was cast down. We also read in Luke 10:18 that Satan was cast down. Jesus told the seventy, "I saw Satan fall from heaven." They were rejoicing because they had authority over demons. But Jesus told them to rejoice because their names were written in heaven. They were enrolled as citizens in the higher level where Satan was cast out.
There are three realms for you to keep in mind: the higher realm of the heavens; the lower human realm of the soul, mingled with all of its various complications; and the still lower natural realm. Satan at one time governed in the heavenly realm, in the heavens where the will of God is done.
Jesus taught us to pray that God's will be done on earth as it is in the heavens. Satan has been cast down. He no longer has access to disturb from the only important realm that exists. The physical, natural realm is important only in the sense that it is to be controlled, governed, and recreated through the spirit realm.
Satan was called the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). He could govern from that high realm over a mortgaged, forfeited world which man no longer was spiritually able to control. When spiritual death entered upon man, Satan was able to usurp the control over all the world, and so he was called the god of this present world.
He could govern it because there was no spiritual entity great enough to take over what man had forfeited.
When man died spiritually, he lost his control over all things. As the sons of God come forth, man will rule and reign with Christ again.
That is what the battle with Satan is all about. Satan was cast down to the lower realms. In this end-time battle, the secondary realm of the soul has been largely overcome. The battle is now in the natural realm where Satan rages.
In the meantime, those who forsake their allegiance to the natural realm (NOTW) are no longer covetous. They lack ambitions for money and position.
Most young people have a dazzling deception upon them to be important in this world and to have a great deal of money.
But those who walk with God desire only to glorify God in the earth.
End-time believers are overcoming the natural realm and the soul realm, and they are walking with God in holy purity.
So my question to you is are you even concerned with your attitude and conduct in this current generation of rebellion against righteousness and personal purity?
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