"Hallowed Be Thy Name" : a theme for our prayer and fasting

I love the image of prayer being like a vine growing on a trellis. By itself, a vine will take a default path of growth, but if it is threaded through a trellis it spreads more evenly, prevents too much density, and ultimately results in greater health for the vine. A good vine dresser trains a vine to grow along the trellis for the sake of greater fruitfulness. 

Each of us have default paths in our vine of prayer, and also deficits of direction, which we tend to avoid.  The prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray, commonly known as The Lord's Prayer, is to our prayer life what a trellis is to a vine. While its familiarity to us can cause it to lose meaning, 

I've found that it is a powerful trellis for the vine of my own prayer life, helping me to grow in areas where I have a prayer deficit. My default is to pray, 'Give us this day our daily bread, or  'Forgive us our sins,' kinds of prayer, but the trellis of the Lord's Prayer trains me to begin praying relationally rather than functionally as I'm reminded that He is my Father and I am His adopted son. It also reminds me that He is in heaven which is my true home, giving me more of an eternal perspective as I pray. It rescues me from the tyranny of the urgent.

And then there is that strange old phrase, Hallowed be Thy Name. It reminds me of some historic Ivy League University or something, walking down those hallowed halls. But very simply, the term hallowed means to be made holy. This is a strange concept, because we know that God cannot be made holy. He is holy. But to pray that God's name be hallowed is really to pray that God's name is revered and treasured and adored as it ought to be. This is an area of prayer that is absolutely vital, and yet often overlooked. This is what we will focus upon as we fast tomorrow and gather to pray at 133 at 6:30pm.

To pray, "Hallowed be Thy Name" is at its most basic, worshipful trust in our Father. It is to acknowledge that He is the Father of heavenly lights in Whom there is no shadow of turning, who does not tempt His children but gives good and perfect gifts to them. We cannot pray, "Thy will be done,"or "Give us this day our daily bread," unless we trust that He is holy. Let's spend time worshipping Him, trusting in His heart before his hands.

To pray, "Hallowed be thy Name is also about mission. It is to ask that God's name be treasured where it is not treasured. It is to pray that the gospel would awaken people to the glory of God so that they would worship Him. Let's be praying for The Alpha Course in that regard, as we kick it off this Sunday at all three campuses. Pray that many would come and explore faith and that people would come to hallow God's name as they put their faith in Jesus. Pray too for the team going to plant a church in Chiang Rai, Thailand, that God's name would be hallowed in a nation where there are very few believers. Let's pray into our work to eradicate human trafficking and our work with orphans in Mexico, that people who have been abused and abandoned by fathers would be introduced to and restored by our Perfect Father in heaven. Let's pray for our students in educational institutions, where God's name is not hallowed. Let's pray that God would empower them to stand boldly for His Name.  

To pray, Hallowed be Thy name is also to pray that our own lives would not obscure His holiness. It is to pray that God would sanctify us so that we represent his holiness well. Let's pray for our work lives particularly, as we've launched the God at Work series, that God would empower us by His Holy Spirit to live lives of courage, integrity, creativity and excellence in the work place, so that that His Name would be hallowed. Let's spend time repenting where our lives have not represented his holiness well.  Let's trust God for a revival of prayer  in our work places that brings many to treasure the name of Jesus. 

Tomorrow, let's allow the trellis of the Lord's Prayer to train us to pray in new ways. 

And let's gather with hearts full of reverence and expectation for His Name to be hallowed anew. 

Gossiping the Gospel

Marvin Gaye's 1968 Motown classic, "I heard it through the Grapevine,"tells a story about a man who finds out from someone else that his woman is cheating on him. That's how hearing it through the grapevine works. We hear something about someone through gossip. Bad news travels fast, and in no time a rumor bears the fruit of fractured relationships. 

I've been thinking though, that the gospel often bears fruit a lot like gossip. The gospel is news too. Good news. The best news. We were fighting a losing battle against sin. Jesus won the battle that we could not win, bearing our sin, absorbing our death and conquering our enemy. And he sent us to be heralds of this good news with the promise that his gospel will bear the fruit of restored relationship with God. Of course, some people are gifted enough to stand on street corners and soap boxes and stadium platforms and herald the gospel loudly. But most of the time the gospel travels less spectacularly, along the grapevine of relationship. We gossip the gospel, from person to person. In our age of skepticism, the gospel is mostly heard and believed by people who trust us enough to listen, because they've seen it at work in our lives in tangible ways.  We hear it through the grapevine.

I love that verse in Paul's second letter to Timothy, in which he commends the way in which the gospel has come to his young prodigy. This is Paul the Apostle, dramatically converted with a blinding vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul who boldly preached wherever he went. And yet he commends the understated way in which the gospel came to bear fruit in Timothy's life. "I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well." 2 Timothy 1:5 The gospel was passed down through the generations in a seemingly undramatic manner, and yet it dwells sincerely in Timothy. This is a picture of the grapevine of the gospel. Of course we trust God for Damascus Road conversions, but those are God's prerogative. Our prerogative is to gossip the gospel and ask Him to cause it to bear fruit as it travels along the grapevine of relationship. 

This Sunday I was freshly reminded of how the gospel travels from person to person down the grapevine of relationship in Cindy, who baptized her two children, aged 9 and 11. Cindy was a top flight soccer player, who had shattered her knee playing soccer and had since become a soccer mom. She was invited to our church a couple of years ago by a fellow soccer mom as they stood along the side lines, watching their kids play soccer. Cindy arrived at church as an atheist with a boat load of questions and a fair amount of apprehension about Christians. She attended our *Alpha course twice, and found people very open to dialogue with her about her questions. To her surprise, she also discovered that even Christians still had questions about faith. Imagine that. One day at church someone asked her if they could pray for her damaged knee. She said yes, and experienced significant healing. (We played soccer last week with Cindy, and she is now very mobile, whereas before she could not play at all.) Cindy continues to be a voracious questioner, but over time the cumulative effect of being invited, befriended, listened to, answered, prayed for and taught, caused the gospel to bear fruit in her life. She was baptized as a Christ follower about a year ago. 

She is now a questioner with faith, rather than a questioner of faith. Not surprisingly, her children did not automatically adopt her faith. But she has patiently prayed, and answered their questions, gossiping the gospel to them like it was gossiped to her. Obviously they have seen significant change in her life, which has helped them to believe that the gospel really is real. This year both of her children put their faith in Christ and asked Cindy to baptize them. Cindy's children's father attended their baptism and remarked afterwards that he felt overwhelmed by how loving the community was. Cindy's own father was also at his grandchildrens' baptism. He has a similar approach to faith as his daughters' prior skepticism, but after coming to church, he has agreed to attend the Alpha course. 

This is just one example of how the gospel undramatically yet unmistakably travels down the grapevine of relationship,  bearing  fruit in God's time. 

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. 

Jesus saves people. But we connect people. 

What we are called to do is to abide in Him and gossip His gospel. 

*Alpha is an 8 week introductory course to Christian faith. The next Alpha course at Southlands starts on April 17th. 

"Who do you think you are?" When our identity informs our prayer.

It may well be that one of the reasons we struggle to pray is that we misunderstand who we really are in Christ. As a church, we've been journeying through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus, exploring the new identities we've been given in Christ. I'm convinced that if we really prayed from these identities, our prayer lives would be drastically transformed. On the one hand our prayers would be full of wonder and reverence because we would be aware that our elevated status is wholly underserved, yet freely given by God's grace. On the other hand, our prayer would be full of confidence because we would be conscious that our relationship to God was based on Christ's faithfulness not on our own. The love that the Father has for His Son is now set upon us because we are in Christ. If we really understood this we would pray with such bold confidence that people might ask, "Who do you think you are?!"

We are accepted in God's beloved Son! Our confident access to God is because God has said of Jesus, "This is my Beloved Son. With Him I am well pleased." Our lives are hidden within the Beloved Son!  This is the primary identity from which we pray. We are adopted as beloved sons and daughters of the Father. This is why, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to say, " Our Father, who lives in heaven, Holy is your name." His Father has become our Father through our adoption as children. This means that we are no less his children when we sin and no more his children when we are righteous. Adoption is an identity given, not earned. In many ways, beginning prayer like this is counter-intuitive. Andrew Wilson recently wrote of being on a flight that went through a vicious storm.  Everybody on the flight thought the plane was going to crash and many were calling out to God, shouting, "Help me!" Some were even confessing their sins exclaiming, 'Forgive me!" The plane didn't crash, but Wilson noted how strange it was that the Lord's prayer doesn't start with 'Help me' or 'Forgive me!' He noted that it began with worship from children to their Father, which seems backwards in terms of the urgency of our needs. He concluded though,  that  what we really need first and foremost, is to know that we are loved and forever accepted by our Father in heaven. Praying from our identity as adopted children will mean we will not just network God with our prayer list. We will engage our Father with grateful worship. This is what we really need. 

There is another Christian identity that powerfully informs our prayer. It is our identity as Ambassadors. Paul's closing request was for the saints in Ephesus to pray for him, "That words may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for I am an ambassador in chains."(6:19) He saw himself as a delegated representative of heaven with an official message from His King. This is what we are too. It requires boldness which requires prayer. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, 'Hallowed be your Name,' it was not just worship, it was an ambassadorial request that God's name would be hallowed in places and by people where it had previously been rejected. Worship quickly turns to witness when we understand our identity as ambassadors. Today as we fast and pray at 133, we are going to pray for a season of ambassadorial boldness in our lead up to Easter and our Alpha course: lets pray for bold invitations, bold proclamation of the gospel  and bold decisions for Christ in baptism! 

Finally, we pray from our identity as soldiers in a spiritual battle, "for our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against...the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.Therefore pray in the Spirit on all occasions" ( 6:10,18) Prayer as spiritual warfare is a much maligned, much misunderstood and much underestimated reality. Even if we don't fully understand it, we sense the spiritual darkness, don't we? At times it's palpable, this conflict between  powers, wills and kingdoms. Which is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done." Jesus has overcome satan, who stands condemned. But satan is making the most of the limited time and power he has through deception, oppression, intimidation and accusation. Let's pray that his power would be broken in ours and others' lives today and that Christ's kingdom would come. 

So who do you think you are? God thinks you are his adopted child, his delegated ambassador and his trusted soldier. Today and tonight, let's pray like we believe it.