Stop Waiting for Heaven and Start Living It Right Now
/Welcome to the Wednesday Recap!
What is the Wednesday Recap, you ask? Each Wednesday, I recap the discussion from the previous week’s Local table gathering. Each week, The Local meets in various homes around a table to eat, worship, read and discuss the Bible, and pray for each other and our community. Living on mission is our response to the grace and love Jesus has shown us. We share the Gospel and show love to those we encounter where we live, learn, work, and play. While this recap gives people a chance to review, it also gives folks who were unable to gather with us a chance to catch up on what we are learning and working on together. I hope you find it a blessing. Be well, and I will see at our Local table!
Too many times in my life I have found myself praying, “Thy will be done,” with a heavy heart, treating those words like a holy sigh of defeat. Or maybe I hedged my bets during my prayer and said, “if You will it, Lord…” just in case nothing happened after I prayed. That way I wouldn’t look foolish or make God seem powerless or unconcerned. Many of us have been taught to use that prayer as a cushion for when life falls apart. We look at a painful diagnosis, a broken relationship, or a season of depression and think, Well, I guess this is just God’s mysterious will.
But as we have been learning about at The Local Olympia, when Jesus taught His friends how to pray, He wasn't giving them a tool for passive resignation. He was handing them an active, powerful key to change the earth.
When we pray "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven," we aren't just waiting around for a future ticket to heaven. We are asking for heaven's reality to invade our lives in the hear and now.
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
What Does Heaven Look Like Today?
To understand what we are praying for, we have to look at the standard of heaven. Revelation 21:4 tells us that in heaven, there is absolutely zero sickness, anxiety, depression, or conflict. It is the perfect blueprint of God's heart.
So if those things don't exist in heaven, guess what? They don't have a legal right to occupy your family, your health, or your city today.
Sickness and trauma are the results of a fallen world, not the hidden desires of a loving Father. When Jesus died on the cross, He didn't just save us for eternity.
He paid for our complete restoration right here.
The prophet Isaiah told us that the Messiah would carry our physical pain, and 1 Peter 2:24 looks back at the cross to remind us that "by His wounds you have been healed." It’s an accomplished, legally paid-for reality.
You Aren't Left on Your Own
This might sound overwhelming. How are we supposed to bring heaven to earth when we feel so small?
The beautiful truth is that you aren't doing this in your own strength. We live in the era of the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus left the earth, He told His disciples something shocking: it was actually better for Him to go away (John 16:7). Why? Because while Jesus could walk with them, the Holy Spirit would dwell in them permanently.
The Holy Spirit is inside you right now to enforce the victory Jesus already won. The apostle Paul calls our current era the "ministry of the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:7–8). You don't have to beg a distant, reluctant God to move. Instead, you get to partner with the Holy Spirit and let Him fill you with dunamis—His miraculous, environment-shifting power.
Shifting Our Approach to Prayer
To see this power activate in our daily lives, we need to shift our perspective in three simple ways:
See from Heaven's View: Stop praying up to God from a place of defeat. Ephesians 2:6 says we are spiritually seated with Christ in heavenly places. Pray from that position of victory, identifying what doesn't belong to heaven's standard and refusing to let it settle in your life.
Lean on the Spirit's Guidance: We don't always know how to pray, and that's okay. Romans 8:26 promises that the Spirit helps us in our weakness. He works in us to build our character, and upon us to give us the power to change our environments.
Speak the Word with Spirit: True transformation requires both the written Word of God and the Holy Spirit working together. The Word without the Spirit can feel cold and legalistic, but the Spirit without the Word can lead to chaotic confusion. When you take God's promises and speak them under the guidance of the Spirit, spiritual authority is released.
A Quick Guide for Your Prayer Time
The next time you face a difficult situation that doesn't look like heaven, try walking through these conversational steps in your prayer time:
Confront it honestly: Name the brokenness or the problem explicitly. Don't pretend it isn't there, but don't let it intimidate you either.
Submit to the Helper: Ask the Holy Spirit to guide your thoughts and give you the right words to speak.
Align with Heaven: Verbally declare what God's Word says about the situation. Speak His peace directly into the chaos.
Step out in action: Ask for the Holy Spirit's power to come upon you so you can actively be the hands and feet that bring healing and comfort to those around you.
Another thing to consider: we can’t always see what God is doing. He is always working. Perhaps He isn’t doing what we think He ought to do, but since He loves us and knows the situation better than we do, we can be confident that He is doing what is best in the situation—even if we don’t see it or understand it. We just need to have faith and keep praying. If it is too difficult, phone a friend! You are not alone.
And remember:
You are not powerless.
You are an authorized ambassador of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Let's stop waiting for the future and start enforcing heaven's reality today!
Thank you for reading! If you are new to The Local, welcome! I hope you decide to stay. If you have stumbled onto this blog somehow, and you have gotten something out of these words, please share it with me. You are welcome at our table.