2023
Hallowed Be Your Name
Passage: Matthew 6:5-13 and 1 Chronicles 29:10-13, 20
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Read Matthew 6:5-13 and 1 Chronicles 29:10-13, 20. What ideas or phrases surprise, encourage, or spark questions for you?
When we pray hallowed be your name, we are “asking God to be set above us as high and holy, central and important. Our main concern in life should be that God be treated as God” explains commentator Dale Bruner. Hallowed means glorify, weighty, heavy, significant. How does this explanation shape your understanding of praying to God hallowed be your name? What are we actually asking for in this petition?
Why is it important that this request comes first in the Lord’s Prayer? How does this impact the way you start your praying?
In 1 Chronicles 29, David praises the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly. His priority is not the form of prayer, but the heart of prayer. David draws the people into worship by example, expression, and instruction (see v 20). What regular habits draw you into worship daily/weekly?
According to the Heidelberg Catechism: “‘Hallowed be your name’ means to bless, worship, and praise you for all your work and for all that shines forth from them: your almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and truth. And it means, help us to direct all our living- what we think, say, and do – so that your name will never be blasphemed because of us but always honored and praised.” To pray this prayer is to desire everyone, ourselves included, to see God as he truly is. What from this teaching do you need to remember, rejoice in, request, or repent of?
PRAYER
Share with your group how they can be praying for you: what is weighing on you from this past week? What are you praising God for from this past week?
“Almighty God, and most merciful Father, we humbly submit ourselves, and fall down before your Majesty, asking you from the bottom of our hearts, that this seed from your Word now sown among us, may take such deep root, that neither the burning heat of persecution cause it to wither, not the thorny cares of this life choke it. But that, as seed sown in good ground, it may bring forth thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold, as your heavenly wisdom has appointed. Amen” Middelburg Liturgy