Matthew 6:9
In this passage Jesus is teaching us how to pray. As we discussed a few weeks ago, in the Sermon on the Mount He says “In this manner . . . pray”, or basically, “pray this way”. When He was asked by one of His disciples, “teach us to pray”, Jesus repeated basically the same prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is inspired by the Holy Spirit, it is taught by Jesus and it is pleasing to the Father; it is how Jesus prayed and it is the foundation from which we are to learn to pray.
We started with the address, “Our Father”. Nothing about the Lord’s Prayer makes sense if we don’t first understand our relationship to the One we pray to, He is our Father. The Lord’s Prayer is how children approach their Father; it is based in love, in dependence and in reverence. Prayer is not our effort to get God to do our will it is the vehicle, given to children by their Father, so that we can come, be reminded of the security of our relationship, be convinced of His desire for intimacy with us and be changed into the image of the very one that taught us the prayer and whom we pray to. Prayer, as children to our Father, glorifies God and transforms our hearts, we must learn to pray to Our Father.
Today we are going to deal with the first petition or request of the prayer, “Hallowed be Your name”. I think that we often rush over these words partly because we don’t understand them and partly because we have overlooked them. These words carry incredible meaning and are supposed to lay the groundwork for everything else that follows them. “Hallowed be your name” is not an expression of praise or worship, it is not a declaration it is a request, it is a prayer asking for God’s name to be seen as holy in the earth. This request is meant to remind us that God initiates prayer and prayer must be for His glory, before we get to our requests from Him we need to remember His desire and that His desires is always for our good. Before I get into my daily bread, my forgiveness and the path of my life I need to ask for God to be seen and known as holy. This is not a separate request, it is establishing the context of all my personal requests; if I truly pray for God’s name to be hallowed then I see everything in life through the lens of His glory, it changes my pleading for my way to a longing for Him to be glorified through every circumstance I face. “Hallowed be your name” is a request that is meant to slow us and to focus us, my prayers are about the One I’m praying to, again, my Father knows what I have need of before I ask Him so let me concentrate on what He desires, so that my heart and my will can be overtaken by His. “Hallowed by your name” is the first and most important request in the Lord’s Prayer, all the rest don’t simply come after it, they are all built upon this one foundation for every petition we will ever offer God our Father.