Lesson 2: R - Respect

“Hallowed be Your name.”

Even though God is our Father, we need to remember that He is still God who deserves our respect and honor. Respect and honor means that if I did not know how much He loves me, I would be terrified of Him because of who He is.

Many times in the Bible we read how God hates our disrespectful words and gifts to Him – things that are not from our heart or are intended only to flatter and pacify Him so He will give us what we want. Zechariah 7:5-6 says, Say to all the people of the land and the priests, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for Me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?”


All too often we have become people who think God owes us something because we have chosen Him as our Savior. We presume on His grace and mercy by demanding things we think He must give us. We presume that a gift He gave to someone in the Bible for their faithfulness to Him, such as the great wealth He gave to Job (Job 42:10-11), will also be given to us. But we are not prepared to be faithful to Him through suffering such as Job endured.

We must not forget that His promises of receiving “the desires of our heart” is conditional on the fact that we must trust Him, be faithful, delight in Him, commit our ways to Him, and be still and wait for Him first. The trusting, delighting, committing, and being still are times when He teaches us His ways – most often through difficult times in our lives. These hard times often feel as if God has forgotten about us or left us alone, but they are the times we truly learn to trust and wait and commit.

Respect for God includes a heart of thankfulness for all He has done for us: troubled times He has seen us through, the child’s laughter that lightened our hearts, the refreshing rain to cool a hot summer day, the delay in traffic that saved us from harm we cannot even know, the days of pain when He was our only comfort.

Respect also includes the deepest love our hearts are capable of giving – love borne of the knowledge that if He had not saved us, we would be without hope and joy and peace for all eternity. Respect is coming before Him on our knees in spirit as well as physically.

*How does respect for God change how you pray?