Holy is Your Name

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

HOLY IS YOUR NAME

Matt 6:9-13

9 "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'

NIV

As we go through this example of prayer that Jesus gave us, we need to remember this is how we should pray when we are in secret place. We do recognize that this prayer is recited verbatim during corporate worship in many churches. It is not that we think that is wrong, but we do wonder why gf of that instruction about our secret place. However, or whenever we look at this example of prayer, we wonder why we simply recite it and think we have complied with what Jesus taught about how we should pray. What we should do is to take each of these examples and see how our prayer would look like. First things first, and that is to acknowledge the one we are praying to. We also want to acknowledge that He is our Father, the Father of mankind, but on a more personal level, our Father, because as we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, which means we are born again, or born from above, we have been given the right to be called children of God. Therefore, He is our Father. As in an earthy family, the father is the head of the family, the one who has authority because he has the responsibility and accountability to God for his family. This is the relationship with have with our Heavenly Father. He has all the authority in the family, and He has all the responsibility, and He is accountable to His own words, for He never lies, but always is truthful. So, we acknowledge He is our Father, and we give praise and honor to his very name. This bring us to consider what name are we hallowing, or declaring as sacred and holy, which is what the Greek word translated as hallowed means. The Jews would not pronoun His name because it is too holy.  Sometimes we have referred to His name as Jehovah, and adding adverbs, such as Jireh to indicate one of the facets or traits of God. We have also used Yahweh pronouncing His name in Hebrew. However, the point remains the same, His name is sacred and holy, and it is right to establish this in the beginning of our conversation or prayer with Him. This is not so much that we have the right to declare His name sacred and holy, but it is more for our benefit to know His name is holy and sacred, far above all names, especially ours. Acknowledging the sacredness and holiness of His name puts us in the right relationship with Him regarding any of our requests. So, we begin our quiet time alone with Him in our secret place knowing His name is hallowed, everything about Him is holy and sacred, especially His name.