“Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”
The Lord’s Prayer is a simple model Jesus taught His disciples when they asked Him to teach them to pray. It begins with an upward focus to the God of heaven, His glory and His will leading to the human needs of each of us. Jesus’s main focus, also His priority in prayer, is the exaltation of God. The first petition He taught His disciples to pray is ‘Hallowed be thy name.’ It may be translated as ‘holy’ be thy name. God’s name is to be treated with reverence for it is holy. This should make us aware as we approach God in our failed human state that we are about to converse with a holy God. It is our place to begin our prayer by treating His name as holy, ‘hallowed be thy name.’ It was Jesus’s first petition in His prayers and should be ours as well.
The second and third petitions flow together with the first exalting God the Father. In all that we do, Christians are to do everything for the glory of God including our prayers. Our prayers should reflect the desire for glorifying God by honoring Him and praying for His kingdom to be established and His will be done in all things. This brings glory to God as we pray in agreement that God’s will and His kingdom will all come about according to His plans established before the foundations of the world.
We may ask, why then should we pray? If God’s plans for His kingdom and His will are already determined, then why pray? Note the following reason on why we should pray; Prayer is not only about asking for things from God, although that is certainly an important part of prayer, but more importantly it is a time of meeting with God, your creator. It is a time to sit with Him and seek to know Him better. We need again to remember ‘who God is’ and ‘who we are’ and that the God of the universe wants to have a relationship with us. He has reached out to make that happen, for we would not do that on our own. Therefore He deserves our praise and reverence exalting His name as we sit in prayer with Him. Modern day theologian R. C. Sproul notes when asked ‘Does our prayer change God’s mind? No, prayer changes us’ and that is the basis of prayer, to know God and to be changed by Him.
The Messianic Kingdom will indeed become a reality one day in the future. The Lord Jesus will rule from Jerusalem over the entire earth for 1,000 years. But currently this world is under the rule of Satan and his demons. Paul writing in Ephesians says the following, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”(Eph. 6:12 NLT) Therefore as Christians we desire to see the Kingdom of God in its fullness come quickly. Until then we pray ‘hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,’ and for God’s will for us to be completely known that we obey His will ‘in earth as it is in heaven.’
Word for the Soul 