Don’t just pray, ‘Thy kingdom come’. We need to pray, ‘My kingdom go’

In recent months, I’ve been working with a team of songwriters and worship leaders to pen some fresh Sunday songs for everyday life. As I’ve written previously, we need more songs which communicate how God cares about our Monday-Saturday lives.

The latest offering from our group, BOUNDLESS, is out today and it’s called ‘As We Go’ as its designed to be sung at the end of a worship service.

At the heart of this song sits a realisation. We Christians are rightly keen to pray ‘Let your Kingdom Come’. But we are less keen to pray ‘Let our Kingdoms go’.

Let me explain.  

You probably feel like you have a good sense of what ‘Let your Kingdom Come’ looks like – all the good stuff – wars ceasing, mouths fed, wise legislation, poverty ended, lives turned to Jesus etc etc. The problem is you and I can blindly pray these things imagining some neutral ether unaware that this is contested territory. And often it is contested by us! Our own ego and need for control.

That’s why we need to pray, “Let my kingdoms go.” Let my attempts at controlling my life to suit me - and even worse controlling others to make my life comfortable - go in the name of Jesus. That’s a less popular prayer. 

But it’s the prayer at the centre of this song. Praying that we would cede control to his authority in the halls of power, in our families and inside our own heads. “Be the King of our opinions” also feels like an important prayer in the polarised world of 2025. 

God’s way of changing the world

21st century Christians often make the same mistakes as 1st century Jews. We have a laudable passion to see the world changed, and just like the Jews of that time a frustration at continued oppression and injustice. But also just like them, our imaginations often only stretch as far as the use of the weapons of this world to make this change happen.

That is not to say that change wrought by the normal processes of government, science and art are not significant, but that there is a danger of our worldview shrinking. There is a danger (especially in the materialist West) that we spend our time asking God to change the world via the methods that we understand, which are mostly visible. 

It is wonderful that over the last few decades the Church’s understanding of the kingdom has been revolutionised. Our understanding has led to the healthy engagement of many believers attempting to bring kingdom change in the different spheres of life. But we are in danger of allowing the tail to wag the dog. In the midst of all this kingdom activity, we can lose track of an important truth. 

Sometimes we focus on the kingdom more than the king. 

You can’t extend the kingdom by focusing on the kingdom. You extend the kingdom by focusing on the king. That’s why we simultaneously engage in the spheres of influence and we pray and worship. 

Mini-surrenders

It’s all about territory. It’s a game of RISK, and God’s mission card states that he needs to go after the whole board, not just Asia and South America. Only then will he receive the glory he is due. Yes there are still some scuffles going on somewhere in the vicinity of Indonesia (at least that’s where my big RISK battles always happen), but the die has been cast. Every individual life giving over kingship to him extends that reach a little further.

Unlike RISK however, the kingdom extends not through force but through surrender, because that is how it started. Through lives freely given, because his life was freely given. Lives giving over more and more control to him, away from our selfish control. Systems and structures relinquishing their autonomy to his rule. His charge across the board is not by military victories but a series of mini-surrenders. Our lives will be full of these moments of surrender and moments of putting the barriers back up again, as sadly there will always be a little bit of us that is outside the kingdom too. Remember the axis of evil runs through us too. “Us good, them bad” is not kingdom thinking, but it is increasingly, worryingly prevalent in the social media postings of even church leaders. 

Making him known

Our allegiance is to the king, not the kingdom. His kingdom is established when we allow him to have his rightful place. We can be so busy doing good stuff, which has ceased to be kingdom stuff, because we have lost our own connection with the vine. John 15 makes that painfully clear. I can become mesmerized by the wonderful things that God’s people are involved in all across the planet. It suits my functional mentality. I will focus on the ‘stuff’ rather than focus on God.  

When we focus on the mission of God rather than God himself, we are in danger of more utilitarian thinking and action. It’s like sending a Valentine Card to my wife’s incredible cooking. It’s like thanking the PowerPoint presentation rather than the preacher. It’s like writing letters to the characters of a soap opera.

Saving every soul is important but is light years short of what he wants

If God’s mission is to make himself known, then our mission is not just to make his ways known, but to make him known. 

God’s mission is not just ‘sorting out the world’ or making it a bit nicer. To be frank, he could do that before I finish this paragraph. His desire is that “every knee should bow and every tongue confess” that he is Lord. He wants to be known and he wants to worshipped. 

If that is his mission, it is still our mission. We may at times need to lift our heads from the complexities of politics to see that just stabilizing the world is much too bashful a goal. Ending poverty is important but is light years short of what he wants. Saving every soul is important but is light years short of what he wants. Stopping climate change is important but is light years short of what he wants.

His mission is epic. He wants the redemption, restoration and reconciliation of all things in heaven and earth to him.

How it’s done

He wants all of the above through freely-entered relationship, which is why it is taking a while (along with our stubbornness). Just as with the paralysed man who was lowered through the roof, Jesus knows what we really need. We come to him requesting the superficial annoyances of our world to be sorted out. He tells us, “Your sins are forgiven”. He sees beyond the obvious and is determined to sort out the depths of our lives and the lives of every human on the planet.  

That’s why we are praying “Let our kingdoms go” and why it is appropriate that Marc James is leading this new song. Marc is perhaps best known for his song ‘Surrender’, and this new song enshrines the need for surrender for the kingdom to truly come in our minds, in our homes and in our nation.

In an age of empty triumphalism where winning seems to be more important than truth, we tried to craft a song of dismissal that was motivating but avoided some of the blindness that sometimes comes with songs like that, when we don’t recognise that we are also part of the problem! 

We cede the place of sovereignty to a king who will not take it by force. Inch by inch we give over more of our control to his rule and reign. 

‘As We Go’ by Boundless is available to watch now on YouTube, and stream on all music platforms