Teach Us to Pray | Hallowed be Your Name | Matthew 6:9 | Coleton Segars

The teaching text for today is Matthew 6, just verse 9.

This is the Lord's prayer, or at least a part of it.

Jesus said, This then is how you should pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

This is the word of the Lord.

Ten years ago, I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but ten years ago, when I when I really wanted to get better at prayer and wanted to do that more, um, one of the things that I found really helpful was reading other people's experience in prayer.

And so people from history, uh, pastors or uh revivalists or evangelists or just other people who would just talk about prayer and talk about their experience in prayer.

And um I began collecting quotes, and now I have this document on Google Docs.

It's like prayer quotes, and I it's like pages and pages and pages of different quotes that encourage me to pray when I feel like prayer does nothing or my prayers are doing nothing.

But one of the quotes that meant a lot to me back 10 years ago was uh from this Scottish preacher named Samuel Chadwick, and uh this is what he says.

He says, Satan dreads nothing but prayer.

His one concern is to keep the saints from praying.

He fears nothing from our prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion.

He laughs at our toil, he mocks our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.

And I love that.

To me, when I read that, like it made me want to pray.

And I was like, he trembles when we pray.

He is not afraid of my strength and what I can do in my own strength, but he trembles when we pray.

And it just stirred something in me to be like, that makes so much sense why prayer is so difficult and why everything kind of mitigates against it and like kind of gets in the way as an obstacle to prayer.

Every time I turn my attention to prayer, I'm distracted, or my mind wanders, or the phone rings, or my phone buzzes, or something.

Like it makes sense.

Like if this is the thing that he trembles at, it makes sense that this is the hardest thing for us to press into.

And to me, when someone tries to get in my way and slow me down, I'm a fight person, not a flight person.

And so I was like, I want to pray more, I want to double down on this.

And so that's why we're doing this series.

The whole point in trying to learn to pray is because he does not tremble at our strength.

He trembles at his strength.

He does not tremble at your plans, he trembles at his plans.

And so when we turn our gaze and fix our attention on him and go from, I'm gonna do this on my own to I want to do this the way that you want, I'm gonna operate in my strength versus like I'm gonna operate under your strength and give this to you and what you can do.

He trembles when we do that.

And so I want us truly to be a people at our church.

I want us to be people who really know how to pray, who love how to do this.

And so that's why we're doing this series.

Last week we looked at the first line in this, our father in heaven.

We talked about the fact that uh Jesus is telling us to remember who you're talking to.

Our father, just remember that you're talking to someone that desires, just loves to hear your voice.

And so don't worry about what you're saying.

Just say words to him.

He loves to hear your voice.

And then how he's gonna treat you based on you being his child and him being your father and what he wants to do in those things.

And so the second thing that Jesus tells us to do is to hallow the name, hallowed be the name of the Lord.

And so, what he's actually doing here, what Jesus is actually doing, is he's calling us to hallow his name by by worshiping him.

To hallow his name is to worship.

And so he's asking us and commanding us, when you enter in, say, our Father in heaven, and then you are worshiping the name of the Lord.

This is a part of your prayer life.

Trimper Longman in his commentary said, hallowed be your name, means let your name be regarded as holy.

It is not so much a petition as an act of worship.

The speaker, by his words, exalts the holiness of God.

And then Tyler Staten in his book says, hallowing is an active kind of praying, honoring, adoring, and naming the greatness of God.

While our Father is a reminder of God's intimacy with us, hallowed is a reminder of his incomprehensible greatness.

His incomprehensible greatness.

And so Jesus is trying to press us into a space where we're being reminded of his incomprehensible greatness, how how wonderful he is, how great he is, how strong he is, how powerful he is, how in control he is, and how out of control we are.

Like he is calling us.

Be reminded of his incomprehensible, incomparable greatness.

Be reminded of that.

Let that be a part of your prayer life.

And so in the scriptures, when you see this happening, and we read a couple of scriptures today where you maybe you've heard it, but maybe didn't notice it, but they're always doing this in the Psalms.

The Psalms are just prayers set to music, basically.

And so they're always hallowing the name of the Lord.

And they they many of them begin this way and then move into their prayer life.

And so if you look at Psalm 44, just real fast, this next slide here, all of the yellow, go to the next slide.

There we go.

All of the yellow is the hallowing that's happening in this just a handful of verses.

And so Psalmist says, With your hand you drove out the nations and planted their ancestors, just telling God something about Himself.

You crushed the peoples, you made our ancestors flourish.

It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory.

It was your right hand, it was your arm, it was the light of your face, for you loved them.

You are my king, you are my God, who decrees victories for Jacob.

Through you we push back our enemies, through your name we trample our foes.

I put no trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me the victory, but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame.

And so all of this is a prayer, and not one time did he ask for anything.

There's no asking taking place here.

It's just exalting and worshiping and saying things about God.

He's saying what God has done, he's saying what God has promised to do, he's talking about who he has been in the past so that it will eventually inform where he's currently sitting in his present.

He is just exalting and worshiping and hallowing the name of the Lord.

And what's interesting about it is that if you look at it, and well, we're gonna look at this a lot, but in basically this entire thing, and in all of them, hallowing really looks like just telling God stuff about himself that he already knows.

Like, hey, I don't know if you heard, but you're really holy.

Hey, you're worthy.

And he's like, Yeah, I know that.

I know those things.

You're God, and he's like, mm-hmm, heard, I heard of that before.

Like, it's just telling him stuff consistently that God already knows about himself.

And Jesus is telling us, even though that's what it is, he's like, you need to do that.

You need to tell him stuff about himself that he already knows.

And it's not because that Jesus thinks that like he needs to be reminded, he's pretty insecure up there, not really, he's struggling a bit.

You're not doing this to remind him of anything.

You're not doing this to make him feel better about himself.

You're not doing this for God, telling him stuff that he's forgotten because he hasn't forgotten.

Jesus is telling us to do this because like you need this.

He doesn't need to be reminded who he is, but you need to add this to your prayer life so that you are reminded of who he is, so that you actually remember how powerful he is, so that you remember that he sits enthroned over the earth while the world is in chaos around us.

He is still sitting on a throne.

You need to be reminded of those things.

And so he tells us to do this, not because God needs it, but because we need it.

We desperately need to be reminded of who he is, and hallowing his name places us in a position where we remember who he actually is.

And so, what I want to do today is I want to give you two things that hallowing the name of God does for us and does in us, and then I want to teach you how to do it practically.

Um, just some things that work for me, hopefully they'll work for you as well.

But two things that hallowing his name does for us.

The first, hallowing God's name stirs our wonder for what's possible with him.

It is supposed to work in us, this imaginative thing that breaks open into our hearts and expands our vision for what's actually possible with God.

Corey Tinboom says this about prayer.

I love this quote.

That the wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and in prayer, you enter into God's realm where everything is possible.

He specializes in the impossible.

He specializes in the I love that idea of like I'm in, I live inside a world where there are parameters around the things that are possible, but in prayer, I break past all of those obstacles and all of those barriers and all of those boundaries of possibility, and I move beyond that into a space where it's like you can do anything.

Like it's incredible what you can do.

You you you literally can do whatever you want.

You have all the power.

And the issue that I have with this quote, and just in my experience with people who pray, is like, I love this quote and I believe that this is true.

But consistently, when I hear people pray, I don't judge their prayers, but it's just true inside their prayers that what they're asking for, what they believe is possible, they say it, and what they're asking for reveals that they are just asking for things that are uh pretty safe.

Lord, give me a good day is a very safe prayer.

It's a fine prayer, and a good day is a is a good thing.

But asking for a good day is a very safe prayer, and again, you could probably nail down a good day for yourself.

People pray for uh help me to stay safe on this drive, which again is a good prayer, and especially here in Memphis, it's a super good prayer.

Uh but like that's a that's a very safe prayer.

Help me be safe on this drive.

Help that, and I realize like it's a good it's a good prayer, but it's a very safe prayer.

We pray things like Lord, bless their family.

It's pretty vague, not totally sure what they need, and that's fine.

But it's like just I don't know, just bless them, like just give them something.

Um and again, none of those things are bad.

But when you're talking to someone where everything is possible, and you can ask for whatever you want, because there's nothing off limits, you just think that we'd ask for some wild stuff.

Like we just I could just ask for whatever I want.

Did you ever see that um uh Guardians of the Galaxy thing where Chris Pratt realizes like he's like his dad's a a god or something like that?

And he's like, I can make whatever I want just by my imagination, and and his dad's like, whatever you want.

He goes, You guys about to see some weird stuff.

Like he's like in his mind, he's like, I can do whatever I want, you're about to see some weird things.

And I think in that's a maybe a crude example of coming back to prayer, but I do think that there's something here that, like, we can ask for whatever we want because anything is possible.

Well, then we should be asking for some wild things that happen.

And many times, people's prayers, we just struggle to actually pray for things bigger than what we can probably see and accomplish in our own right.

And hallowing his name is supposed to be this thing that expands our vision out into the world of going, what is possible for him?

And then looking at all those things and going, therefore, based on what's possible with you, I'm going to ask based on possibility with you, not based on possibility with me.

I'm gonna based on, I'm gonna base my prayers on your strength and your power, not my strength and my power.

That's what Jesus is calling us into.

And you see these examples in the scriptures all the time of people doing this.

And I want to give you a couple of them just to show you how this works and how people pray.

So King Hezekiah back in the Old Testament in 2 Kings, um, there's this time where he's ruling Judah, and um the nations, nations plural, of Assyria are like coming in, and it's like a horde of an army that's like as numerous as the sand on the seashore.

There's like 400, 500,000, 600,000 people of enemies headed their way.

And um, they've already crushed a ton of other nations and killed a bunch of other people and all this stuff, and now they've the next in line is Hezekiah's kingdom, and here they are, and then Hezekiah sees this and then prays, and this is what he says, and again, all the yellow is just hallowing his name.

So this is what he prays, Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim.

You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth, as if God didn't know that.

He's like, I know that, but he's he's hallowing his name.

You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.

You've made the heavens and the earth, just in case you forgot.

You did that.

Give ear, Lord, and hear.

Listen to the words of Senatorib that he has sent to ridicule the living God.

It is true, here's another thing that you know, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste to these nations and their lands.

They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, but they were not gods, but only wood and stone fashioned by human hands.

And here is the request based on all of that.

Now, based on the fact that you alone are God over the kingdoms of the earth, based on the fact that you're the God that made the heavens and the earth, based on the fact that you're actually God and not an idol, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are God, that there's no one like you.

And so it leads him, most of his prayer is just hallowing his name, saying who God is, that the kings of Assyria aren't stronger than God, that everything that's happened up to that point isn't because they've actually defeated you, but they've just defeated idols and stuff like that.

Like just reminding of what's true.

And then, based on being reminded of what's true, he's just pressing in and asking, so do this impossible thing.

No one has been able to stand up to this army.

No one has.

But they have not come against you yet.

And so, because they haven't come against you yet, I need you to show them that you are different than every other God in every other nation, that you are somebody completely different.

And so it's this point for him where he's going, let me just tell you and be reminded of what's true, and then ask for something impossible that seems impossible based on what's true.

You see this in the New Testament too, um, in Acts 4.

If you remember the story, Peter and John they heal a man uh who was lame, and then they basically are preaching in the name of Jesus, they heal in the name of Jesus.

And uh people get really mad about it, and they put them into jail and that kind of stuff, and then they tell them, like, do not preach in the name of Jesus anymore, do not do this anymore.

And then they release them and uh with threats of like if you preach in the name, it's gonna be really bad for you and all this stuff.

And so Peter and John go back to the disciples, and they're talking to them about all this stuff, and then they lift up their voices and pray, and this is what they pray.

Sovereign Lord, they said, You made the heavens and the earth and the sea, one better than Hezekiah.

You made the sea too, and everything in them.

You spoke.

Here's something you said by your Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David.

And this is a quote from uh Psalm 2 Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.

Indeed, that happened.

Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.

But they did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

And so it's he's what they're what they're praying and what they're saying is like none of this was outside of your control.

They they killed your son Jesus, if you, Lord, if you forgot.

They're just telling them, like telling him something he already knows.

But it's like, but that was a part of your power and your plan.

That's that's your will.

There's something you decided years and years ago.

You took their evil and you bent it to be something that works out for good and actually accomplished your plan, didn't crush your plan.

That's what they're saying.

Look how powerful you are, God.

Now, based on that, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

And so they basically take time to say, God, you are in control.

None of this has happened outside of your will.

None of this is us being persecuted for the name of Jesus, isn't something that was like you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't think this was gonna happen.

Like, no, you have planned all of these things.

You still rule and you rule in the heavens and the earth.

You did all those things.

You use their evil to accomplish your good plan.

And when they hallow his name like that, it gives them courage not to pray for peace.

And their prayer isn't, God, they're uh they're persecuting us and putting us jail into jail.

Would you please do something?

Would you please stop them?

Would you give us favor with them?

Would you would you crush our enemies?

Like what like they don't they don't pray for any of those things because they realize this is actually a part of it.

God, you have planned these things.

It happened to your son Jesus, and he said that in this world we're also gonna have trouble, and so we're experiencing that.

And so we're not asking for it to stop, but what we are asking for is like, let us keep doing this with more boldness.

Let us, and then stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders, do miraculous things.

Show them through power that you are actually working through us.

And really what they're asking for is uh they're in trouble right now because Jesus healed somebody uh through Peter and John.

So they're basically saying, like, keep doing it.

If we get in trouble, so be it.

If they don't like it, so be it.

If they jail us, so be it.

If they beat us, so be it.

Keep healing, keep displaying your power on the earth because you are in control and we trust you completely.

And so they're praying for something that's powerful and bigger than what we would naturally pray for.

If I was being jailed for my faith, most people in my life would be praying for my release and be praying for people to let me go and that kind of thing.

And they're going, put us back in there.

Their prayers like, I just want to be in there some more.

Give us more boldness so that we're not afraid of this thing.

They're just praying for something that's grander, something that's bigger.

Even Jesus does this in the garden.

And if you look at Jesus' prayer in the garden, it's basically the Lord's Prayer.

He says, Father, everything is possible for you.

That's the hallowing.

Father, every I'm gonna hallow your name.

Hallow is your name, holy is your name.

Everything is possible for you.

Therefore, I'm gonna pray for something impossible.

You can do anything, and so take this cup from me, but I want your will, not my will.

And so, in this thing, even Jesus is going, I'm in hallowing his name, he's praying for something that's impossible.

They decided before the creation of the world that the cross was gonna be a part of Jesus' experience.

But because Jesus has elevated the name and reminded himself and God of everything, like this is you can do anything.

Anything is possible for you.

And so I'm gonna ask for something impossible, even though I know that the cross is gonna be a part of this.

It led him to ask for something that is just bigger and a huge shift and a huge change.

But it's because his vision is opened up to what God can actually do, and he's praying for something great and big, and it's just this huge thing that he's elevated his his heart and expanded the vision of that thing, and he's showing us how to pray even now, knowing that he's gonna go to the cross.

And so hallowing God's name, doing this thing that expands our vision of what's possible, reminding us of his power and his greatness and his strength.

Jesus wants that to be something that we take into our prayer life so that it informs how we pray.

So that we don't just ask for things that we can do in our own strength, stuff that we can probably take care of with ourselves, but so that we begin aiming at something just greater than ourselves and greater than what we can think or imagine.

And so what this can look like, there's a couple of them.

I don't have them on the screen because I didn't want you guys looking at the screen the entire time, but that may have been a mistake.

But I'm gonna read these things to you.

But what a prayer like this could look like is father, I'm in an impossible situation.

Just impossible.

I see no way, no way through.

But you're the God who split the Red Sea.

Like you're the God who made a way where there wasn't a way.

That's who you are.

And so I need you to do that in my marriage.

I need you to do that in my family, I need you to do that with my kid.

I need you to do that with my job, my money.

I need you to do that with my addiction.

I I don't see a way forward, and neither did Moses and Israel.

And then all of a sudden you snap that C in half and they walk through on dry ground.

I don't know how you did it, but I'm talking to that God.

I need you to do that same thing for me.

Father, I've been praying for the same thing with no response for you for years.

I've been asking and persisting in prayer, and nothing, you're doing nothing that I'm asking for.

And I'm persistent.

But you're the same God who listened to Hannah in 1 Samuel.

You just you just listened to her pray over and over and over for a kid, over and over and over.

Please give me a son, please give me a son, please give me a son.

And nothing happened in her life for so long, but she kept praying, and eventually you heard her persistence and you moved in her story and you changed her life.

I'm not gonna give up.

I'm gonna continue to persist in prayer.

I want you, the God of Hannah, I want you to be the God of me in this as well, the God who answers persistence, who just consistently hears me and hears my prayers.

I need you to respond to me the way that you did for her.

I know that you hear me.

And I've seen you move in in scripture in history where people continue to pray to you and finally they break through.

I am not gonna stop until I get that breakthrough.

Father, I'm dealing with some evil people in my life.

And they're trying to cause me pain.

They're trying to harm me, and they have the power to do so.

But you are the God who used what the enemy meant for evil and you purposed it for good.

Like you're the one whose evil people's evil plans can't harm or hinder your plan.

They help accomplish your plan.

Like that's who you are.

Somehow you can take what the enemy meant for evil and you can use it for good in my life.

I need you to do that in my life.

I don't know how you do that, and I don't see how you're gonna do that here, but that is who you are.

I'm hallowing the name of the Lord and saying, You're the God who purposes evil for good in my life.

Do that for me.

Father, there are people in my life who hate you, and I want them to love you.

There are people in my life that it just seems impossible.

They're never gonna become Christians.

But you're the same God who turned Paul, who was a hater of Christians, and now he's a maker of Christians.

He he was killing them, and now he's trying.

Trying to make more Christians, like you changed his heart in such a substantial way.

I need you to do that in this person's life.

I need you to do that in my husband's life, in my mom's life, in my wife's life, my friend's life.

I need you to do that in my kids' life.

Like somehow you can shape people and change people's hearts to where they hated you before and now they love you.

Would you please do that?

It is looking at what he's done in the past and reminding ourselves of his strength because the stuff that we look at just looks impossible.

And we don't know how to move forward.

But then we have these stories of spaces where people move forward in the midst of impossible situations.

I'm going, man, I want that.

I just want to see some of that stuff, and I need that, and I need to be reminded that that's what he can do.

Hallowing his name should lead us to pray for things beyond what we think are possible.

I've read this quote before, and honestly, I didn't get a lot of feedback on it, and I really love it, so I'm gonna keep saying it until you guys like it.

But it says this it says, the story is told that Alexander the Great had a general who approached him after many years of service to ask that he would pay for the wedding of his daughter.

Alexander agreed and told him to obtain the funds needed from the treasurer.

Soon thereafter, the treasurer came to Alexander complaining that this general was taking advantage of Alexander's generosity.

He was asking for an exorbitant amount of money, enough to host the largest wedding that Greece had ever seen.

Alexander thought about the situation for a moment and then waved his hand dismissively and said, Grant him his full request.

And the treasurer looked bewildered.

Alexander continued, My general pays me two compliments.

One, he believes I'm rich enough to afford his request, and then two, that I am generous enough to grant it.

And honestly, in assuming these two things, he honors me.

And he says, This is how we should pray.

Our God is so good, so gracious, so powerful, that we can never ask or assume too much from him.

We don't offend him with large requests, we offend him with the small ones.

Now look, I think you can pray for big, small, whatever you want.

I think I JD Greer, appreciate the quote, we offend him with the small ones.

I don't know how true that is.

I think he just loves hearing our voices.

But he's on to something.

Because I really think that there's this space where it's like, if we we get bored praying, because primarily we spend our times doing something that and asking for things primarily, not everybody, primarily just asking for things that we could just do if we just stopped praying.

If I just stopped praying, I could probably go do some of the stuff I'm actually asking you to do.

And we need to shift beyond that.

And we need to shift into a space where our requests are actually like, honestly, if you don't show up, I don't know what's gonna happen.

If you don't step in, I don't see how this is gonna go because I I have nothing else to do here.

You have to break in.

Hallowing the name.

It's meant to remind us of what's possible.

So then that we ask things from God that are worthy of his power and worthy of his strength.

And so to help us actually expand what our vision of what we think is possible and then begin asking for things to go.

I can't believe I'm asking for this, but honestly, you made the heavens and the earth.

You can do anything, and so I'm asking for the anything.

So that's the first.

The second.

Jesus tells us to hallow his name because hallowing his name will encourage us.

It will encourage us tremendously, it will lead us to rest, hope, peace, joy, and probably a bunch of other things.

I just ran out of room.

But hallowing his name is meant to be this thing that as we're doing it, we're being encouraged in the process.

And so again, you see this in the text, you see this in the scriptures.

Look at how the psalmist in Psalm 46 says this.

In verse 1, he says, God is our refuge in strength, and ever-present help in trouble.

So he's just hallowing the name.

But then the outcome of hallowing the name is, therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

And so what you see is like taking the time to remember what's true about him, just worshiping him.

God, you are our refuge and our strength and ever-present help in time of trouble.

Therefore, I do not have to be afraid in the midst of the chaos.

Walking through something that just like I cannot, the mountains are falling into the heart of the sea, the world is crumbling in on itself.

But because you're my refuge, because you're my strength, because you're my ever-present help in time of trouble, I can live in the rest and the confidence that you're gonna protect me, that you're gonna care for me.

I do not have to fear.

David does this in Psalm 23, it's one of the most famous Psalms out there.

So we go to the next slide.

He hallows the name, the Lord is my shepherd, and then you have the outcome of that.

Therefore, I have everything I need.

He's gonna lead me, he's gonna provide for me.

Then he hallows the name, you're with me, and your shepherd's rod and staff, they protect me.

The outcome of that is therefore, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you're with me.

He he bends the hallow on the other side of that.

But he's hallowing and then going, Therefore, I'm I'm telling you who you are, I'm reminding myself of who you are, therefore, this is how I can live, and this is what my experience can actually be.

Many of the Psalms that we read today, we're saying that Psalm 139 and uh the Psalm about where does my help come from?

I lift my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord.

So the Lord knows that already, but he's saying something to his own heart and to his own life so that he can actually be in a space where he feels confident.

My help is not given to me by the hills, my help is not given to me by princes or kings or whatever.

My help is from the Lord who is beyond the hills and beyond the nations and beyond the world and beyond the universe.

Like he is the one who sees me and wants to help me, and that brings peace and encouragement in the midst of it.

Rayney and I we do this a lot.

Um, we have a regular practice, just when life is hard, of um hallowing uh the name of the Lord.

We don't actually call it that, but that is what we do.

We really just call it remembering his faithfulness in our in our past.

But one of the most significant times that we uh did that that I remember was my first job uh as a full-time, yeah, my first full-time job at this church in Chicago, and I was so excited.

And Randy and I were about to be married, and so that was gonna be awesome to start this job.

And uh in the midst of that, like I'm working at this church, and then I began being accused of something that I have I did not do.

I did not do that, but I'm being accused of something I did not do.

And so these people were coming to go meet with my boss, the pastor, and they were gonna try and get me fired for something they're accused me of, but I definitely didn't do anything that they're saying.

But they were coming to do that.

They were gonna go, they were gonna meet.

They were I had already set up the meeting, and I was gonna be in this meeting where they try and get me fired.

Um and Randy and I were sitting at like Panera Bread or something in the parking lot, and um just sad and scared and like just bummed.

Like we've been in this job for just a little bit, and now like I might lose this thing based on some accusation that this person is saying.

And uh so what we started doing just kind of accidentally is just like, well, you know, our relationship, like I wanted, I met Rainey and I was like, I wanted to marry her immediately.

Rainey met me and was like, who are you?

Um that was basically the experience.

Sometimes it's still that way, 15 years in.

Um, but like I was like, I God, you have to do a miracle, like you have to make her love me.

I don't even know if you can do that, but I'd really love that.

But it like seemed like such a long shot.

Like, this girl is not gonna fall in love with me.

I'm gonna be bald here soon, like it's coming.

Lord, I need you to do some work here.

And um, we started dating, which was like a miracle in itself.

I was like, God is so good, he loves me more than anybody else.

Um, and then we started dating, and um our first year was long distance.

And so in the car during this situation, I just started sharing that story.

I was like, you know, I wanted him to do an impossible thing before, and now I just wanted to like date you, and now we're engaged to be married, like we're gonna be married soon.

Like he does impossible things.

Like, this is amazing.

He's he's he's given me the thing that I wanted.

And then she shared a story about her her life, and then I we shared another story about like like just back and forth of like, and then our relationship, like uh five years in, like we just butchered our relationship, and honestly, we thought it was gonna crumble and crack, and and then the Lord helped restore that and bring it back from the dead and and all these different things.

And I didn't think I'd graduate college, much less get into graduate school, and now like you were going to graduate school, I wanted to be where you were, and and so God made a way for me to get into graduate school and to be able to afford it and all this stuff.

Like, we just started just hallowing his name and saying, look at what he did back then, look at what he did back then.

Oh, and look at what he did back then.

And by the end of it, of doing that for five minutes or so, I said, you know, every single thing that I actually care about that I really wanted and needed, he has provided that thing.

Like I am, I am without need.

He is my shepherd, I have everything that I need.

And the things that I thought I needed in order to be satisfied, and I don't have those things, I no longer even think about those things.

And so he has shown himself to be faithful in the past, he will be faithful in this situation.

These people will come, and if they get me fired, then God is gonna be good to us and good to me after this because that's who he's been before, that's who he's gonna be again.

And if they come and do their worst, but God wants me to have this job, they're not going to be able to convince God to change his mind on that.

Like he they can say everything that they want, but if God wants me to have this job, then I will have this job.

And just in hallowing the name of the Lord and talking about the power and the ways that he worked in our life, how good he's been to us, it just encouraged us and it gave us hope.

It was like, regardless of what happens, they show up, they don't show up, they they say whatever, I get fired, I don't like.

He has shown me that he wants to take care of me.

He has been good to me, he is going to be good to me again, regardless.

And then he did.

He took care of us in that situation, and those people actually never even made the meeting.

They never even showed up, and I never heard from him again.

And it was amazing.

But for us, it was this space of like, we didn't realize that that's what we were doing at the at the time.

But now it's like, man, to look back at our at our past and let that inform our future and inform our present circumstances and go, I am walking through something where it seems like this is just nothing good can come out of this situation.

Then you're like, but then you remember times in the past where like it seemed like nothing good could happen here, but God did something good in the midst of it.

But he is the God who actually works bad things to good.

And you're like, so if that's who he was, then that's who he's gonna be, and it's meant to encourage us.

It's meant to give us that confidence, it's meant to give us peace and rest and hope for where we currently are.

And so it's not just informing our prayers, but also informing our hearts to go, this is who he is.

You have someone who cares for you.

Rest in the fact that he cares for you.

And so, again, just a couple of ways, like it can look like this, not on the screen.

But if you're dealing with enemies, you can just remember some of these things and say, God, some of your favorite people in the scriptures had significant enemies.

David had Saul, and everything that Saul did to try and keep David from becoming king, you used to serve your plan to make David king.

Therefore, what's true?

Let's talk about reality now.

Therefore, if that's what you can do with an enemy, that means that no enemy of mine can stop the good plan that you have for me.

They cannot get in the way.

You will just take their bad and evil or whatever they're trying to do.

You will bend it for my good.

If that's true of you in the past, and that's true of you here, and so even though they have the power to hurt me or to be evil in my life, I can rest in the fact that like you can do these things, I can rest in the fact that you'll take care of me in the midst of it.

In your sinfulness.

I feel like I've outsinned your grace, that you hate me because of my sin.

But you say in your word that as far as the east is from the west, so far have you removed my sin from me.

You've said that where sin abounds, that your grace abounds all the more.

That nothing can separate me from your love.

And so I'm just gonna rest and trust that my sin hasn't led you to hate me.

I'm gonna rest and trust in your word.

This is who you are.

I hallow the name of the Lord by saying, You are the God whose grace abounds over my sin.

I'm gonna rest in the fact that, like, I'm not gonna listen to my fears, I'm not gonna listen to the accusations of the enemy.

I'm just gonna rest in the fact that this is who you are.

Chaos and upheaval.

Lord, your word says that you sit enthroned above the nations.

Therefore, whatever goes on in our nation or overseas or wherever, you are still in control, you are still on your throne.

Nothing happens outside of your direction, everyone bows the knee to you, all of it.

And so I can rest in the fact that you still run the world, even though it sounds like other people run the world.

And it's supposed to be this thing that when you're reminding ourselves of who he is, that it brings us back into a spot of like, what's actual reality?

I want to live not with what my eyes are seeing, but I want to live inside the actual reality that's there.

And it's supposed to be this one where like he rules, he reigns, and he loves us deeply.

And so, because of that, we can rest and we can trust and we can be actually at ease and at peace because that's who he is, and we're reminded of who he is.

So those are the things that Jesus calls us to do.

Those are the things to hallow his name.

It reminds us of what's possible for him so that we expand what we're actually praying for, and it reminds us of who he is and what he's done so that we can rest in those areas of his character and his nature.

This is who he is.

You can rest.

You do not have to be the one that makes everything great and good in your life.

Like there's someone who loves you enough to do that for you.

Those are the things that he calls us to do.

And in many ways, those two things, hallowing his name, um well, really, and calling him father, they're just preparing you for the ask.

They're just preparing you to actually request something in prayer.

If you notice in the Lord's Prayer, you haven't you haven't asked for anything yet.

There's been no petition, no, no asking.

There's been like our father, just call him by this name and then worship him.

And so the the the idea that Jesus is saying, like, this is this is important, and it's not always a formula, it's not always this way, but it's important for you to remember who you're talking to.

It's important for you to remember that what's possible with him is anything.

And when you remember those two things, now you are ready to begin asking.

Because now you will pray something that's actually uniquely connected to him and not something that's just coming from the poverty of your own heart.

And so that's why he tells us to do this.

It prepares us for the ask, it makes us ready to ask for things, makes us ready to say, Your kingdom come, your will be done.

It's easier to say your will be done when you know you're talking to a loving father.

If you're talking to a tyrant and you're saying, your will be done, look out.

But when you can actually move into a space and you go, I actually do want what you have for me.

And so Jesus calls us into this to prepare us to actually ask for things.

And so I want to give you very practically a couple of ways that I do this, that maybe it's helpful to you.

If it's not, don't tell me about it.

Um, find your own.

Um but this is something that's helpful to me.

Um, this prayer, uh, Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, you can just pray that verbatim if you'd like.

But if you want to use that as a guardrail or a launching point to worship, don't go to that.

Um, if you want to use that as a guardrail, you can do that.

But I want to give you practical ways to kind of use it as a launching point.

And so, a couple of practical ways to begin practicing hallowing the name of the Lord.

First is begin prayer with worship songs.

Begin prayer with worship songs.

I do this every day.

If I'm praying at any point in time, I try and begin with worship songs to set the psalms in the Bible, they are the hymn book of the Old Testament, but they're all prayers.

And so prayer and worship are always supposed to go together.

Singing and prayer was always supposed together.

Aren't the songs that we sing are prayers just set to music.

That's what they are.

And so prayer and worship should always be together.

And so I begin prayer with a time of worship.

And these are just a handful of songs that I use.

If I'm going through something, depending on what I'm going through, I have a select playlist for like life's hard right now.

Boop.

And then I listen to that playlist.

Um, these are incredible songs, again, for me.

If you don't like them, please don't tell me.

Um, but Good Plans by Red Rocks, same God, won't stop now, do it again, uh, Don't Fight Alone, I believe and the truth.

What those songs do for me is they just help me to worship him, but also to remember who he actually is.

Good plans is like, you have good plans for me.

When I'm walking through bad plans that are taking place in my life, it's important for me to remember that the God who runs the world actually does have good plans for me.

He's on my side.

He's not against me, but he is for me.

And so this song is like, there's a line in there that's like, um, if you are, if you are the one that walks with me, if you're the one that can protect me, if you're the one that has all this stuff for me, then what better thing can I give my time to than just spend, just to spend my time with you?

Like I want to be in a space with somebody that only has rich and good plans for me, like then I don't want to spend my time with anybody else.

I want to spend it with you.

What could be better than walking with you if that's who you are?

Same God just reminds me of really all the a number of things that happened in the Old Testament.

It's like, if you are the God that helped David, if you're the God that helped Jacob, if you're the God that then who you were is who you still are, because you're the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Um my favorite up there is uh John Reddick's Don't Fight Alone.

Um it starts off by going, There are um angel armies uh that I have never seen.

There are prayers I've never heard surrounding me.

And uh he talks about the fact of like in the great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews talks about, like that there is a great cloud of people who have gone before us in this in our faith.

Uh a unique set of people that are like, they're not just sitting there going, like, do it like I did.

Like they are cheering, like in heaven, they are cheering us on.

There are people watching us struggle and going, Man, I have been there too, and they're rooting for us, and we are not fighting this alone.

This thing that we're in, we're not doing this by ourselves.

There are prayers that Jesus has prayed for me, there are prayers that people have prayed for me.

Back in the first century, there are prayers that Paul and these people prayed for the future church, and I'm the future church.

There are prayers that pastors that used to pastor that were killed by the Romans were praying for future pastors.

I'm one of those pastors.

Like there are prayers surrounding me that I I'll never I have no idea what they said.

But what the song does is it elevates my vision to what's actually reality and it stirs my heart and it stirs my faith to be like, okay, I'm ready to pray now because what I was ready to do before was just complain and be angry and wallow in self-pity or just think that it's impossible and nothing can happen.

And these songs just lift my eyes and lift my gaze and remind me like there is more available, more available.

And so, anyways, listen to those songs if you want, but you find your own.

Start prayer with worship.

It is not wasted time.

I need to be praying, I need to be.

No, just turn on a music, some music and listen to it and allow that to launch your prayers.

I gotta go faster.

Okay, second.

Uh remember what he's done or what he's promised in the scriptures and apply that to your situation in life right now.

And so this is, Lord, this is what you did in the past.

This is what you did in I saw what you did in Josiah's life, I saw what you did in David's life, I saw what you did in Solomon's life, I saw what you did in uh Gideon's life.

I have I have I remember those things.

I have heard of your fame, I stand in all of your deeds.

I need you to repeat those things in my time.

It is looking back at what he's done in the scriptures or just in redemptive history and grabbing that situation and going, if you truly are the same yesterday, today, and forever, that's who you were, that's who you are still, please be that thing for me.

And so you heal before, heal again.

You resurrected relationships before, do so again.

You saved incredibly just just hateful people that we thought would never come to faith, do it again.

You just ask him for those things.

Next, you can remember the ways that he's broken into your life and helped you in the past and let his past faithfulness cure you and encourage you in your present.

And so, again, in this time of prayer, if you just need this in your time of prayer, just remember, like I'm walking through a hard situation.

I'm walking through a time where people are angry at me and people are being evil towards me or whatever.

How have you helped me in the past?

Remembering that, God, you are the God that helped me back in 2011 when I was walking through that situation.

And so, based on that, I'm gonna live in the peace of that, and I'm gonna ask you to do the exact same thing again.

It's remembering your path his past faithfulness.

And last, you can hallow his name by just thanking him, taking the time to thank him for what he's done.

Just reminding yourself consistently, he has done this, thank you.

He has done this, thank you.

One of the things that that will do for you, if you ever read Ann Voskamp's book, Um A Thousand Gifts, she talks about like she used to do that, trying to thank God for every single thing that she could think of that he's done in their life.

And she goes, one of the um outcomes of that was every time I went to go and pray next, because I had been thanking him before, I had and trying to notice things that he's done for me, I became very aware that he's kind of always doing stuff for me.

And so asking him to do more for me seemed like no big deal because he's constantly helping me.

And so taking time to just thank him for little things, like I love the way this coffee tastes, I love the fact that it's cooler outside this morning.

I love, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And it just opens your heart up for like you are here, you are present, you love me, and now I'm ready to pray.

And so it stirs this in us to like he is not a grudging giver, he is somebody who's willing to give.

So those are some of the ways that you can do those things.

This is why we're called to hallow his name.

Tyler Staten, again, a short quote in his book says, Powerful prayer begins with adoration.

Powerful prayer begins with adoration, and I want us to pray with power.

Powerful prayer begins with adoration.

And Jesus clearly wants us to pray with power too, because he calls us to hallow his name before we enter into your kingdom come and your will be done.

And so let's learn how to do this.

Let's learn how to hallow his name so that we can be shaped into people who pray powerfully.

And let's close today by praying this prayer again.

Let's say this together.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.