Prayer can be tough. We can’t see who we are praying to. He doesn’t talk back to us audibly. Sometimes we aren’t quite sure what to pray for. We can forget who it is that we are addressing. We can be demanding and selfish. Our minds can wander. There can be an overwhelming number of things we wish to pray for and we’re not sure where to start. Our pride makes us feel that we don’t need to pray. We feel as though we must say exactly the right words to get what we want. We sometimes feel as though our prayers make no difference.
No wonder Christians sometimes struggle to pray. It’s not something that comes naturally to us and it takes hard work to make prayer a priority in our lives. But praise God, He did not leave us guessing when it comes to praying in a way that is pleasing to Him. He sent us his Son to model for us what a life of prayer looks like and to explicitly teach us how we should pray.
This Friday morning, we’re going to use the Inductive Study Method to take a look at Matthew 6:9, the very first line of the Lord’s Prayer.
Pray then like this:
Matthew 6:9
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Context
Jesus is teaching on a mountainside. His disciples are close by. There are thousands of people gathered to hear Him teach. Jesus has just told them how not to pray: don’t be like the hypocrites, don’t pray aloud so that everyone will hear you, do not heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles. And then he teaches them how they should pray.
“Pray then, like this:” he says.
Observation – What does it say?
Our Father in heaven
Jesus commands us to pray saying “our” Father. This is significant because one might think that Jesus might teach individuals to pray “my” Father. The term used for Father is not the term often used in prayer abba, but the much more commonly used term patēr (where do I get my greek, you ask? Check out blueletterbible.com). And this Father is not a creation of this earth but is beyond this earth in heaven.
Hallowed be thy name
Hallowed is an old English word that is hardly ever used anymore. By the dictionary definition, hallowed (adj.) means regarded as holy, venerated; sacred. This can be confusing. Why would we ask God to keep his name holy? Isn’t it already holy? The NLT translation of this phrase can be helpful. It says, “may your name be kept holy” indicating that something might defile God’s name.
Interpretation – What does it mean?
Let’s look at the meaning phrase by phrase.
Pray then, like this:
Jesus needed to come and teach us how to pray. Prayer is not something we naturally know how to do well. Prayer can be difficult and we can be demanding. What grace that Jesus gave us an example of prayer that is pleasing to God! Jesus came to make a way for us to have a personal relationship with our creator and he modeled how to strengthen that relationship through prayer. He paved the way for us to pray and gave us the words to pray.
Our
Not “My Father in heaven” but “Our Father in heaven”. There are two reasons I think Jesus chose to teach us to say “Our Father” rather than “My Father:
- When we say “our” we are praying alongside Christ. Through the blood of Christ, we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God (Gal. 4:5). We are considered his children, co-heirs with Jesus himself. Because of Christ’s atoning work on the cross, we do not pray to “Jesus’s Father in heaven”, we can pray to “Our Father in heaven.”
- When we say “our” we are praying alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ. The Lord’s prayer is not simply a solitary, personal prayer. When we pray it, we are joining Christians around the world praying the prayer that Christ taught us to pray. It is never us alone who pray the Lord’s prayer. We pray in unison with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Father
I love that Christ taught us to pray using the word Father as our address to God. He could have rightly taught us to pray to “The Most Holy God in heaven” or to “Yahweh in heaven” or to the “King of all Kings in heaven”. Instead he teaches us to pray to our Father. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, God truly is our father. And it is important to remember this in prayer. To remember that God is our Father gives us the comfort that God is parenting us well. It is to remember that he is not some far-off, callous supreme being, but the perfect Father who parents us intimately in love and grace. Tim Keller in his book Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God quotes Calvin when he says,
“by the great sweetness of this name [Father] he frees us from all distrust.”
To be able to pray the Lord’s prayer with sincerity, it’s important to remember that we are making our appeals to our loving, trustworthy, heavenly Father.
in heaven,
The Father to whom we pray is also our creator. Through him everything was created, yet he himself is not created. He always was. To pray to our father “in heaven” is to remember that God is above all things created. He is above all and is ruling all his creation. He cannot be fully grasped by our earthly human minds for he is far higher than our thinking. Isaiah 55:9 says,
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
To remember that our Father is in heaven is to remember that he is over all and in all.
hallowed by your name.
Why do we ask God to make his name holy? Is it not already holy? Keller clarifies,
“Luther points to the fact that all baptized Christians have God’s name put upon them. As name bearers they represent a good and holy God, and so we are praying that God keep us from dishonoring the name by which we are called.”
By praying “hallowed by your name” we are in essence confessing to God that he is holy and we are not. And we are asking him to keep us from defaming his name in the earth with our unholiness. By praying this we are reminding ourselves of who God truly is (perfectly holy) and who we truly are (unholy). The rest of the prayer should be framed with this mindset.
Application – How should this change me?
Praying the first verse of the Lord’s prayer should rightly bring me to my knees. It causes me to remember that I have an audience with the Most Holy God, whom I can address as Father because I have been washed in the blood of Christ. To pray is a privilege I should not take lightly.
But I easily forget. I am quick to waltz into God’s presence through prayer and start making my demands. Or I come with a troubled mind and start worrying in God’s direction, trying to control my own circumstances by pleading with God to have things go in my favor.
To truly pray the Lord’s prayer, stops me from coming to God in so casual and callous a manner. I remember that he is our Father, whom I can trust with my circumstances and my life. And I ask him to help me keep his name holy as I bear it hear on earth. But not only that, I need to ask him to help me keep his name holy as I come to him in prayer remembering rightly that it is a most Holy God with whom I am speaking and I am most unholy. By my own right, I should not be allowed to come into God’s presence and converse with him. But because of Christ’s blood, I am permitted to come before my Father with my requests.
The first verse of the Lord’s prayer prepares us to pray. We remember that he is OUR Father, who rules over all and is in all, higher than our thoughts, who is utterly holy and good. And to come before him in prayer is a privilege. May we never take it lightly.
Question for Discussion
What do you think is the most difficult part about praying? How do you help yourself through that struggle?