[Great Verses] Prayer of the LordSample

Hallowed be your name

Hallowed be your name.

The point of this prayer is: Lord, may Your name be honored. May Your name be exalted. May Your name be glorified. Lord, may You get the honor due to Your holy name. The spirit behind this request is a blazing passion for the glory of God. Our concern in prayer is God’s name, not our name; God’s reputation, not ours. For self-centered humans like us, that’s easier said than done.

Do you notice how God-centered this prayer is? Think of the first four lines. Jesus is teaching us how to pray, and His model prayer exudes one striking trait: making your prayers God-centered, not self-centered. It’s not wrong to bring your needs to God. In fact, it’s a good thing. But put the focus on God’s glory, not your problems. If you begin to pray by honoring the glory of God, it lifts your gaze off yourself and onto God. The perspective on your problems becomes correctly sized. You are reminded that however big your problem is, God is bigger.

Are your prayers more God-centered or self-centered? Pray God-centered prayers.

The kingdom is how God rules in the lives of people. It is not a kingdom of territory or land, but a kingdom of human beings. Whenever someone trusts Christ as Savior and whenever people submit to Him, there is the kingdom of God. Christ’s kingdom is not a political kingdom, with armies, parliaments, and capital buildings. Rather, Christ’s kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom of the spirit. It is not a visible kingdom but an invisible one.

It is not a kingdom of force and coercion, but a kingdom of love and grace. It is a kingdom not of words but of power, the power of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom is an international community made up of people from every tribe, tongue, group, and nation. There are no barriers of race or gender or rank in this kingdom. This is a kingdom of joy, peace, power, and love. In this kingdom, the people don’t die for the king; He dies for them and then He rises again. And now the servants of the king spread throughout the earth to rescue people from the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom is wherever someone bows a knee to King Jesus. But the kingdom will come to its fullness when the king returns to earth. All of this we pray for when we pray, “Your kingdom come.” Come, Lord Jesus! Come and reign in all the earth. Come and reign in all my life.