"your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
— Matthew 6:10
Quick Answer
This phrase from the Lord's Prayer asks God to bring his reign more fully into the world now and to fulfill it completely at Christ's return, while surrendering personal plans to God's better purposes (Matthew 6:10). It is both an evangelistic longing for God's rule to expand and a personal act of submission, echoing Jesus' own prayer in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39).
The Heart of the Lord's Prayer
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, the third request came right after praise for God's name: "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). It is easy to recite these words quickly without noticing how enormous a request they actually are. This is not a request for a small personal favor; it is a request that the entire created order come fully under God's rightful rule, exactly as it already is in heaven, where nothing resists him and nothing is broken.
Praying this phrase honestly means wanting what God wants for the world more than wanting the world to simply leave you comfortable. It reorders a person's priorities every time it is prayed sincerely.
Your Kingdom Come: Already and Not Yet
Jesus taught that God's kingdom is, in one sense, already present. When the Pharisees asked when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus answered, "the kingdom of God is in your midst" (Luke 17:20-21) — present wherever the King himself was present, breaking into the world through his teaching, healing, and eventually his death and resurrection. Every time someone repents and trusts Christ, the kingdom advances a little further into a world still resisting its King.
Yet the kingdom is also unmistakably not yet fully arrived. Revelation looks forward to the day when "the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 11:15) — a complete, visible, unopposed reign that has not yet happened. Praying "your kingdom come" holds both realities together: gratitude that the kingdom has already broken in through Christ, and longing for the day it arrives in full, undoing every effect of sin, sickness, and death.
Your Will Be Done: A Global and Personal Prayer
The second half of the phrase applies the same longing on two scales at once. Globally, it asks that God's purposes for history move forward unhindered — that his patience toward a world he does not wish to see perish (2 Peter 3:9) continues to draw people to repentance, and that his justice and mercy shape the nations. Personally, it asks that God's will govern the praying person's own choices, relationships, and plans, even when that will costs something.
Paul captures the personal dimension well: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is" (Romans 12:2). Praying "your will be done" is, in part, a request to actually want what you are asking for, since human nature naturally resists surrender.
This means the prayer functions almost like a daily recalibration. A believer's own plans, ambitions, and preferences drift by default toward self-interest, and this single phrase, prayed sincerely and often, keeps pulling attention back toward a will that is not the pray-er's own. It is one of the shortest phrases in the Lord's Prayer and one of the hardest to mean fully.
Jesus' Own Example in Gethsemane
The clearest picture of what it costs to mean this prayer comes from Jesus himself, on the night before his crucifixion. Facing the terrible weight of the cross, he prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). He named his own desire honestly — he did not want the suffering ahead — and then submitted it fully to the Father's will. That is precisely the pattern the Lord's Prayer trains every believer to practice in smaller ways, daily.
Praying "your will be done" is never a request to stop caring about outcomes; it is a request to trust the Father's judgment about those outcomes more than your own.
Praying This Honestly Today
To pray this phrase with integrity, name specifically what you long to see God's kingdom overturn — injustice, addiction, a broken relationship, spiritual apathy in your own heart — and ask boldly for it. Then, like Jesus in the garden, hand the outcome and the timing to the Father, trusting that his will, even when it is not what you would have chosen, is always aimed at what is ultimately good and right. This prayer is meant to be prayed with both eyes open: eyes lifted in hope toward the kingdom's full arrival, and eyes lowered in humble submission to whatever the King decides today.