Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray. This is the most famous prayer in all of scripture. It has been preached on for centuries. Books have been written off of this one prayer. Thousands upon thousands around the world have said this prayer. In the realm of bowls in heaven being the prayers of the saints, I believe this bowl should have tipped a long time ago. What if it is not words we speak, a cry we send up, a decree we make, what if it is a model God wants to see established? Not a model prayer, but a model example of what God is doing? What if this popular prayer in Matthew 6 is the blueprint?

I was pondering the thought this morning about the difference between creation and the church. Creation is everything God created before He created man. Sun, moon, stars, trees, birds, fish, cattle, beasts, creeping things on the earth. Proverbs talks about the ant, the badger, the lion, the rooster; Psalms talk about the sun, the moon and the stars; Moses talked about bushes, trees, deserts and rivers. Then there are allegories about cows of Bashan and trees of Lebanon. Jesus even prayed for a man and said, what do you see and the man said, I see men walking around like trees. The word of God is riddled with comments about creation.

The difference between creation and the church is that creation is in submission to the Creator, the church is not. Creation lives in harmony, peace and order, no competition, no titles, no trying to be someone they are not, because they are submitted to the one who created them. Trees are not trying to be cows; birds aren’t trying to be bushes; you get the point. But the church is trying to be all things to all people and we are out of order. When there is a lack of order there is a lack of peace. Not everyone can sing, not everyone can speak well, not everyone can build. If we only did what we were created to do, everyone, like creation would be doing their role and we would have order, we would have peace, we would express beauty and the world would declare “O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!” (Psalm 8:1). Then we would see Jesus’s prayer in Matthew 6 manifest, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. To manifest the blueprint we, the church must live in submission to God, just like creation does.