There are times when I really try to take in all that is happening in front of my eyes, and it can get a bit hard to catch my breath. It seems that weekly I hear another story at The Gathering of a changed life, a healed body, another conversation that brought the hope of Jesus to someone who was hurting. It can feel a bit like lassoing a tornado, and I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be when we really start experiencing the prayer that Jesus prayed when He was teaching His disciples how to pray. A little back story may help here before we get to the point.
Basically the twelve men who had given everything up to make sure that they could be with Jesus anywhere at anytime had finally broken down and admitted that they really had no clue how to pray. Jesus, of course, wasn’t surprised by this at all, and so He taught them a great model of how to pray. It was such an epic prayer that it has been recited more than any other prayer in the history of praying, and no doubt you’ve recited it in a group or alone more than once. It’s The Lord’s Prayer, and you know something’s important when every letter in the title is capitalized, even the word “the.”
Of course, with repetition often comes a lack of recognition, and my guess is that we’ve missed a fairly important phrase right there in the middle of the prayer. Matthew 6:10 says that Jesus – right after telling God how holy He is and right before mentioning anything about physical needs – simply prayed “your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Think about that for just a minute. He didn’t pray about how great heaven was (and it is awesome, no doubt) or about how he hoped we could just all hang on and survive “down here” until we can finally get “up there.” He said, basically, “Help here mirror what’s happening there.” Jesus taught a bunch of non-prayers to pray for the stuff of heaven to invade the stuff of earth, and that – when you really stop to think about the implications -is enough o leave all of us breathless.
What is heaven like? Revelation 21:4 mentions a few things that won’t be there that we seem to have an abundance of down here: tears, death, mourning, crying pain. It is so easy to just accept the fact that we have to deal with all that stuff because we’re not in heaven yet, but what do we do with the famous “every word is capitalized” prayer that Jesus prayed? How do we mirror heaven in the middle of all the stuff that won’t be there? Maybe a key is found just one verse in front of the one we just read. Look at what Revelation 21:3 says:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
What makes heaven so much different than earth? 24/7, uninterrupted communion with God! “He will be with them” and “he will dwell with them” are amazing promises of how His presence changes everything! Look, all of us have been sick at times, and even when the medicine didn’t help us feel better, we knew that if we could just get to mom, she could make it better. She didn’t necessarily do anything, but her presence brought a calm and a peace to the situation. Multiply that effect by about a bazillion and you’ve got an idea of what heaven will be like with the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We will be with Him in all His glory, in fact so much glory that lights will not be needed (Revelation 22:5)!
So how do we get the stuff of heaven down here? We allow Jesus to take over more and more in our lives (John 3:30). We invite His presence into every situation that we face. We make it our aim to be near God, and in turn we find ourselves bringing Him near men who are far from Him because they want to know the peace in their trials that you and I have come to know in ours.
Our prayer at The Gathering is simply this: God, in every way let the unfiltered presence of Jesus in heaven be seen in my life today here on earth. Our mission sums all that up: to be near God and near man and to make disciplers of everyone we can. We are never more like Jesus – who is called “God with us” – than when we are bringing the presence of heaven into the situations on earth. Carry that with you today, and when you bow your head to honor the National Day of Prayer, remember to ask God to bring heaven to earth through you. You’ll be amazed at the way things around you will start to change!
