Matthew 6:5-15 And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' 14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Introduction
Aren’t you glad someone decided to ask Jesus the question, “Which is the greatest commandment?” The Author of the Bible did not leave us to guess about which is the most important command. Sometimes I wonder what Jesus would have said if someone had asked Him, “Which is the greatest promise in all of Scripture?” I do not know how Jesus would have answered that question but I think it is very likely He would have pointed to Ezekiel 36:23. In that chapter the Lord is talking about the future restoration of Israel, and in verse 23 He makes this promise:
Ezekiel 36:23 I will hallow my great name, which has been profaned among the nations
The Day is coming when instead of God’s name being profaned everywhere in the world it will be hallowed.
Isaiah 29:23 they will hallow my name; they will hallow the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
The fulfillment of that great promise is recorded in my favorite verse in the whole Bible – Revelation 5:13.
Revelation 5:13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"
I believe that is not only the climax but also the purpose of all world history. Every being in existence offers exuberant praise to the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes people will try to put something in perspective by saying, “In the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter?” And the answer to that question for most things is, “This current issue, in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really matter at all.” But whether people hallow or profane the name of God really does matter in the grand scheme of things. In fact, that is really the crux of the issue in the grand scheme of things – it is the whole purpose of the grand scheme of things. The whole point of the whole creation and all of history is to arrive at that moment when all of the Creation hallows the name of the Lord. So it is no surprise that this is the first thing Jesus teaches us to ask for in prayer.
Heavenly Father
Not exactly like human fathers
We have been studying through the Sermon on the Mount and last week we began the Lord’s Prayer, and we started by exploring the significance of the fact that Jesus taught us to address our prayers to the Father. When we think of the Person listening to the prayer as being like a father to us it draws our attention to all the various marks of fatherly love – such as the special access we have to Him, His love for us, care for us, provision, protection, discipline, etc. And it enables us to understand the beautiful mixture of fear and intimacy that are so uniquely combined in a child’s love for his father.
So the good news is God is a lot like an earthly father. And today we get the even better news – and that is God is not exactly like an earthly father. They are earthly, but Jesus tells us to pray, Our Father in heaven. The word is actually plural (in the heavens). Our fathers have limitations, but the One who dwells in the heavens does not.
2 Chronicles 2:6 who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him?
Thinking of our Father being in the heavens calls to mind His transcendence and total sovereignty over everything.
Psalm 115:3 Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.
He is higher than all, answerable to no one, and therefore completely free to do whatever He wants. So when you pray to our Father who is in the heavens you are simultaneously reminded of the similarity between God and your dad, as well as the dissimilarity.
The transcendence/imminence paradox
This is the amazing paradox of prayer. We approach God as Father and Creator at the same time. “Abba” communicates the closest intimacy, and the fact that He is in heaven communicates the greatest possible transcendence. God is as far removed from us as it is possible to be, and He is closer to you than anyone. He is closer to you than your own wife or husband or child or parent, but he is farther away from you than the Milky Way. The vast expanses of the universe fit in the palm of His hand and He is in your heart. We climb up into His lap and lay our head on His chest, and simultaneously we fall prostrate before Him with our face in the dirt.
If you neglect either side of this truth you get heresy. If you focus totally on God’s nearness and imminence, you end up with a sappy sentimentalism where God ends up being little more than your own thoughts and feelings – so your desires and impulses become God’s will and your thoughts become God’s Word. Either that or the heresy of pantheism – where God is so near that He is in the tree and the rock, and He is not distinct from the creation – the creation is God. On the other hand, if you focus too far on His transcendence you end up with the heresy of deism – where God is way out there somewhere but He is not involved in day to day affairs on earth. But the perfect balance is found in the simple phrase, Our Father, who is in heaven. And that is the blessed paradox of prayer.
Psalm 95:5 You are the great God, the great King above all gods, in His hand is the depths of the earth. The mountain peaks belong to Him, the sea is His for He made it, and His hand formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker
One verse later,
7 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
He is simultaneously the great, transcendent King above all Gods and the nearby shepherd. That kind of thing is everywhere in the Bible.
Isaiah 63:15 Look down from heaven and see from your lofty throne, holy and glorious.
One verse later…
16 But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father…
Fellowship with the Trinity
I told you last week that I would address this question of whether we should think about God being up in heaven when we pray or right there in the room with us. And the paradox of prayer is that it is both. And if you have trouble conceiving of God being simultaneously transcendent and imminent (far away and near at the same time), it might help to think in terms of the Trinity. Scripture does not say exactly the same thing when it talks about how to relate to the Father as opposed to how we relate to the Son or Holy Spirit.
The Father
The Father is most often spoken of as being in heaven – far above the creation, on His throne reigning over all. The Holy Spirit is most often spoken of as being nearby and close. Even in the creation account it is the Spirit who is on site, down on the earth, moving above the waters. Our most direct, most immediate interactions with God are with the Holy Spirit.
So God the Father is way up in heaven and God the Holy Spirit is closer to you than your skin, and in between is God the Son. Jesus Christ stands between earth and heaven, laying one hand on the Father (because Jesus is God) and the other on us (because Jesus is also man) and He functions as the connection between us and heaven. All our interactions with the Father must go through Him, and all the Father’s blessings to us come through Him.
There are exceptions to all this, so I do not want to pigeon hole too much, but by and large when it comes to the Father the language is mostly high and lofty and transcendent, when it comes to the Holy Spirit the language is mostly nearby and close and imminent, and when it comes to Jesus Christ there is a whole lot of both.
And so what are the implications for how we have fellowship with each member of the Trinity? What is the main thing we receive from the Father? We answered that question last week – love. Fatherly love. And so what does fellowship with Him look like? It looks a lot like a little child interacting with his father – looking to his father to take care of him and provide for him and protect him, and guide him and teach him and discipline him.
The Son
What about God the Son? If we think of God the Father primarily being in heaven, and the Spirit being close by us here on earth, where do we think of Jesus being? Both heaven and earth. He is our mediator – appealing to God on our behalf and giving us grace from the Father. All the worship and prayers and service and everything else we offer to God is presented to the Father by the Son, and out of His love for the Son, God the Father accepts what is offered. And everything the Father gives us is given through the Son.
God does not have a father-son relationship with unbelievers (Jn.8:41-44) . The reason we enjoy a father-son relationship with Him is only because we are in Christ. When Jesus prayed He always said, “My Father” never “Our Father.” But then He tells us to say “our Father.” That points to a uniqueness in the Sonship of Jesus in which we participate but with which we do not share at the same level. We call God Father but not the same way Jesus does. For Him it is an essential relationship that He has the right to; for us, we are sons of God only in Christ. And the benefits of sonship come to us only through Christ.
So when Paul assigned one word to each member of the Trinity the word for the Father was “love,” and the word for Christ is “grace”
2 Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
It is the grace of the Father, but it comes to us through Christ.
John 1:17 grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 4:7 to each one of us a grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
The word “grace” is shorthand for every good thing we receive from God – especially with respect to salvation. And every good thing we receive from God comes to us only because of Christ. He purchased God’s favor for us on the cross. If Jesus had not suffered on the cross and taken upon Himself the guilt and punishment for all our sins then we would never, ever have even the remotest hope of ever having any favor from God. So every gift from God – especially salvation – comes to us only because of Christ.
So if fellowship with the Father looks like a child interacting with his dad, what does fellowship with Jesus Christ look like? The main thing we get from Him is grace; what is the main thing we offer back to Him in response? Faith.
Romans 5:1-2 … we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace
We gain access to the grace of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 3:17 says that He dwells in our hearts through faith. You are never closer to the Lord Jesus Christ than when you are trusting Him. You are never receiving more of the grace He offers than when you are believing His words and entrusting your life to Him.
The Spirit
How about the Holy Spirit? The Father is in heaven, the Son stands between heaven and earth, and the Spirit – He is the one who is the closest to us.
John 14:17 the Spirit of truth … lives with you and will be in you.
The Spirit is the one who is the most immediate connection we have with God. Grace comes from the Father, because of Christ, but then the actual action of that grace being applied in your life in real time is done by the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who strengthens you, empowers you, enables you to do things. It is the Spirit of God who is right there opening your eyes to enable you to understand and accept something you read in Scripture. When you have a godly impulse – that is the Holy Spirit’s doing. When we sin, we are resisting what the Holy Spirit is doing.
And the Spirit not only lives within us as individuals, He also dwells within us corporately, as a church.
Ephesians 2:22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
When you are edified by a sermon, or moved by corporate worship, or someone in the church helps you when you are in trouble or encourages you or prays for you or rebukes you and restores you from a sinful path or any other benefit that comes from the Church – all of that is the direct work of the Holy Spirit in His Temple.
So grace is from God the Father, it comes through faith in God the Son, and is delivered to us directly by the God Holy Spirit. So what does fellowship with the Spirit look like? Fellowship with the Father looks like a child loving and trusting and honoring his dad. Fellowship with Jesus Christ looks like a wife trusting and submitting to and following the leadership of her husband. What does fellowship with the Spirit look like? How do we interact with Him? The main way we interact with the Spirit is by simply being responsive to His influence. He is working in us and we can either resist what He is doing or receive and acquiesce to it.
Galatians 5:16 walk by the Spirit
Ephesians 5:18 be filled by the Spirit.
Galatians 5:25 keep in step with the Spirit.
Galatians 5:18 [be] led by the Spirit
Ephesians 6:18 pray in the Spirit
Ephesians 4:30 do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
1 Thessalonians 5:19 Do not extinguish the Spirit
Just as a drunk exposes himself to the influence of alcohol, we must expose ourselves to the influence of the Holy Spirit. And that influence comes through the Church and the Scriptures. Those are the Spirit’s “stompin’ grounds” so to speak. Expose yourself to the influence of the Scriptures and the Church with a receptive attitude, and you will know communion with the Holy Spirit. Which means – if you understand what I am telling you right now – if you can see the meaning of these passages of Scripture,and the truths are delightful to you and your soul is accepting and embracing them – then you are experiencing fellowship with the Holy Spirit right now, at this very moment. The Spirit is giving you things, and the only thing required to make that a two-way kind of fellowship is your attending to Him – realizing that what is happening is His handiwork.
So all three kinds of fellowship involve obedience. We obey the Father as children who tremble at the thought of disobeying their father. We obey the Son like a submissive wife who trusts the direction her husband is leading. Jesus says, “This is the best way,” and we say, “We believe You!” and we eagerly go that way rather than the way human wisdom points to. And we obey the Holy Spirit by being responsive to the influences He exerts on our souls through the Scriptures and the Church.
Hallowed Name
The structure of the Lord’s Prayer is very simple. There is the address, followed by six requests. The first three are about God (Your name, Your kingdom, Your will) and the last three are about our needs (our daily bread, forgive us our sins, deliver us from evil).
The petition of worship
So the first half of the prayer is worship. But it is worth noting that the worship part is still in the form of requests, not just declarations. We usually think of worship and petition as two different categories. Now we are worshipping God, and now we are asking God for things. But in reality worship is asking God for something. Look at the first line – Hallowed be Your name. That is a second person imperative – asking God to see to it that His name be hallowed. And that is true of the others as well. Your kingdom come and Your will be done are in the form of requests – “See to it that Your kingdom is brought about and see to it that Your will is done.” Even when we worship God we are asking Him for a gift, because only God can cause His name to be honored. And only God can bring about His kingdom and His will.
The desire for universal worship
So we ask God to bring those things about – in our own hearts and in the hearts of others. A true worshipper is never satisfied with just his own, solo voice praising God. I praise God because I want Him to be praised, and so the more voices the better. So if we really love God we won’t be satisfied until every single person in existence is worshipping Him. And until that happens things are not as they should be and we cry out to God, “Let it happen!” If my heart is the way Jesus says it should be, as soon as I start crying out to God and asking for the deepest desires of my heart the first thing that will tend to come up will be the desire that God’s name be hallowed.
The definition of hallowed
The word hallowed is hagaizo (??????), which is means “to make holy” or “to consecrate.” “Hallowed” is a good translation of that word. It means to set something apart as being sacred and holding it in the highest honor.
Faith, Obedience, and Fear
It is the opposite of taking God’s name in vain or profaning His name. And taking God’s name in vain involves a lot more than just the way you talk about God. We usually think of profanity in terms of speech – people who go around saying “Oh my God” or “Jesus Christ” as an epithet. And that is profane, to be sure, but there are a lot of other ways to profane God’s name. The question of whether you are profaning God’s name or hallowing God’s name is an issue of the heart, and the best test for whether you hallow God’s name in your heart is your response to His Word. Those who hallow God’s name respond to Scripture with faith, obedience, and fear. They believe God’s Word, they trust Him to the point of obeying His commands, and they tremble at the thought of disobeying.
If you study the passages in Scripture where people failed to hallow God’s name that becomes very clear. For example, in Numbers 20:12 God had commanded Moses to speak to a rock and instead he struck the rock with his staff. And God said, Because you did not trust in me enough to hallow me in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them. “You did not trust Me enough to hallow Me.” Hallowing is a function of trust. God told Moses to do something that would have made him look really silly if God did not come through, so Moses hedged his bets. He struck the rock in a way so that he was not running the risk of looking like a fool. He did not trust God to do what He promised, so the result was God was not glorified in the eyes of the people nearly as much as He would have been when the water came from the rock. Moses profaned God’s name by disobeying, and the reason he disobeyed was He did not trust God’s Word. So there hallowing God’s name means trusting Him enough to obey Him.
Another passage that speaks of hallowing God is Isaiah 8:12–13.
Isaiah 8:12-13 Do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. 13 The Lord Almighty is the one you are to hallow, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread,
So there to hallow God means to fear Him more than you fear men. That is, to regard it as much more dreadful to lose God’s approval than to lose anything else including your life.
But if you do trust God’s Word then you will also tremble at the thought of disobeying Him. When God gave the instructions on how to approach Him in worship in Leviticus 22 He ended by saying:
Leviticus 22:32 Do not profane my holy name. I must be hallowed by the Israelites.
“Don’t depart from what I’m saying. Don’t try to approach Me on your own terms. Just obey these instructions because My name must be hallowed.” Then in Leviticus 10:3 Nadab and Abihu got creative in worship and tried to approach God in a way different from what God had prescribed. God sent fire and burned them to ashes on the spot and then said “Among those who approach me I will show myself hallowed; in the sight of all the people I will be honored.” They were not afraid to depart from God’s Word, so they ended up a pile of ashes.
So what kind of effect does it have on a person when he hallows God’s name? If you hallow Him you will trust Him, you will obey Him, you will fear Him, and you will approach Him only on the terms He has revealed. Anything short of that profanes the name of God.
The definition of “name”
The “name” of God can refer to different things in Scripture depending on the context. Sometimes it refers to authority. If you cast out demons in the name of Jesus, that means you are doing it based on His authority. But most of the time “God’s name” refers to that which is knowable about God – that part of God that we can know and commune with. So when someone says, “I praise Your name” it means “I’m praising You. All that I know of You, I praise. Every part of you that has been revealed, everything that can be known about You I praise” And I think that is the way Jesus is using the word “name” in this context. The prayer is this: “Father, cause people to look at what You have revealed about Yourself and stand in awe. Let all thoughts, language, attitudes, and responses toward You be respectful and reverent and filled with the utmost honor and fear.”
The most important thing in the Universe
Does this surprise you – that this would be the highest priority? Time magazine once ran an article about truck driver who was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct in Maryland. He was so abusive to the officers, they wanted to throw the book at him. But the maximum penalty for DC was $100 fine and thirty days in jail. When the judge heard how he had behaved, he felt this was too mild. So he found an antiquated law that had been forgotten but never repealed – an old statute against public blasphemy. It carried another thirty days and another $100. The reporter was incredulous. He was not one bit outraged by the behavior of this truck driver, but he was shocked that in this day and age someone would be sentenced to thirty days just for publically blaspheming the Holy name of Almighty God. To the world that seems as minor as it can be. They have all kinds of restrictions on what is allowed to be said on TV, and at various times of day, but even in children’s programming that last thing they are worried about is taking the Lord’s name in vain. We live in a culture that thinks nothing of blaspheming God. People think it is cute to hear their 3 year old child do it.
Think for a second about the Ten Commandments. Imagine there was a huge upheaval in the United States government in which they decided the law code had gotten way out of hand and way too complex, so they just scrapped the entire thing. Then they came to you and said, “We want you to write a new law code from scratch that will be the foundation for all future laws to be based on. Make it comprehensive enough so that it covers all the various issues that come up in society, so we can have law and order and justice. But don’t make it too complex. In fact, we would like you to keep it to a maximum of ten laws – no more. So now you have just ten laws to cover everything. If you were going to write ten laws to govern a nation, would you “waste” one of them on a law that says, “No taking the name of the Lord in vain”? You would if you had a heart after God’s own heart.
There are a lot of terrible things that take place. Terrorism, child abuse, wife abuse, murder, rape, genocide, mass starvation, human rights violations – all kinds of truly horrible things that go on. But the worst one of all is the failure to honor and revere God’s name. And so that rises to the top of Christian prayer as our most urgent request before God – “Our Father, reigning above the highest heaven, cause Your name to be hallowed.” That is more important than anything. God banned Moses from the Promised Land and burnt Aaron’s two sons to ashes for one mistake – why? Because God’s name being honored is more important than whether someone enters the Promised Land, and it is more important than whether someone lives or dies. If we could see reality clearly that would be in our priorities. It is not important if Darrell Ferguson is still alive at the end of 2010. It is supremely important whether God’s name is honored or profaned. What would our lives look like if the hallowing of God’s name really was more important to us than our own lives?
John Piper is famous for his book, The Pleasures of God. And the main thesis of that book is that uppermost in God’s affections is His own glory. The most important thing to God is His own glory. Many people have taken issue with that over the years, insisting that they do not see that in the Scriptures. But I see it right here. When God teaches us to pray He teaches us the priority #1 to pray for is that His name be hallowed.
I think the reason people object to that idea is because if any of us became consumed with our own glory and honor that would be a terrible thing. We call people like that pompous egomaniacs. So why is it OK for God and not for us?
There are a couple reasons why it is bad for us.
1) It is a lie. If I act like I am of supreme importance, I am lying. I am not supremely important. But God is supremely important. So for God it would be a lie if He acted like He was not supremely important. So when I glorify myself; that is bad because I am lying. But for God it would be lying to do anything other than glorify Himself.
2)
3) It is unloving. If I point your attention to me and my glory and all that I have to offer, that is unloving because in myself I do not have anything worthwhile to offer. I am pointing you to a dry well – or a poisoned well. But for God it is the other way around. For God the most loving thing He can do is point us to His glory, because seeing the glory of God is the most valuable, beneficial thing any human being could possibly experience. In fact for God to hide His glory or point to something or someone else as being more glorious and more worthy to be gazed upon would be unloving and cruel.
4)
The most important thing in the universe is the glory of God. The most beneficial thing that can happen to a person is to see the glory of God. So the most horrifying possible evil is to obscure the glory of God. So the heart that loves God and loves people cries out day and night, “Father – glorify Your name! Cause it to be hallowed.”
Conclusion – from your heart to the whole universe
Your own heart
The application of this starts in our own hearts and expands out from there. If you really, really want God’s name to be hallowed you are going to start with your own heart. If you want there to be lots of voices praising God then you will start with the one voice you can control. What if we all just resolved, right here and now, to never, ever entertain profane or degrading thoughts about God?
Entertaining profane thoughts
You can tell how much you respect someone by what kind of thoughts you are willing to entertain about that person. Suppose you are with a friend when he arrives home from work to find that none of his kids are home. He cannot figure out where they might be, so he says to you, “I wonder if my wife murdered them?” And at first you assume he is joking, but then you realize he is dead serious. He really is considering that a possibility. Now you know what that guy thinks about his wife’s character.
If you come home from work and the kids are not there, there are some possibilities you are willing to entertain and some you are not. If you have a high regard for your wife’s character you would never seriously think, “Oh, my wife must have killed them.” You would think, “Oh, they must have stayed after school, or they are at a friend’s house, or out playing…” So you investigate all those possibilities and find that they are not in any of those places, their bikes are still in the garage – and in your wildest imagination you cannot conceive of where they might be. But still – even then – you would leave it as a mystery in your mind before you would ever seriously entertain the idea that your wife did something bad to them. The thought would not even cross your mind – and if it did you would push it out as fast as it came in as a ridiculous thought.
It amazes me what kind of horrific thoughts God’s people are willing to entertain about the most perfect and holy being in existence. “The only explanation I can think of is that God is being unjust – therefore it must be a possibility. I can’t think of any other way to explain all this, therefore, since I can’t think of it, there is no other way to explain all this.” God is being cruel. God is being capricious. God is inflicting pain on me for no good reason. This is why people get mad at God – because they entertain blasphemous and ridiculous and irrational thoughts about God (that maybe God has done something wrong). When we hallow God’s name we refuse to do that. No matter how perplexing and unexplainable our situation is, we would much sooner conclude that we are going insane than conclude that God has done something wrong.
If this is something you struggle with I would urge you right now to renounce any and every blasphemous thought about God, and resolve to never, ever even consider entertaining thoughts like that ever again. And if those kinds of thoughts pop into your head, fight them off with the same vigor and fierceness with which you would fight against any life-threatening attack, and resolve also that if you do fall into the sin of un-hallowed thoughts about God you would never voice those thoughts to other people lest a brother or sister be influenced to fall into that same wickedness. Hallowing God’s name starts in your own heart.
The motive for everything
And it becomes the motive for everything you do. Why do I praise God? Because I want His name to be hallowed. Why do I resist a temptation? Just because I don’t want to be a failure? No – I resist temptation because I do not want God’s name to be blasphemed among the demons because of me. I do not want Satan to say, “See God – Your people don’t even prefer You above a little, passing, earthly pleasure.” And I do not want God’s name to be slandered among unbelievers because of me.
Family
So hallowing God’s name starts in my own heart – and from there it moves outward. First to my family. Why do I pray with my wife in a tense moment instead of fighting or walking away? Because I feel like doing that? No – it is because I want God’s name to be hallowed in a greater way in my heart and in her heart. If I truly desire His name to be honored I will not be satisfied with it being honored just in my own heart. Why do I discipline my children when my lazy flesh just wants to look the other way? Why have family devotions when the TV is sitting there calling my name? Because I want my home to be a worship center where God’s name is hallowed in every heart.
Church
It starts with me and moves out to those closest to me, and then from there out to the church. Why get involved in ministry at church? Because you feel like you have to pitch in and do your share and pull your weight? No, it is because you long for more and more hearts to hallow God’s name. Why volunteer for children’s ministry or youth ministry? Because you like hanging around young people? No – it is because you realize that that room at the end of the hall could potentially be a place where the language and conversations and attitudes and jokes and whispers dishonor God’s name; or it could be a room jammed full of young hearts that hallow God’s name. And you want to do everything you can to make sure it goes that way instead of the other way.
World
That is why you put money in the offering; it is why you participate enthusiastically in worship even when it is not your favorite style, it is why you go to prayer group when you don’t feel like it, or make that hard phone call, or write a letter or run the sound or clean the building or anything else that contributes to this ministry. You want all the efforts of the Church to be successful because you long for God’s name to be honored in more and more hearts and in greater and greater ways.
And that longing will start in your own heart and move out to your family and the Church and ultimately to the entire world. Why did Dave and Carolyn leave a comfortable life in America to labor in a hard ministry among some of the most closed Muslims in Russia? Why are Wayne and Vicki Petts going to go to Guatemala in November where they will be working so hard from sunup to sundown trying to reach people for Christ? Why do we as a church give tens of thousands of our hard-earned dollars to support missions? Because we want God’s name to be honored- and worshipped and - revered and praised and adored and hallowed in every tribe and tongue and people and nation and language. Nothing short of the universal praise of Revelation 5:13 can satisfy the longing in the heart of one who longs for the hallowing of God’s name.
How do you improve a ministry within the church? Is it mainly through better leadership or better organization or better funding or better communication? No. Those things help, but the most important way to improve any ministry in the church is to increase the longing in people’s hearts for the hallowing of God’s name in all the earth. Do that and you have just improved every ministry in the church.
This, then, is how you should pray. How do we improve our prayer life? We work continually at elevating the importance of the hallowing of God’s name in our affections and priorities to the point where our first impulse in prayer is to ask for that. To come to the point where if we were granted one wish – anything we desired – it would be that the name of God would be hallowed. Then we will beseech the Lord in prayer and ask for that, and we will be praying for the greatest thing there is. We will be praying for the thing that will most benefit us personally; it will be the greatest possible act of love toward other people, and the greatest worship of God. And God will hear those prayers and look with favor on them and answer them and every being will bow the knee and confess the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
Benediction: 1 Peter 1:15-17 just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." 17 Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.
