"Our Father in Heaven,
hallowed be your name," Matthew 6:9b
The most important thing about Christian prayer is to whom we pray. Obviously what we pray is important or Jesus would not have taught His disciples how to pray and that prayer wouldn't have been recorded for us. But to whom we pray is of upmost importance.
Remember the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal? In 1 King 18:16-39 Elijah had a competition with the prophets of Baal. They both put a bull on the altar and prayed for fire to come from Heaven and consume their bull. The prophets of Baal went first and they yelled and prayed and danced from morning to noon. Nothing happened and Elijah taunted them by saying maybe Baal was busy or sleeping or something else. So the prophets shouted louder and cut themselves with spears and swords until the afternoon and even into the evening. Nothing happened. Then Elijah's turn was up and he made the competition harder on himself by dumping water on his bull.
Then Elijah prayed one short prayer and fire from God fell from the sky and burned up the bull, the wood, the stones, the soil and evaporated the water that was drenched on all of it.
See, long prayers and fastings and dancing and even hurting oneself did nothing for the prophets of Baal. The most powerful part of prayer is the one to whom we pray.
So, who does Jesus say that we pray to?
"Our Father in Heaven,
hallowed be your name,"
Jesus says that the God of Heaven, the one true God is to whom we pray. The most excellent part of any prayer is the destination of the prayer, the one on the other side of the line not the words said or the length of the prayer.
Also, Jesus teaches us that God, the One we pray to, is both hallowed and Father.
God is hallowed. He is holy, holy, holy. God is so other from us and all that exists in the universe. There is an immense gap between all that we add up to and the infinitude of all that is good that is our great God. Proverbs 1:7 says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge." We must always begin with the fear of the Lord. The prayer that Jesus taught us forces us to reckon with and remember the holiness of God. When we pray we must have a magnified view of God.
God is Father. This hallowed being is our Father. God is not simply great, and He is beyond great; He is someone with whom we can have a Father-son or Father-daughter relationship. We can approach God in prayer like we would approach the best of earthly dads. We can come to God the way that my son comes to me with arms up begging to be held. We can come to God without fear of harm knowing that He, as a good Father, wants what is best for us.
Our Holy Awesome Father is both capable to do what we need and willing to do what we need. Good fathers don't always give what we ask for but good fathers have their child's best interest at heart.
It is easy to get lost on either side of this coin. We can be so struck by the holiness of God that we disbelieve a personal, intimate relationship with Him is possible or we can be so focused on the accessibility we have to our Father that we forget the magnitude of His holiness. We must do neither and that, at least in part, is why Jesus teaches us to pray like this.
"Our Father in Heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one" today.
No comments:
Post a Comment