“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'” Matthew 6:9-13 NIV
The Lord’s Prayer. Most people who have been to church of almost any denomination, for any period of time in their lives, know this prayer. This passage of verses is part of the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus gave. There are many topics covered during the time that Jesus is giving the Sermon on the Mount and prayer, in my opinion, is the most important. It is our way of communicating with our Heavenly Father, our Lord and Savior.
The Lord’s Prayer follows a time of instruction that Jesus is giving that has to do with not performing religious or charitable activities solely for others to see you doing it. Jesus says that everyone should be charitable in secret so that there is no praise from the people around the person being charitable. No one is to do what they do simply to be noticed by others.
Jesus talks about prayer in the same way, it should also be done in private so that the person is not getting praised by those around them for praying. He then instructs them how to pray to God and gives the following verses as a way to communicate with God the Father.
I am only going to talk about the bolded portion of the passage, verse 9, today. Jesus tells the crowd that they are to begin the prayer by acknowledging that they are talking to their Father Who is in heaven. The instruction is the same for us. He is all of our creator and just like parents and children, we all should address Him as our Father. This also is a way of us showing reverence to God.
The very next thing Jesus says we are to do is show our adoration. “hallowed be Your name” is showing God that we praise Him and we worship Him because He is holy. Getting ourselves in a mindset of praising God, showing Him How worthy of praise He is to us and that we know He is holy, helps us understand the importance of how we communicate with our Heavenly Father.
I believe that we should be very intentional with each section of the Lord’s Prayer and not run through it as a rote memorization exercise. It is so much more. Join me tomorrow as we continue to look at the Lord’s Prayer.