Spiritual transformation into Christ-likeness in not going to happen unless we act... What transforms us is the will to obey Jesus Christ.

To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved.

So when Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence

The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes- a time for men and women to be heroic in their faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.

It would be of course a low voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-labouring with God to accomplish good things and advancing his Kingdom purposes.

When Jesus directs us to pray, "Thy kingdom come," he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence.

The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.