Yesterday I began a series on the Lord's Prayer from a message I preached at Gateway last weekend. You can listen to my message here.
We are to pray that God's name is “hallowed” in the world. This is to pray that people may recognize and acknowledge God's holiness give Him the reverence which He is due. This is not because God has some selfish desire to become famous on earth, but flows out of His desire to restore the brokenness of the world.
Consider this: where did the universe begin to unravel? In the garden when humanity decided to "hallow" something other than God and their relationship with Him. In that moment sin enters the world and we can no longer figure out our relationship with Him, with each other, with ourselves and with all created order.
We all “hallow” something in the world. We take something or someone (other than God) and elevate it to first place in our lives and as a result our lives spin out of control.
Jesus knows that when we cry out to our Father we return in some sense to the purity of Eden. That connection is restored, and we are beginning to undo all of the things that disorder the world. When we "hallow" God we are religning our hearts and when we rightly order our hearts, when we let lesser things go, we can then begin to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
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