This week we’ll pray through the Lord’s prayer as an outline, one line at a time. Today, read the first line, verse in Matthew 6:9:
“Our Father, in Heaven,
Hallowed be your name.”
Think about each word and what it teaches you as you pray it.
“Our Father”
Jesus calls God his father, an unusually intimate term for his culture. What does “father” mean to you? What would it mean for you to see God as a good father in your life? How does this affect your concept of God?
“In Heaven”
Jesus didn’t mean Heaven the way we tend to think of it – as a distant cosmic place. Rather, Heaven was the realm of power in which God was fully in charge; Jesus, and all of the Old Testament scriptures, depicted heaven as the place where God’s rule and reign were unspoiled and uninterrupted by sin, disease, violence, and death. God occasionally broke into the present earthly realm, but he lived and worked from heaven. Given this, what does the concept of God being from heaven mean to you?
“Hallowed be your name”
Hallowed means to revere or honor. In the culture of the ancient near east where Jesus and the other Jews lived a person’s name was more powerful and meaningful than it is to modern Western societies. A person’s name was their identity. It reflected their character and purpose. Likewise, the name of God throughout scripture reflects His character and purpose. There are many names for God in the Old Testament, and each depicts, in some way, his divine character as witnessed by the ancient Hebrews. Here are a few:
- YHWH-Yireh — “The LORD will provide” (Genesis 22:13-14)
- YHWH-Rapha — “The LORD that healeth” (Exodus 15:26)
- YHWH-Niss”i — “The LORD our Banner” (Exodus 17:8-15)
- YHWH-Shalom — “The LORD our Peace” (Judges 6:24)
- YHWH-Ro’i — “The LORD my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1)
- YHWH-Tsidkenu — “The LORD our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6)
- YHWH-Shammah — “The LORD is present” (Ezekiel 48:35)
Prayer Exercise:
Find a quiet place to pray, uninterrupted for 20-30 minutes. Begin by addressing God as your father, then pray through some of these names of God listed above, asking God to be your “provider,” your “healer,” your “peace,” etc. Pause with each one as consider what this might look like in your life and pray for the specific situations that come to mind. Thank God for the ways in which He has already acted in this way for you.
Afterward, share a bit of your experiences in the comments below. Was this a good exercise? Was it easy or difficult? What did you experience?
So far I’ve said that everything we do is spiritual, therefore everything we do is worship. When it comes to discipleship, or “spiritual formation,” that means every realm of life is open to spirituality – and that spiritual training should involve every realm of life.
But some will object that doing so will lead to religious legalism.
Nobody wants to be in a legalistic church, where people judging themselves and others according to petty and meaningless external behaviors. This is already the case! According to studies of Christian character the Western Church by-and-large already produces an insincere form of religious legalism - it just happens to be a shallow form. But shallow religiosity is still religiosity. Setting a low bar of expectations has not saved us from the error of the Judaizers, it has only created a modern, secularized form of it. We’ve pressed the lessons of Luther and Calvin to the point of complete absurdity, making salvation nothing more than a matter of pure motives and approved doctrines. Now, instead of suffering under the blight of a works-based righteousness, we suffer under the blight of an information-based unrighteousness. Read More
denise on 
jenell on