Lesson 14: After This Manner Pray, part 2
The lesson is of more importance than we think. In true worship the Father must be first, must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father.
This must influence all our prayer. There are two sorts of prayer: personal and intercessory. The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy. This may not be. Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around. There can be no deep growth in prayer unless this be made our aim. The little child may ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, Give some for sister too. But the grown-up son, who only lives for the father’s interest and takes charge of the father’s business, asks more largely, and gets all that is asked. And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the Father. Oh let us live for this, and let, on each act of adoration, Our Father, there follow in the same breath, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will; for this we look up and long.
“Hallowed be Your name.” What name? This new name of Father. The word Holy is the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father of the New. In this name of Love, all the holiness and glory of God are now to be revealed. And how is the name to be hallowed? By God Himself: “I will hallow My great name which you have profaned.” Our prayer must be that in ourselves, in all God’s children, in presence of the world, God Himself would reveal the holiness, the Divine power, the hidden glory of the name of Father. The Spirit of the Father is the Holy Spirit. It is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him that the name will be hallowed in our prayer and our lives. Let us learn the prayer: “Our Father, hallowed be Your name.”
Prayer: Lord, it is as if we needed days and weeks in Your school with each separate petition, so deep and full are they. But we look to You to lead us deeper into their meaning; do it, we pray, for Your Name’s sake. Your name is Son of the Father.