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.
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