Lord’s prayer tells us of heaven
Published 7:00 pm Friday, March 21, 2008
By Staff
The disciples of Jesus Christ saw and heard Him pray. After seeing Jesus pray, one of His disciples asked Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1). Jesus responded by giving His followers what is commonly known as the Lord's Prayer recorded in Matthew, chapter 6, verses 9-13, and Luke, chapter 11, verses 2-4.
The Lord's Prayer included honoring God, expressing dependence for daily provision, the free flow of grace and forgiveness, protection and leadership, and a phrase placed right in the middle of the prayer that manifested God's heart and God's will – "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Heaven is a place. God lives there with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, angels, departed saints, and perhaps others.
We know that in heaven there is no sin, no death, and no opposition to God's perfect will. Human nature is not a factor in heaven. Satan has very limited access to stand before God on occasion, but no influence in the affairs of heaven. Heaven is all about God. Every need is met there directly and completely by God. God truly is ALL and in all.
God's desire is that heaven would be established on the earth. When God created the earth, it was, in a sense, an extension of heaven with time, substance, and human nature. In the beginning, creation was pristine; it was heaven on earth. God freely walked and talked with His created beings, Adam and Eve.
The human nature element quickly caused things on earth to depart from the heavenly model. When trust, submission, and dependence were replaced with human willfulness and disobedience, the situation on earth fell from a heavenly state where God's will rules to a place with new rules of force, greed, ambition, independence, etc., which spawned insecurity and chaos.
It went from everything glorifying God to every person for himself. Human nature did not surprise nor overwhelm God; He created it and gave every human the power to choose for or against God.
God's will is still for things on earth to be as they are in heaven. It is, "up there, down here."
After human nature and sin took over earth, God seemed to step back until things on earth were so bad that He intervened with the great flood that destroyed every living thing, except chosen animals and eight people in the family of Noah (Genesis, chapters 6-8).
Starting over with eight people and a clean slate gave opportunity for things on earth to be like they were in heaven, but human nature and sin once again prevailed.
God chose a group of people (i.e., the Jews), and gave them a code to live by (i.e., Mosaic Law) to protect them from themselves and their bent toward evil. The Mosaic Law had no power to transform human nature so the downward slide continued. God continued to intervene for hundreds of years with chosen spokesmen who continually called mankind to seek "up there to come down here."
The crowning moment to bring "up there, down here" was when God sent Jesus Christ to live in human form. Jesus was the God-man, fully divine, yet choosing to lay aside His power (Philippians 2:6-8), and live within the confines of a physical body.
Jesus is God. He truly brought "up there, down here." He walked in full dependence on His heavenly Father. Everything He did and said was to bring heavenly perspective to earth.
The life of Jesus was radically different from what had become the earthly norm.
Many received Jesus Christ for who He was, the Son of God, and followed Him with all their heart, but the majority of people rejected the claims God was making on their lives and continued in their human nature without restraint. The rejection was so complete that created men put Jesus Christ, God's Son from heaven, on a cross and crucified Him.
"Up there, down here"? It did not seem like it, but the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead crushed the most powerful weapon earth had-death. "Up there, down here" was reality, in that, through the power of the cross and the resurrected Christ, we can live in victory.
"Up there, down here" can be experienced here. We must live by faith in Christ, in full dependence on God, trusting Him for every aspect of our lives. Adam and Eve had "up there, down here" available to them, and Jesus Christ modeled it as He walked the earth.
"Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Pray it, believe it, live it. God has provided everything we need.