Play All
     1. Wonderful Power of My Wonderful King   (2:05)
     2. The Lord’s Prayer   (3:25)
     3. Thy Kingdom Come   (24:23)
               a. Message   (20:45)
               b. Closing worship: Leaning on the Everlasting Arms   (3:38)

Matthew 6:10.  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

“Thy kingdom come.”  We pray, “Your concentration camp come, Your prison come.  Come on, hand over the handcuffs and the shackles and the straitjacket.”  It’s really funny.  It’s almost amusing the way we hear preaching: “Now you gotta be good.  You gotta do this and that, and you gotta live like that, and this just won’t do, and so and so and so and so.” 

Well, His kingdom is a kingdom of peace and righteousness, joy unspeakable and full of glory.  And when His kingdom comes, why, He reigns—He takes over.  I learned a little bit about that fifty years ago when God gave me that verse that I quote a thousand times: “Commit thy way unto the Lord.”  I had to make my choice because there was that concentration camp.  We were taught to be good and to be gooder, and I didn’t manage very well.  I tried it.  But oh, it was so different when Jesus Christ took over.

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“Thy kingdom come.”  My goodness, it leaves me so free of all worry, of all fretfulness—just leaves me free…  I’m so glad that I don’t have to reign anymore.  So glad I don’t have to boss anybody.  People wonder about that.  They think that I’m come to boss them.  It wouldn’t occur to me, no.  But, “Thy kingdom,” when Jesus Christ comes in, why, He becomes the boss.  And He becomes the wonderful manager.  He’ll manage your financial affairs.  Your spiritual life is entirely His charge, His responsibility.  And when we talk about consecration, why, that’s done when we’re baptized into Jesus Christ.  You’ve “put on Christ.”

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Oh, to have Him for a king ought to first of all make you very happy.  You’re a sinner if you’re not happy, you are.  You’re a sinner if you worry.  You’ve got no business to put those shackles on anymore, to put that straitjacket on.  You’re not… you’re free.  And how can you attract others to Jesus when you go around moping, and kicking, and criticizing, and finding fault with everybody, and finding fault with your lot, and finally finding fault with God?

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Now, I know I can preach a thousand million years like this, and some…  I was going to say, “Some of you will never take it.”  You’re so in love with yourself.  You’re so deeply in love with your own ways, you haven’t any idea.  Beloved, we’ve got to fall in love with this Jesus.  Isn’t He beautiful?  But we don’t until we experience Him.  That’s how we find out how wonderful He is.

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But we ought to pray, “Thy kingdom come.  I quit.  I give up.”  “Ye have not so learned Christ, if you have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.”

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We ought to learn to let Jesus Christ really reign.  We don’t do that as long as we reign ourselves—as long as we try to straighten things out ourselves, and try to sanctify ourselves.  But oh, to learn this grand lesson: to abandon ourselves to Him!  When I give myself, He takes over.  He really does.  And He’s got the power to take over.  He’s got the power to “subdue all things unto Himself.”  That’s where it belongs.  Now He’s king.  Now He is Lord.  Now He is Master.

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Six dollars is what I needed.  Six dollars He supplied.  Well, it was a very wonderful lesson to learn.  There are laws of the Kingdom.  Oh, this wonderful King is a “lawgiver,” and He works according to “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”  And when you refuse to anxious, and you commit everything to Him, He takes over.  He says, “He careth for you.”

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You’re not the king.  You’re a bondslave of love.  You’re here to “live no more unto yourself, but unto Him.”  And that’s the mistake people make.  They say “Thy kingdom come” so that I have something to reign over, so that I’ve got something to make my life comfortable.  But, oh how different when your whole life is not yours anymore!  It belongs to Him.  Then, it’s part of the kingdom.

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I’ve often said, “My Lord, You sure fixed it up this time.  Boy, I couldn’t think of a more complicated trial or problem than this: absolutely no solution in sight.”  And it finally makes you rejoice.  I said, “Lord, I’ll be terribly interested to see how You’re going to unravel this thing.  I’m just going to watch You do it.”  And it’s interesting to watch the Lord do it.  And He does it when you refuse to be anxious: you honor God.

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Where did Abraham get this persuasion from?  Why, the promise of God.  Instead of going to the clinic and having his high blood pressure lowered, and having pills to swallow, and going through all that rigmarole that they ask you.  I said to someone yesterday, “Jesus Christ is my Shepherd, but some of these folks make a guinea pig out of you.”  They do.  They’ll try a thousand pills on you to find out just how they’ll react because they don’t know.

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Why did God promise?  Not because He saw that Abraham was uncomfortable, and that Sarah was in dishonor because she was not a mother.  That wasn’t it.  But God wanted to bless the whole world.  God wanted to bring His kingdom to this world, and He had to have one representative upon this earth that wouldn’t worry, would believe God.  And he honored God by “hoping against hope,” where there was no natural solution at all.

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Comments on cigarettes.  “Why in the world did you ever start?  What made you ever put a rope around your neck?  You knew you’d choke to death.  You knew that devil would get the best of you after a while.  And yet they all do it.”    (from 3:50)

God’s provision for a need of six dollars.  “For a whole month I labored, and I dumped, and I found fault with God…  ‘Now, You said that whatsoever we ask, it shall be done.’  …Oh, I had a lesson to learn to leave it all in His wonderful hands…  I went out of that meeting full of joy, and not only that, but full of repentance.  I had to ask God to forgive me for doubting Him.  And then the miracle happened.”    (from 9:08)    See also recording 8A, near 11:08.

Stories of miraculous provision: butter during the war, cabbage for a rabbit, and money from Elder Brooks’ pocketbook.    (from 10:32)    The rabbit story is related in recording 9B, starting at 15:14.

The story of a five thousand dollar need supplied overnight.  “Those things happen a hundred times.  You don’t talk about those things at all, but you say, ‘Thy kingdom come!’”    (from 13:44)

Ich bin aller Welt(’s uncle) — I am the whole world’s uncle.

Audio Quality: Fair

Original tape marked (61) C/60.  For side B, we ran light hiss reduction, DeHummer -30dB, 16 filter, 57.55Hz, and compression.

A few stutters were removed, and a long pause or two shortened.

The original media and project files are available upon request.