Skip to main content

The Lord's Prayer--Thy Name


The Lord’s Prayer—Thy Name, Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection

            For the next five weeks, I would like to unpack the five main phrases of what we call The Lord’s Prayer, The Our Father, The Prayer Jesus taught us to Pray, The Model Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9-13.  I hope to help us reflect more deeply on the phrases many of us know by heart.  Jesus did not teach them to us to pray without considering the meaning behind each word and phrase. 

            Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name….what a beautiful way to begin. 

            Our Father: Jesus is the one who taught us to think of God as our Father.  God gave this image of Himself with mankind in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 1:31; Psalm 103:13; Malachi 3:17) but it was not until Jesus that we began to comprehend that God wants us to think of Him as our Father during prayer.  I love that Jesus didn’t teach us to pray to His Father.  Jesus calls God our Father.  Jesus called Him Abba—Daddy.  When we pray we are to consider that we are talking to our Father, He is the Father to the fatherless.  No Father compares to God as our Father.  Jesus delights in sharing His special relationship with His Father (Matthew 6:6) and encouraging us to address the Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe, the Most Holy of All; Father. 

            Once we grasp that we are speaking to Our Abba-Father, we recognize that He is in heaven—Who art in heaven.  Jesus asks us to center our prayer by grasping the reality of heaven even while we pray from earth.  Heaven should be on our mind each day and throughout the day.  Heaven is our hope.  It is our goal.  It is the place we want to be after God determines that our time on earth is finished.  If we think of heaven every day, we won’t get so caught up in the constant worries and concerns of the world.  Heaven is what centers us to live into the fullness of God’s will for our life on earth.  The atmosphere of earth is a picture of heaven with its blue horizons and bright lights.  The heavens that we see with our eyes remind us that Our Father is in heaven (a place more wonderful than we can imagine) preparing a place for us so that we can be with Him there.  Heaven is a real place.  Heaven is where God is.  We don’t learn of heaven by limiting our knowledge to the out-of-body recollections that people have described when they die and come back to life.  We learn about the place of heaven by the descriptions that God has given us in the Bible.  It is the place He wants us to be.  It is a place that no one visits and comes back to earth.  Paul said he went there (he wasn’t sure if it was in the body or in a trance, 2 Corinthians 12:2) but he wasn’t allowed to write what he saw.  He was eager to go there permanently (2 Timothy 4:8).  John wrote of heaven in some degrees in Revelation and he too informed us that some things he was not permitted to write (Revelation 10:4).  So when we think of heaven, we think of it as a place that is good and real and perfect.  But we cannot begin to grasp how wonderful it really is.

            Hallowed be Thy Name is the response to forming the concept that we are praying to Our Father in Heaven.  It is by His grace that we can call Him by a name.  That name has power beyond our imagination.  We are transformed by calling on His name.  When we are lifting up His name we are doing the opposite of sinning, we are halting the rebellion that comes naturally to us and acknowledging that His Name is holy, honored and wonderful.  The original sin of doubting God’s goodness is transmuted.  Isaiah 43:21 says; The people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.  We were created for this very purpose to give praise to His holy name.  It is indeed our honor and our dignity that we repeat this first phrase.  We orient ourselves to the great and beautiful God who is our Father in heaven whose name is above all and amazing beyond words.

Copyright © 2013.  Deborah R. Newman  www.teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are cr...

The Effects of the Holy Spirit

The Effects of the Holy Spirit               Can you imagine that the very Spirit of God is given to humans who believe in God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection?  Just thinking about the Holy Spirit makes me realize that I can do better.  I am not left to my own resources when it comes to praying, having faith, obeying God, doing what He asks me to do.                 No one understands the depth of sin’s effect on a soul better than God.  Every action He takes has been to reduce the effect of evil that was unleashed into our world when sin was merged into His perfect universe.  We never saw it coming. Even Adam and Eve did not see what hit them.  God has counteracted with the effect of faith after sin by enabling sinners to be affected by His ho...

Holy Saturday

Nothing is written about the events of Holy Saturday except Luke 23:56, “they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.” These few words speak volumes about our life with Christ.   What was it like for these ladies to rest on the Sabbath?   They had watched carefully, they knew how quickly Jesus’ body was laid in the grave. The men had brought spices and linens, but they had little time to properly anoint this most precious of all bodies.   As the women watched carefully, they made mental note of the supplies that would be necessary to complete this sacred act of burial as it should be. They spent the last few hours before sunset to prepare the spices for this holy act of reverence. The Sabbath signaled the time for rest.   I’m sure they didn’t feel like resting, but by complying out of obedience they were probably served by its benefits.   Their minds racing from the horror they had just witnessed, at best they could allow their bodies to rest and ...