How Do You Pray?

The first petition of Lord’s Prayer is “hallowed be your name” (Matt 6:9).  Priority one in prayer is pleading with our Heavenly Father to take action for the hallowing (i.e., honoring, exalting) of his name.  Jesus is saying:  when we pray, our driving passion should be to see God’s power and love and wisdom and purity and grace and splendor and comprehensive glory be magnified!

And so, if our prayers are all about my feelings, my wishes, my comforts; if we pray and imagine God basically as someone to fix my life to make it nicer, have we even grasped what prayer is?

For many of us, taking Jesus seriously calls for a paradigm shift so that our prayers are grounded in praise.  To help us along the way with this, here are some biblical examples of hallowing prayer:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory above the heavens (Ps 8:1).  Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!  Let your glory be over all the earth! (Ps 57:5).  Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! (Ps 67:5).  Bless the Lord, O my soul!  O Lord my God, you are very great!  You are clothed with splendor and majesty (Ps 104:1).  Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours.  Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all (1 Chron 29:11).  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… (Eph 1:3).  To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever (1 Tim 1:17).  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Peter 1:3).  Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come! (Rev 4:8).

Here’s the key question:  Is the passion that God would be praised what fuels and permeates your prayers?  Do you cry out to God that his radiance would shine and spread and reach broken homes and lost hearts and despairing souls?  How do you pray?