Pray Cooperatively Series

HoHum:

One blistering hot day when they had guests for dinner, Mother asked 4-year old Johnny to return thanks. “But I don’t know what to say!” the boy complained. “Oh, just say what you hear me say” his mother replied. Obediently the boy bowed his head and mumbled, “Oh Lord, why did I invite these people over on a hot day like this?” Who said prayer is boring?

WBTU:

Jesus wants us to pray cooperatively. Jesus says prayer is a cooperative venture, a partnership between us and God, in which we align with His mind before we speak our mind. Lauren Daigle’s song First- Before I bring my need I will bring my heart; Before I lift my cares, I will lift my arms; I wanna know You; I wanna find You; In every season, In every moment; Before I bring my need, I will bring my heart; And seek You, First

Pray can be a demanding but thrilling process if we think and say and do the following three things

Thesis: 3 petitions

For instances:

A. “I Guard Your Reputation,” “Hallowed be thy name”

It is possible that Jesus, in including this phrase in the prayer He taught His followers, was echoing the Kedushat HaShem, an ancient prayer that has been passed down through the centuries as the 3rd blessing of the Amidah, the daily blessings recited by observant Jews. Jews will say this: “You are holy, and your Name is holy, and your holy ones praise you every day. Blessed are you, Adonai, the God who is holy.” If so, Jesus changed these affirmations to a petition. He changes “You are holy, and your Name is holy,” to “May your Name be kept holy.” Implicit in the request is a commitment on the part of the person praying to guard God’s reputation and protect the integrity and holiness of God’s name. It is similar to a mother who sends her children off to school every morning with the admonition, “Remember who you are,” repeating the family name and making it clear that they are expected to bring honor, not shame, to that name. The 1992 movie A League of Their Own features Tom Hanks in the role of the drinking and carousing team manager Jimmy Dugan. When he takes over the team, he makes it clear that he is uninterested in anything other than fulfilling his contract and cashing his paycheck. He sleeps through games. He berates his players. But then the team starts to win, and he starts to care. Finally, when they make the playoffs, he decides to lead the team in a locker room prayer. “Lord,” he begins, “hallowed by Thy Name.” He then proceeds to ask for swift feet and mighty bats before thanking God for a waitress in South Bend who treated him with extra kindness. The scene shows that Jimmy Dugan had some knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer- he quoted, “Hallowed be Thy Name,” but the words were clearly meaningless to him, because profane actions cannot help to “hallow” God’s name. What does it mean to “hallow” God’s name? 3 things here:

1. Trusting God. Once, when God’s people were wandering in the Sinai wilderness (toward the end of the 40 years), they complained because of a lack of water. So God told Moses to speak to the face of a cliff where they had camped, promising that water would flow from the rock. Rather than speaking to the rock, however, Moses, in anger, struck it with his staff (like he did many years earlier). Water came out for the people but “the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them” (Numbers 20:12). Believing God, trusting Him, and taking Him at His word “hallows” His name and upholds His reputation.

2. Obeying God. When God gave His commandments to His people, He told them, ““Keep my commands and follow them. I am the LORD. Do not profane my holy name, for I must be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites. I am the LORD, who made you holy” (Leviticus 22:31-32). In other words, a lifestyle of submission and obedience to God “hallows” His name- not a legalistic, Pharisaical attitude but a winsome, day by day pursuit of God and His ways.

3. Rejoicing in God. When David’s second attempt to return the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem was successful, he was so overcome with joy that he threw off his kingly robes and danced with abandon in the holy procession. His wife, Michal, however, was watching from a window. She berated her husband because, she said, “he exposed himself life a fool in the sight of the servant women of his officials!” But David answered: ““It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor”. (2 Samuel 6:20-21). Joy- in worship, in trial, in the details of daily life- honors God. When our lives exudes “the joy of the Lord,” (Nehemiah 8:10) God’s name is hallowed.