The Lord's Prayer: Part 1

Biblical text

Geraldine takes us into the start of our journey through the Lord's Prayer...

“Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name.....”

Hallowed = Sanctified = set apart; dedicate; consecrate; separate; holy = describes a manifestation of life produced by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

There are two aspects of coming to God as Father: worship and aligning ourselves in unity with God.  These will be explored in turn.

1. Worship (Psalm 95: 1-7a; Malachi 1: 11; Romans 6: 13).

It is all about us worshipping God for who he is and that in that awesome place ‘He is My God’! To worship an awesome God and know Him as a Father, worshipping from a place of knowing what He has done for me and what He can do for me and what He wants to do for me.

It is worshipping from a place of Holiness, a Holiness he has given us: ‘Be Holy as I am Holy’ (1 Peter 1: 13-21; Leviticus 11: 44). We are to imitate God by living our lives according to the law of holiness.  This lifestyle not only enables us to communicate with the Awesome God, it frees us to call Him Father and worship Him with abandonment – the truest of worship.

This worship creates within us an environment for communicating with God, reveals the intimacy of meeting with Him, knowing Him as Father – His love, compassion, authority which in turn enables us to know our own authority and rights.  When Jesus asked God for anything He knew how much He could ask and how much God could give!

2. Aligning ourselves in unity with God.  

Our relationship with the Heavenly Father should display a family likeness of manifesting the fruits of the Spirit. “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5: 9). Peace is ours if we are being called to be peacemakers and if we live as peacemakers it can be seen as a sign that we have accepted our reconciliation with the Father, therefore we can truly experience Him as Father and be recognised as a Son of God. Being a Peacemaker means becoming the initiator in reconciling conflict between others and ourselves – we should actively seek to resolve conflicts.

We go into the ‘Family Business’, Jesus shows us how he brought the ‘Family Business’  to earth (Luke 2: 49; John 14: 27) and for us this is what it means to be a Peacemaker, the business of God’s Family on earth.  To reveal the truth of God through our own lives and to be prepared to work with God as He wills (Amos 3: 3; John 17: 1-26).

“Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done, On Earth as it is in Heaven......”

When we ask God for His Kingdom to come, His will to be done, we are aligning ourselves with Him to be the vessels for these things to become a reality.  To come from reminding ourselves of our relationship with God as our Father – to Worship Him from our place of Holiness – opens US to bringing Heaven down.

Jesus in Matthew 26: 42 shows us what it means to ‘do the Father’s will’. To be able to do the Father’s will is to have a life completely given over to the purpose of God’s Kingdom coming onto Earth.  We ask of Him and He will ask of us, He is completely focused on being seen on earth and will be ready to respond to our call, in turn there will be things He will ask of us as He has destined us to work with Him - Jesus was to go to the cross to enable God to be known to man, releasing salvation on earth. We will never be asked to do such a thing as dying on a cross, but, we are asked to work alongside God as Jesus does and God in His Grace allows us to be a part of the answered prayers.

1 Corinthians 2: 9-16 explains to us how we can know the will of God: “But we have the mind of Christ” (v.16). Learning to listen and hear God is clearly what we have to learn.  As with Jesus if we truly know we will be able to do all that is required of us as it comes not with an understanding of humanness but by the Spirit: “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (v.13). Praying is not all about words of what we think should happen, praying is seeing with the spiritual eye and listening with the spiritual ear that we pray in accordance with the will of God, He will enable us to pray this way as He teaches us and tells us what His mind is on situations and circumstances.  All prayer is important to Him but when it comes with the understanding of the Kingdom it again demonstrates the unity between God and His people and releases the power of Heaven onto the Earth, a releasing which is always ready and waiting: “The Lord has established His throne in Heaven, And His Kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103: 19).

When we ask God to come the Kingdom and His Will needs to come to us first, as we then pray for situations and circumstances we realise that ‘nothing is too hard for Him’, the testimony of what we ask for is already on earth, in our lives. God is always waiting for the Sons of God to take hold of the reality of His Kingdom because He knows when they do that, they will ask Him for more.  When He is allowed to establish His throne on their hearts and rule over their lives, they will ask for more.  When the full truth of what Jesus accomplished at Calvary is understood, they will ask for more.

Praying for situations, circumstances, life changing moments are keys to the vastness of heaven being unlocked but, the turning of the key is the knowing who God is and who we are:

“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the Sons of God” (Romans 8: 19).