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PRAYER – VALUING THE NAME

Christian Life, ,

PRAYER – VALUING THE NAME

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name, Matthew 6:9

Prayer is a fascinating subject.

I regret that it’s taken me so long to learn from Jesus what prayer is about rather than from listening to others pray.

Take for example praying in Jesus’ name. In our prayers, saying “In Jesus’ name, amen” is rather like an “over and out” ending to a two-way radio conversation, or like saying, “You have to answer me, God, because I prayed in Jesus’ name.” Is that what it really means?

At Mt Sinai, God gave “Ten Commandments” to His people as a guideline for living the best kind of life. The third commandment said that they were not to take God’s name in vain. We have reduced that to getting mad when people at work or on TV say “God!” or “Jesus!” and not doing it ourselves. But is that really all it means?

Part of the covenant God set up with His people was the right to use His name. That means that He gave them power of attorney to “sign cheques” in His name for whatever they needed to get the work that He assigned to them done.

Jesus passed that assignment on to us. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you…” To do what? Basically, to live like He did to show the world what the Father is like.

There are three ways in which we can take God’s name in vain; we can justify what we are saying or doing wrong by claiming that God “understands”. We do this by rationalising. ”I know it’s wrong to have an affair but I love him and I don’t love my husband any more. God is love, so what’s so wrong with that?”

Secondly, we claim to speak in God’s name things that contradict who He is or give “a word” to people that He didn’t authorise. In our enthusiasm for God, we forget that it is a serious thing to speak for God what He has not spoken. False prophets were severely dealt with in the Old Testament.

The third way is by making demands of God in prayer and tagging Jesus’ name on the end like a magic formula. Jesus gave us a tough assignment – to be like Him in the world so that the world would know what the Father is really like. That means that He expects us to live exactly opposite to the way the world lives.

The world is greedy – we must be generous.

The world criticises and condemns – we must be merciful.

The world wants to be first – we must serve.

The world lives for self – we must die to self.

To pray on the name of Jesus is to be so one with Him in heart and mind that we think what He thinks and ask what He wants so that He can carry out His will through us here on earth. It means praying only what He authorises according to who He is. Praying in His name is to honour Him so much that we would not dream of saying, doing, or asking for any thing outside of who He is.

When You Pray, Say…

Prayer, , ,

WHEN YOU PRAY, SAY…

“Then He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'” Luke 11:2-4

I wonder how well the disciples understood what Jesus was teaching them about prayer. Did they grasp the underlying truth of God as their Father?

Unlike Matthew 6, there is no preamble to this version of the prayer. Although Jesus taught them that prayer is not about words, words are used to express the thoughts and emotions of the heart. What a world of meaning is wrapped up in the word ‘Father’! There is no prayer outside of this relationship which was made possible through Jesus. “Yet to all who received Him, to all who believed in His name, He gave the right to be called children of God…” John 1:12.

Prayer is the way sons communicate with their heavenly Father. Prayer is the conscious turning of the attention away from self to the One who is our source and sustainer, changing the focus of our attention from self and its issues to God and His attributes. Whatever words it might take to do this are only the vehicle through which this change of awareness is effected. Therefore, when a son focuses his attention on Father God, that is prayer.

This Father with whom human beings are privileged to have a relationship because of Jesus, is not outside our realm of existence and experience. Heaven is not a place up there or out there but a dimension that completely saturates the physical realm as air saturates the earth. God is everywhere and He is therefore as near to us as our breath.

Prayer is therefore, firstly, a change from my environment to the environment of God, of His presence and nearness. Secondly, it is an awareness of who He is. To hallow His name is to concentrate on His glory, “the sum of His magnificent attributes and the eternal fame of His mysterious works”. Where my attention was taken up by the issues of my life, I deliberately change my focus to the greatness of the God with whom I am engaging in love and trust as a son.

To engage with Him in this way is to put my personal concerns into the context of the bigger picture of His kingdom and will. It is also to put my failures into the context of His mercy. Since He has dealt with my load of guilt and the barrier of sin that separated me from Him, I dare not hang onto the offences that separate me from my fellow man.

Just as I am dependent upon Him for every crumb that passes my lips as a little child, I too, I depend on Him for the “bread” of heaven that nourishes my soul. And, knowing how tainted I am with the self-centred greed that has infiltrated my soul from birth, I look to Him to save me from my self-destructive ways that would ensnare and destroy me without the grace of His Spirit who is constantly at work in me.

This simple pattern prayer teaches me the essence of the attitude and disposition of a son to the Father, submitting to Him and being involved in the things that are on His heart. This is not about putting God first. This is about putting Him in the centre of my thinking and living.