Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The Lord's Prayer Part I - Talking to the Father about the Father, Part 17 of 50
TEXT: "In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." (Matthew 6:9)
IDEA: We become holy as we make God’s name holy.
PURPOSE: To help listeners live in the reality that God turns our attention from ourselves to Him for a devout life.
Do you ever pray for your spiritual life?
Do you pray that God will make you a devout Christian?
I. Does it strike you as strange that in the prayer the Lord taught His disciples to pray, that there is no petition that asks God to make us more devout Christians?
What do you make of it that we are not told to pray, “Lord, make me holier than I am and make me what You want to be”?
This “Disciples’ Prayer” never mentions that as a request we should make.
Do you think it is wrong to pray such a request?
This seems particularly strange for beatitude people who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
II. The prayer is not “May I be holy,” but “Your name be hallowed.”
What do you think Jesus meant by that?
Do I begin with myself? My good intentions? Or will my honest efforts work the righteousness I may crave?
Do you think that Jesus despises people who honestly try to be “good Christians”?
Look at Mark 10:21: "Then Jesus looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go your way, sell whatever you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross and follow me.’ "
This is the only time the New Testament says of a person who turns away that Jesus “loved him.”
Do you think that people in that society would have thought of him as a “good person”?
What was going on inside him? He lacked one thing: what was it really?
If you desire to be holy, how could you go about it?
It doesn’t depend on our own exertions. It all depends on our willingness to honor God and let God be God in your life.
We cannot become a spiritual person by deciding to become one. We are asking God to be GOD to us, that in our prayers and in our lives He will rule.
