Our Deepest Prayer: Hallowed Be Your Name

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
What an unspeakable and undeserved privilege it is to stand in this pulpit again and look out on you, the flock that the great Shepherd has called me to feed. I am thrilled to be back with you. Thank you for your great generosity in letting me be away for those months. I don’t know how long the Lord will give me to live. But I do know that as long as I live, those eight months will bear fruit in my soul, in my marriage, in my family, and in my ministry. My prayer and my hope is that you will be nourished by that fruit.
As I was leaving back in April, I said that it was time for a spiritual reality check for these four things: my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry. So I wrote a report about the leave of absence, addressing these four things, which will be published as my annual report, and which you can read at the Desiring God blog. I won’t say it all again here in this message, but it might be helpful to say a little, before we turn to God’s word.

On the Leave of Absence

The work that God is doing in my own soul and the work he is doing in our marriage are almost indistinguishable, because all sin is sooner or later relational. I said when I left that I wanted to set the sights of my Holy Spirit gun (Romans 8:13) on species of pride in my life. All sin is rooted in pride. So let me be more specific.
I would name my most besetting (and I hope weakening) sins as selfishness, self-pity, anger, quickness to blame, and sullenness. And all of these have been most often manifest at home, more than anywhere else. So for these eight months, I have tried to go deep and to go hard after the roots of these things. The Lord has revealed himself in his word in some very precious ways. He has also retaught me some very basic strategies for putting to death the uprisings of sin in my heart.
Time will tell, and Noël will tell, and you will tell, whether the progress I have made is deep and durable, or not. I pray it is. How God is doing these things will, no doubt, weave its way into messages and writings in the months and years to come. I hope they will be of benefit to your own soul and your relationships—whether single or married.

A Sermon on Prayer

So let’s begin that process with a sermon on prayer. What has God been teaching me about prayer in this spiritual warfare, and how might it make a difference in your life? I choose to focus on prayer because it’s the close of our annual Prayer Week, and because it has been with me during the whole leave of absence—both as a steady cry to God for his help in our souls and marriage and family and ministry, and as a recurrent focus of reflection and thinking. I prayed a lot, and I thought a lot about praying.
I love the prayers of the Bible. They shape my own prayers more than anything else. I love the prayers of Paul in Philippians 1:9–11, and Ephesians 1:16–21 and 3:14–19, and Colossians 1:9–12. I love the prayer of Jesus in John 17. And I love the whole book of Psalms, which is the inspired prayer book of the church—filled with such a range of emotions that the cry of our heart in almost any experience can find words in the Psalms.

The Lord’s Prayer: Simple and Spectacular

But the prayer in the Bible that has gripped me most during this leave is the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9–13. This is probably because, in God’s providence, I was memorizing the Sermon on the Mount with many of you. So week after week I was reviewing Matthew 6 in my mind, and so saying the Lord’s prayer over and over.
As I thought about it and prayed it, it had an effect on the big picture of my life, and it had an effect on the nitty-gritty, daily wrestlings in my life. I hope it will have a similar effect on you as you pray it.
Matthew 6:5-15
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
What an unspeakable and undeserved privilege it is to stand in this pulpit again and look out on you, the flock that the great Shepherd has called me to feed. I am thrilled to be back with you. Thank you for your great generosity in letting me be away for those months. I don’t know how long the Lord will give me to live. But I do know that as long as I live, those eight months will bear fruit in my soul, in my marriage, in my family, and in my ministry. My prayer and my hope is that you will be nourished by that fruit.
As I was leaving back in April, I said that it was time for a spiritual reality check for these four things: my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry. So I wrote a report about the leave of absence, addressing these four things, which will be published as my annual report, and which you can read at the Desiring God blog. I won’t say it all again here in this message, but it might be helpful to say a little, before we turn to God’s word.

On the Leave of Absence

The work that God is doing in my own soul and the work he is doing in our marriage are almost indistinguishable, because all sin is sooner or later relational. I said when I left that I wanted to set the sights of my Holy Spirit gun (Romans 8:13) on species of pride in my life. All sin is rooted in pride. So let me be more specific.
I would name my most besetting (and I hope weakening) sins as selfishness, self-pity, anger, quickness to blame, and sullenness. And all of these have been most often manifest at home, more than anywhere else. So for these eight months, I have tried to go deep and to go hard after the roots of these things. The Lord has revealed himself in his word in some very precious ways. He has also retaught me some very basic strategies for putting to death the uprisings of sin in my heart.
Time will tell, and Noël will tell, and you will tell, whether the progress I have made is deep and durable, or not. I pray it is. How God is doing these things will, no doubt, weave its way into messages and writings in the months and years to come. I hope they will be of benefit to your own soul and your relationships—whether single or married.

A Sermon on Prayer

So let’s begin that process with a sermon on prayer. What has God been teaching me about prayer in this spiritual warfare, and how might it make a difference in your life? I choose to focus on prayer because it’s the close of our annual Prayer Week, and because it has been with me during the whole leave of absence—both as a steady cry to God for his help in our souls and marriage and family and ministry, and as a recurrent focus of reflection and thinking. I prayed a lot, and I thought a lot about praying.
I love the prayers of the Bible. They shape my own prayers more than anything else. I love the prayers of Paul in Philippians 1:9–11, and Ephesians 1:16–21 and 3:14–19, and Colossians 1:9–12. I love the prayer of Jesus in John 17. And I love the whole book of Psalms, which is the inspired prayer book of the church—filled with such a range of emotions that the cry of our heart in almost any experience can find words in the Psalms.

The Lord’s Prayer: Simple and Spectacular

But the prayer in the Bible that has gripped me most during this leave is the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9–13. This is probably because, in God’s providence, I was memorizing the Sermon on the Mount with many of you. So week after week I was reviewing Matthew 6 in my mind, and so saying the Lord’s prayer over and over.
As I thought about it and prayed it, it had an effect on the big picture of my life, and it had an effect on the nitty-gritty, daily wrestlings in my life. I hope it will have a similar effect on you as you pray it.
Excerpt: The Lord's Prayer Is Very True to Life

The Lord’s prayer is very true to life in this sense. Life is a combination of spectacular things and simple things. In almost everyone’s life there are breathtaking things and boring things. Fantastic things and familiar things. Extraordinary things and ordinary things. Awesome things and average things. Exotic things and everyday things. That’s the way life is.

God’s Name, Kingdom, and Will

And, looked at one way, that’s the way the Lord’s prayer is. Almost everyone notices that it has two parts. The first part (verses 9–10) has three petitions; and the second part (verses 11–13) has three petitions. The first three petitions are:
  • hallowed be your name
  • your kingdom come
  • your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We are asking God to bring about these three things: cause your name to be hallowed; cause your kingdom to come; cause your will to be done as it’s done by the angels in heaven.

Our Food, Forgiveness, and Holiness

The second three petitions are:
  • give us this day our daily bread
  • forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
  • lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
You can see the difference—and feel the difference—between these two halves. The first three petitions are about God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will. The last three are about our food, our forgiveness, our holiness. The first three call our attention to God’s greatness. And the last three call attention to our needs. The two halves have a very different feel. The first half feels majestic and lofty. The last half feels mundane and lowly.

The Mingling of Eternity and the Everyday

In other words, there is a correspondence between the content of this prayer and the content of our lives. The big and the little. The glorious and the common. The majestic and the mundane. The lofty and the lowly.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” I take that to mean that the world and the human soul are iridescent with wonders linked to eternity. And yet our humdrum, ordinary, mundane experiences of this world keep us from seeing the wonders and from soaring the way we dream from time to time. Even we believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God—even we say, “We have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Our spirit is alive with God’s Spirit, but our bodies are dead because of sin (Romans 8:10).

Prayer for Eternity

hat’s the way life is. And that’s the way this prayer is—iridescent with eternity and woven into ordinary life.

  • Verse 9: Father, cause your great and holy name to be honored and reverenced and esteemed and treasured above all things everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause you glorious, sovereign, kingly rule to hold sway without obstruction everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause your all-wise, all-good, all-just, all-holy will to be done all over this world the way the angels do it perfectly and joyfully in heaven—and make it happen in me.
That’s the breathtaking part of the prayer. And when we pray it, we are caught up into great things, glorious things, global things, eternal things. God wants this to happen. He wants your life to be enlarged like that. Enriched like that. Expanded and ennobled and soaring like that.

Prayer for the Everyday

But then we pray,
  • Verse 11: Father, I am not asking for the bounty of riches. I am asking for bread. Just enough to give me life. I want to live. I want to be healthy, and to have a body and a mind that work. Would you give me what I need for my body and mind?
Excerpt: Let Jesus Be Honored in the Lord's Prayer]

Matthew 6:5-15
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
What an unspeakable and undeserved privilege it is to stand in this pulpit again and look out on you, the flock that the great Shepherd has called me to feed. I am thrilled to be back with you. Thank you for your great generosity in letting me be away for those months. I don’t know how long the Lord will give me to live. But I do know that as long as I live, those eight months will bear fruit in my soul, in my marriage, in my family, and in my ministry. My prayer and my hope is that you will be nourished by that fruit.
As I was leaving back in April, I said that it was time for a spiritual reality check for these four things: my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry. So I wrote a report about the leave of absence, addressing these four things, which will be published as my annual report, and which you can read at the Desiring God blog. I won’t say it all again here in this message, but it might be helpful to say a little, before we turn to God’s word.

On the Leave of Absence

The work that God is doing in my own soul and the work he is doing in our marriage are almost indistinguishable, because all sin is sooner or later relational. I said when I left that I wanted to set the sights of my Holy Spirit gun (Romans 8:13) on species of pride in my life. All sin is rooted in pride. So let me be more specific.
I would name my most besetting (and I hope weakening) sins as selfishness, self-pity, anger, quickness to blame, and sullenness. And all of these have been most often manifest at home, more than anywhere else. So for these eight months, I have tried to go deep and to go hard after the roots of these things. The Lord has revealed himself in his word in some very precious ways. He has also retaught me some very basic strategies for putting to death the uprisings of sin in my heart.
Time will tell, and Noël will tell, and you will tell, whether the progress I have made is deep and durable, or not. I pray it is. How God is doing these things will, no doubt, weave its way into messages and writings in the months and years to come. I hope they will be of benefit to your own soul and your relationships—whether single or married.

A Sermon on Prayer

So let’s begin that process with a sermon on prayer. What has God been teaching me about prayer in this spiritual warfare, and how might it make a difference in your life? I choose to focus on prayer because it’s the close of our annual Prayer Week, and because it has been with me during the whole leave of absence—both as a steady cry to God for his help in our souls and marriage and family and ministry, and as a recurrent focus of reflection and thinking. I prayed a lot, and I thought a lot about praying.
I love the prayers of the Bible. They shape my own prayers more than anything else. I love the prayers of Paul in Philippians 1:9–11, and Ephesians 1:16–21 and 3:14–19, and Colossians 1:9–12. I love the prayer of Jesus in John 17. And I love the whole book of Psalms, which is the inspired prayer book of the church—filled with such a range of emotions that the cry of our heart in almost any experience can find words in the Psalms.

The Lord’s Prayer: Simple and Spectacular

But the prayer in the Bible that has gripped me most during this leave is the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9–13. This is probably because, in God’s providence, I was memorizing the Sermon on the Mount with many of you. So week after week I was reviewing Matthew 6 in my mind, and so saying the Lord’s prayer over and over.
As I thought about it and prayed it, it had an effect on the big picture of my life, and it had an effect on the nitty-gritty, daily wrestlings in my life. I hope it will have a similar effect on you as you pray it.
Excerpt: The Lord's Prayer Is Very True to Life

The Lord’s prayer is very true to life in this sense. Life is a combination of spectacular things and simple things. In almost everyone’s life there are breathtaking things and boring things. Fantastic things and familiar things. Extraordinary things and ordinary things. Awesome things and average things. Exotic things and everyday things. That’s the way life is.

God’s Name, Kingdom, and Will

And, looked at one way, that’s the way the Lord’s prayer is. Almost everyone notices that it has two parts. The first part (verses 9–10) has three petitions; and the second part (verses 11–13) has three petitions. The first three petitions are:
  • hallowed be your name
  • your kingdom come
  • your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We are asking God to bring about these three things: cause your name to be hallowed; cause your kingdom to come; cause your will to be done as it’s done by the angels in heaven.

Our Food, Forgiveness, and Holiness

The second three petitions are:
  • give us this day our daily bread
  • forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
  • lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
You can see the difference—and feel the difference—between these two halves. The first three petitions are about God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will. The last three are about our food, our forgiveness, our holiness. The first three call our attention to God’s greatness. And the last three call attention to our needs. The two halves have a very different feel. The first half feels majestic and lofty. The last half feels mundane and lowly.

The Mingling of Eternity and the Everyday

In other words, there is a correspondence between the content of this prayer and the content of our lives. The big and the little. The glorious and the common. The majestic and the mundane. The lofty and the lowly.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” I take that to mean that the world and the human soul are iridescent with wonders linked to eternity. And yet our humdrum, ordinary, mundane experiences of this world keep us from seeing the wonders and from soaring the way we dream from time to time. Even we believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God—even we say, “We have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Our spirit is alive with God’s Spirit, but our bodies are dead because of sin (Romans 8:10).

Prayer for Eternity

Excerpt: Come On Up

That’s the way life is. And that’s the way this prayer is—iridescent with eternity and woven into ordinary life.
  • Verse 9: Father, cause your great and holy name to be honored and reverenced and esteemed and treasured above all things everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause you glorious, sovereign, kingly rule to hold sway without obstruction everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause your all-wise, all-good, all-just, all-holy will to be done all over this world the way the angels do it perfectly and joyfully in heaven—and make it happen in me.
That’s the breathtaking part of the prayer. And when we pray it, we are caught up into great things, glorious things, global things, eternal things. God wants this to happen. He wants your life to be enlarged like that. Enriched like that. Expanded and ennobled and soaring like that.

Prayer for the Everyday

But then we pray,
  • Verse 11: Father, I am not asking for the bounty of riches. I am asking for bread. Just enough to give me life. I want to live. I want to be healthy, and to have a body and a mind that work. Would you give me what I need for my body and mind?
Excerpt: Let Jesus Be Honored in the Lord's Prayer

  • Verse 12: And, Father, I am a sinner and need to be forgiven everyday. I can’t live and flourish with guilt. I will die if I have to bear my guilt every day. I have no desire to hold any grudge. I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, and so I have no right to withhold it from anyone. I let go of all the offenses against me. Please, have mercy upon me and forgive me and let me live in the freedom of your love. And, of course, we know now what Jesus knew when he said this. He knew he would also say of his death: “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). When we pray for forgiveness, we expect it not merely because God is our Father, but because our Father gave his Son to die in our place.
  • Verse 13: And Father, I don’t want to go on sinning. I’m thankful for forgiveness, but, Father, I don’t want to sin. Please, don’t lead me into the entanglements of overpowering temptation. Deliver me from evil. Guard me from Satan and from all his works and all his ways. Grant me to walk in holiness.
That’s the earthy part of the prayer. The mundane, daily, nitty-gritty struggle of the Christian life. We need food and forgiveness and protection from evil.

Our Father—In Heaven

Excerpt: Our Father vs. In Heaven

And I think these two halves correspond to the two things said about God in the way Jesus tells us to address him at the beginning in verse 9: “Our Father—in heaven.” First, God is a father to us. And second, he is infinitely above us and over all—in heaven. His fatherhood corresponds to his readiness to meet our earthly needs. His heavenliness corresponds to his supreme right to be given worship and allegiance and obedience.
For example, in Matthew 6:32, Jesus tells us not to be anxious about food and drink and clothing because “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” In other words, Jesus wants us to feel the fatherhood of God as an expression of his readiness to meet our most basic needs.
And then consider Matthew 5:34, where Jesus says, “Do not take an oath . . . by heaven, for it is the throne of God.” In other words, when you think of heaven, think of God’s throne, his kingly majesty and power and authority.

Majestic and Merciful

So when Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:9 to pray, “Our Father in heaven,” he is telling us that the prayer-hearing God is majestic and merciful. He is high, and also dwells with the contrite (Isaiah 57:15). He is a king, and he is a father. He is holy, and he humbles himself. He is far above us, and ready to come to us. He has plans for the whole earth and for the universe, and wants us to care about these great plans and pray about them; and he has plans for your personal life at the most practical level and wants you to pray about that.
So on October 5 last year, I wrote in my journal:
My heart’s desire is to be used by God for
the hallowing of his name and
the coming of his kingdom and
the doing of his will.
To that end I pray for
Health—give me daily bread;
Hope—forgive my debts; and
Holiness—deliver me from evil.
In other words, it seems to me that the great designs of God are first and mainly about God. His name being hallowed, his will being done, his kingdom coming. And the rest of the prayer is how I can be fitted to serve those great designs. My bread, my forgiveness, my deliverance—my health, my hope, my holiness—are for the purpose of being part of God’s great purposes to glorify his name and exalt his rule and complete his will.

The Unique First Petition

Matthew 6:5-15
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
What an unspeakable and undeserved privilege it is to stand in this pulpit again and look out on you, the flock that the great Shepherd has called me to feed. I am thrilled to be back with you. Thank you for your great generosity in letting me be away for those months. I don’t know how long the Lord will give me to live. But I do know that as long as I live, those eight months will bear fruit in my soul, in my marriage, in my family, and in my ministry. My prayer and my hope is that you will be nourished by that fruit.
As I was leaving back in April, I said that it was time for a spiritual reality check for these four things: my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry. So I wrote a report about the leave of absence, addressing these four things, which will be published as my annual report, and which you can read at the Desiring God blog. I won’t say it all again here in this message, but it might be helpful to say a little, before we turn to God’s word.

On the Leave of Absence

The work that God is doing in my own soul and the work he is doing in our marriage are almost indistinguishable, because all sin is sooner or later relational. I said when I left that I wanted to set the sights of my Holy Spirit gun (Romans 8:13) on species of pride in my life. All sin is rooted in pride. So let me be more specific.
I would name my most besetting (and I hope weakening) sins as selfishness, self-pity, anger, quickness to blame, and sullenness. And all of these have been most often manifest at home, more than anywhere else. So for these eight months, I have tried to go deep and to go hard after the roots of these things. The Lord has revealed himself in his word in some very precious ways. He has also retaught me some very basic strategies for putting to death the uprisings of sin in my heart.
Time will tell, and Noël will tell, and you will tell, whether the progress I have made is deep and durable, or not. I pray it is. How God is doing these things will, no doubt, weave its way into messages and writings in the months and years to come. I hope they will be of benefit to your own soul and your relationships—whether single or married.

A Sermon on Prayer

So let’s begin that process with a sermon on prayer. What has God been teaching me about prayer in this spiritual warfare, and how might it make a difference in your life? I choose to focus on prayer because it’s the close of our annual Prayer Week, and because it has been with me during the whole leave of absence—both as a steady cry to God for his help in our souls and marriage and family and ministry, and as a recurrent focus of reflection and thinking. I prayed a lot, and I thought a lot about praying.
I love the prayers of the Bible. They shape my own prayers more than anything else. I love the prayers of Paul in Philippians 1:9–11, and Ephesians 1:16–21 and 3:14–19, and Colossians 1:9–12. I love the prayer of Jesus in John 17. And I love the whole book of Psalms, which is the inspired prayer book of the church—filled with such a range of emotions that the cry of our heart in almost any experience can find words in the Psalms.

The Lord’s Prayer: Simple and Spectacular

But the prayer in the Bible that has gripped me most during this leave is the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9–13. This is probably because, in God’s providence, I was memorizing the Sermon on the Mount with many of you. So week after week I was reviewing Matthew 6 in my mind, and so saying the Lord’s prayer over and over.
As I thought about it and prayed it, it had an effect on the big picture of my life, and it had an effect on the nitty-gritty, daily wrestlings in my life. I hope it will have a similar effect on you as you pray it.
Excerpt: The Lord's Prayer Is Very True to Life

The Lord’s prayer is very true to life in this sense. Life is a combination of spectacular things and simple things. In almost everyone’s life there are breathtaking things and boring things. Fantastic things and familiar things. Extraordinary things and ordinary things. Awesome things and average things. Exotic things and everyday things. That’s the way life is.

God’s Name, Kingdom, and Will

And, looked at one way, that’s the way the Lord’s prayer is. Almost everyone notices that it has two parts. The first part (verses 9–10) has three petitions; and the second part (verses 11–13) has three petitions. The first three petitions are:
  • hallowed be your name
  • your kingdom come
  • your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We are asking God to bring about these three things: cause your name to be hallowed; cause your kingdom to come; cause your will to be done as it’s done by the angels in heaven.

Our Food, Forgiveness, and Holiness

The second three petitions are:
  • give us this day our daily bread
  • forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
  • lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
You can see the difference—and feel the difference—between these two halves. The first three petitions are about God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will. The last three are about our food, our forgiveness, our holiness. The first three call our attention to God’s greatness. And the last three call attention to our needs. The two halves have a very different feel. The first half feels majestic and lofty. The last half feels mundane and lowly.

The Mingling of Eternity and the Everyday

In other words, there is a correspondence between the content of this prayer and the content of our lives. The big and the little. The glorious and the common. The majestic and the mundane. The lofty and the lowly.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” I take that to mean that the world and the human soul are iridescent with wonders linked to eternity. And yet our humdrum, ordinary, mundane experiences of this world keep us from seeing the wonders and from soaring the way we dream from time to time. Even we believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God—even we say, “We have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Our spirit is alive with God’s Spirit, but our bodies are dead because of sin (Romans 8:10).

Prayer for Eternity

Excerpt: Come On Up

That’s the way life is. And that’s the way this prayer is—iridescent with eternity and woven into ordinary life.
  • Verse 9: Father, cause your great and holy name to be honored and reverenced and esteemed and treasured above all things everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause you glorious, sovereign, kingly rule to hold sway without obstruction everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause your all-wise, all-good, all-just, all-holy will to be done all over this world the way the angels do it perfectly and joyfully in heaven—and make it happen in me.
That’s the breathtaking part of the prayer. And when we pray it, we are caught up into great things, glorious things, global things, eternal things. God wants this to happen. He wants your life to be enlarged like that. Enriched like that. Expanded and ennobled and soaring like that.

Prayer for the Everyday

But then we pray,
  • Verse 11: Father, I am not asking for the bounty of riches. I am asking for bread. Just enough to give me life. I want to live. I want to be healthy, and to have a body and a mind that work. Would you give me what I need for my body and mind?
Excerpt: Let Jesus Be Honored in the Lord's Prayer

  • Verse 12: And, Father, I am a sinner and need to be forgiven everyday. I can’t live and flourish with guilt. I will die if I have to bear my guilt every day. I have no desire to hold any grudge. I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, and so I have no right to withhold it from anyone. I let go of all the offenses against me. Please, have mercy upon me and forgive me and let me live in the freedom of your love. And, of course, we know now what Jesus knew when he said this. He knew he would also say of his death: “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). When we pray for forgiveness, we expect it not merely because God is our Father, but because our Father gave his Son to die in our place.
  • Verse 13: And Father, I don’t want to go on sinning. I’m thankful for forgiveness, but, Father, I don’t want to sin. Please, don’t lead me into the entanglements of overpowering temptation. Deliver me from evil. Guard me from Satan and from all his works and all his ways. Grant me to walk in holiness.
That’s the earthy part of the prayer. The mundane, daily, nitty-gritty struggle of the Christian life. We need food and forgiveness and protection from evil.

Our Father—In Heaven

Excerpt: Our Father vs. In Heaven

And I think these two halves correspond to the two things said about God in the way Jesus tells us to address him at the beginning in verse 9: “Our Father—in heaven.” First, God is a father to us. And second, he is infinitely above us and over all—in heaven. His fatherhood corresponds to his readiness to meet our earthly needs. His heavenliness corresponds to his supreme right to be given worship and allegiance and obedience.
For example, in Matthew 6:32, Jesus tells us not to be anxious about food and drink and clothing because “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” In other words, Jesus wants us to feel the fatherhood of God as an expression of his readiness to meet our most basic needs.
And then consider Matthew 5:34, where Jesus says, “Do not take an oath . . . by heaven, for it is the throne of God.” In other words, when you think of heaven, think of God’s throne, his kingly majesty and power and authority.

Majestic and Merciful

So when Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:9 to pray, “Our Father in heaven,” he is telling us that the prayer-hearing God is majestic and merciful. He is high, and also dwells with the contrite (Isaiah 57:15). He is a king, and he is a father. He is holy, and he humbles himself. He is far above us, and ready to come to us. He has plans for the whole earth and for the universe, and wants us to care about these great plans and pray about them; and he has plans for your personal life at the most practical level and wants you to pray about that.
So on October 5 last year, I wrote in my journal:
My heart’s desire is to be used by God for
the hallowing of his name and
the coming of his kingdom and
the doing of his will.
To that end I pray for
Health—give me daily bread;
Hope—forgive my debts; and
Holiness—deliver me from evil.
In other words, it seems to me that the great designs of God are first and mainly about God. His name being hallowed, his will being done, his kingdom coming. And the rest of the prayer is how I can be fitted to serve those great designs. My bread, my forgiveness, my deliverance—my health, my hope, my holiness—are for the purpose of being part of God’s great purposes to glorify his name and exalt his rule and complete his will.

The Unique First Petition

Excerpt: Hallowing Is Something You Do

But there was one more exegetical insight that came as I pondered and prayed this prayer again and again during the leave of absence. There is something unique about the first petition, “Hallowed be your name.” It’s not just one of three. In this petition, we hear the one specific subjective response of the human heart that God expects us to give—the hallowing, reverencing, honoring, esteeming, admiring, valuing, treasuring of God’s name above all things. None of the other five requests tells us to pray for a specific human response of the heart.
If you combine this fact with the fact that this petition comes first, and that the “name” of God (“hallowed be your name”) is more equivalent to the being of God than is his kingdom or his will, my conclusion is that this petition is the main point of the prayer and all the others are meant to serve this one.

One Great Passion

In other words, the structure of the prayer is not merely that the last three petitions serve the first three, but that the last five serve the first.
So on October 9 last year, I wrote in my journal:
My ONE Great Passion!

Nothing is more clear and unshakeable to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name.
His kingdom comes for THAT.
His will is done for THAT.
Humans have bread-sustained life for THAT.
Sins are forgiven for THAT.
Temptation is escaped for THAT.
And then on the next day, October 10, I wrote:
Lord grant that I would, in all my weaknesses and limitations, remain close to the one clear, grand theme of my life: Your magnificence.

Prayer for Pressures and Problems

 

Matthew 6:5-15
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
What an unspeakable and undeserved privilege it is to stand in this pulpit again and look out on you, the flock that the great Shepherd has called me to feed. I am thrilled to be back with you. Thank you for your great generosity in letting me be away for those months. I don’t know how long the Lord will give me to live. But I do know that as long as I live, those eight months will bear fruit in my soul, in my marriage, in my family, and in my ministry. My prayer and my hope is that you will be nourished by that fruit.
As I was leaving back in April, I said that it was time for a spiritual reality check for these four things: my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry. So I wrote a report about the leave of absence, addressing these four things, which will be published as my annual report, and which you can read at the Desiring God blog. I won’t say it all again here in this message, but it might be helpful to say a little, before we turn to God’s word.

On the Leave of Absence

The work that God is doing in my own soul and the work he is doing in our marriage are almost indistinguishable, because all sin is sooner or later relational. I said when I left that I wanted to set the sights of my Holy Spirit gun (Romans 8:13) on species of pride in my life. All sin is rooted in pride. So let me be more specific.
I would name my most besetting (and I hope weakening) sins as selfishness, self-pity, anger, quickness to blame, and sullenness. And all of these have been most often manifest at home, more than anywhere else. So for these eight months, I have tried to go deep and to go hard after the roots of these things. The Lord has revealed himself in his word in some very precious ways. He has also retaught me some very basic strategies for putting to death the uprisings of sin in my heart.
Time will tell, and Noël will tell, and you will tell, whether the progress I have made is deep and durable, or not. I pray it is. How God is doing these things will, no doubt, weave its way into messages and writings in the months and years to come. I hope they will be of benefit to your own soul and your relationships—whether single or married.

A Sermon on Prayer

So let’s begin that process with a sermon on prayer. What has God been teaching me about prayer in this spiritual warfare, and how might it make a difference in your life? I choose to focus on prayer because it’s the close of our annual Prayer Week, and because it has been with me during the whole leave of absence—both as a steady cry to God for his help in our souls and marriage and family and ministry, and as a recurrent focus of reflection and thinking. I prayed a lot, and I thought a lot about praying.
I love the prayers of the Bible. They shape my own prayers more than anything else. I love the prayers of Paul in Philippians 1:9–11, and Ephesians 1:16–21 and 3:14–19, and Colossians 1:9–12. I love the prayer of Jesus in John 17. And I love the whole book of Psalms, which is the inspired prayer book of the church—filled with such a range of emotions that the cry of our heart in almost any experience can find words in the Psalms.

The Lord’s Prayer: Simple and Spectacular

But the prayer in the Bible that has gripped me most during this leave is the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9–13. This is probably because, in God’s providence, I was memorizing the Sermon on the Mount with many of you. So week after week I was reviewing Matthew 6 in my mind, and so saying the Lord’s prayer over and over.
As I thought about it and prayed it, it had an effect on the big picture of my life, and it had an effect on the nitty-gritty, daily wrestlings in my life. I hope it will have a similar effect on you as you pray it.
Excerpt: The Lord's Prayer Is Very True to Life

The Lord’s prayer is very true to life in this sense. Life is a combination of spectacular things and simple things. In almost everyone’s life there are breathtaking things and boring things. Fantastic things and familiar things. Extraordinary things and ordinary things. Awesome things and average things. Exotic things and everyday things. That’s the way life is.

God’s Name, Kingdom, and Will

And, looked at one way, that’s the way the Lord’s prayer is. Almost everyone notices that it has two parts. The first part (verses 9–10) has three petitions; and the second part (verses 11–13) has three petitions. The first three petitions are:
  • hallowed be your name
  • your kingdom come
  • your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We are asking God to bring about these three things: cause your name to be hallowed; cause your kingdom to come; cause your will to be done as it’s done by the angels in heaven.

Our Food, Forgiveness, and Holiness

The second three petitions are:
  • give us this day our daily bread
  • forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
  • lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
You can see the difference—and feel the difference—between these two halves. The first three petitions are about God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will. The last three are about our food, our forgiveness, our holiness. The first three call our attention to God’s greatness. And the last three call attention to our needs. The two halves have a very different feel. The first half feels majestic and lofty. The last half feels mundane and lowly.

The Mingling of Eternity and the Everyday

In other words, there is a correspondence between the content of this prayer and the content of our lives. The big and the little. The glorious and the common. The majestic and the mundane. The lofty and the lowly.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” I take that to mean that the world and the human soul are iridescent with wonders linked to eternity. And yet our humdrum, ordinary, mundane experiences of this world keep us from seeing the wonders and from soaring the way we dream from time to time. Even we believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God—even we say, “We have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Our spirit is alive with God’s Spirit, but our bodies are dead because of sin (Romans 8:10).

Prayer for Eternity

Excerpt: Come On Up

That’s the way life is. And that’s the way this prayer is—iridescent with eternity and woven into ordinary life.
  • Verse 9: Father, cause your great and holy name to be honored and reverenced and esteemed and treasured above all things everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause you glorious, sovereign, kingly rule to hold sway without obstruction everywhere in the world (including my heart).
  • Verse 10: And cause your all-wise, all-good, all-just, all-holy will to be done all over this world the way the angels do it perfectly and joyfully in heaven—and make it happen in me.
That’s the breathtaking part of the prayer. And when we pray it, we are caught up into great things, glorious things, global things, eternal things. God wants this to happen. He wants your life to be enlarged like that. Enriched like that. Expanded and ennobled and soaring like that.

Prayer for the Everyday

But then we pray,
  • Verse 11: Father, I am not asking for the bounty of riches. I am asking for bread. Just enough to give me life. I want to live. I want to be healthy, and to have a body and a mind that work. Would you give me what I need for my body and mind?
Excerpt: Let Jesus Be Honored in the Lord's Prayer

  • Verse 12: And, Father, I am a sinner and need to be forgiven everyday. I can’t live and flourish with guilt. I will die if I have to bear my guilt every day. I have no desire to hold any grudge. I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, and so I have no right to withhold it from anyone. I let go of all the offenses against me. Please, have mercy upon me and forgive me and let me live in the freedom of your love. And, of course, we know now what Jesus knew when he said this. He knew he would also say of his death: “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). When we pray for forgiveness, we expect it not merely because God is our Father, but because our Father gave his Son to die in our place.
  • Verse 13: And Father, I don’t want to go on sinning. I’m thankful for forgiveness, but, Father, I don’t want to sin. Please, don’t lead me into the entanglements of overpowering temptation. Deliver me from evil. Guard me from Satan and from all his works and all his ways. Grant me to walk in holiness.
That’s the earthy part of the prayer. The mundane, daily, nitty-gritty struggle of the Christian life. We need food and forgiveness and protection from evil.

Our Father—In Heaven

Excerpt: Our Father vs. In Heaven

And I think these two halves correspond to the two things said about God in the way Jesus tells us to address him at the beginning in verse 9: “Our Father—in heaven.” First, God is a father to us. And second, he is infinitely above us and over all—in heaven. His fatherhood corresponds to his readiness to meet our earthly needs. His heavenliness corresponds to his supreme right to be given worship and allegiance and obedience.
For example, in Matthew 6:32, Jesus tells us not to be anxious about food and drink and clothing because “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” In other words, Jesus wants us to feel the fatherhood of God as an expression of his readiness to meet our most basic needs.
And then consider Matthew 5:34, where Jesus says, “Do not take an oath . . . by heaven, for it is the throne of God.” In other words, when you think of heaven, think of God’s throne, his kingly majesty and power and authority.

Majestic and Merciful

So when Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:9 to pray, “Our Father in heaven,” he is telling us that the prayer-hearing God is majestic and merciful. He is high, and also dwells with the contrite (Isaiah 57:15). He is a king, and he is a father. He is holy, and he humbles himself. He is far above us, and ready to come to us. He has plans for the whole earth and for the universe, and wants us to care about these great plans and pray about them; and he has plans for your personal life at the most practical level and wants you to pray about that.
So on October 5 last year, I wrote in my journal:
My heart’s desire is to be used by God for
the hallowing of his name and
the coming of his kingdom and
the doing of his will.
To that end I pray for
Health—give me daily bread;
Hope—forgive my debts; and
Holiness—deliver me from evil.
In other words, it seems to me that the great designs of God are first and mainly about God. His name being hallowed, his will being done, his kingdom coming. And the rest of the prayer is how I can be fitted to serve those great designs. My bread, my forgiveness, my deliverance—my health, my hope, my holiness—are for the purpose of being part of God’s great purposes to glorify his name and exalt his rule and complete his will.

The Unique First Petition

Excerpt: Hallowing Is Something You Do

But there was one more exegetical insight that came as I pondered and prayed this prayer again and again during the leave of absence. There is something unique about the first petition, “Hallowed be your name.” It’s not just one of three. In this petition, we hear the one specific subjective response of the human heart that God expects us to give—the hallowing, reverencing, honoring, esteeming, admiring, valuing, treasuring of God’s name above all things. None of the other five requests tells us to pray for a specific human response of the heart.
If you combine this fact with the fact that this petition comes first, and that the “name” of God (“hallowed be your name”) is more equivalent to the being of God than is his kingdom or his will, my conclusion is that this petition is the main point of the prayer and all the others are meant to serve this one.

One Great Passion

In other words, the structure of the prayer is not merely that the last three petitions serve the first three, but that the last five serve the first.
So on October 9 last year, I wrote in my journal:
My ONE Great Passion!

Nothing is more clear and unshakeable to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name.
His kingdom comes for THAT.
His will is done for THAT.
Humans have bread-sustained life for THAT.
Sins are forgiven for THAT.
Temptation is escaped for THAT.
And then on the next day, October 10, I wrote:
Lord grant that I would, in all my weaknesses and limitations, remain close to the one clear, grand theme of my life: Your magnificence.

Prayer for Pressures and Problems

Excerpt: Attack Your Problems Indirectly

Here is the sum of the matter.
Sooner or later life almost overwhelms you with pressures and problems—physical problems (give us daily bread), relational and mental problems (forgive us our debts), moral problems (lead us not into temptation). And what I want you to see is this. You have a Father. He is a thousand times better as a Father than the best human father. His fatherhood means he cares about every one of those problems, and he beckons you to talk to him about them in prayer, and to come to him for help. He knows what you need (Matthew 6:32).
That’s the way we usually attack our problems. And so we should. We attack them directly. I have this financial problem, or this relational problem, or this bad habit problem. Father, help me. That is right and good.
But Jesus offers us more in this prayer. There is more—not less than that, but more. There is an indirect attack on our problems. There is a remedy—not a complete deliverance from all problems in this life, but a powerful remedy—in the first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer, especially the first one.

Attacking Indirectly

God made you be a part of hallowing his name, extending his kingdom, and seeing his will done on the earth the way the angels do it in heaven. In other words, he made you for something magnificent and for something mundane. He made you for something spectacular and for something simple. He loves both. He honors both. But what we fail to see often is that when we lose our grip on the greatness of God and his name and his kingdom and his global will, we lose our divine equilibrium in life, and we are far more easily overwhelmed by the problems of the mundane.
In other words, I am pleading with you not to lose your grip on the supremacy and centrality of hallowing the name of God in your life. I am urging you from the Lord’s prayer that you go to God for bread, and for healing of relationships, and for the overcoming of besetting sins, and for the doing of God’s will, and for the seeking of God’s kingdom—all of it, all the time for the sake of knowing and hallowing, reverencing, honoring, valuing, treasuring God’s name (God’s being, God himself) above all things.

Feet on the Ground, Heart Rising to God

Keep your feet on the ground. That’s why the second three petitions are there. But let  your heart rise into the magnificence of God’s global will, God’s kingdom, and most of all God’s holy name—his being, his perfections.
You may not see it clearly now, but I testify from the Scriptures and from experience, there is more deliverance, more healing, more joy in the hallowing of his name than perhaps you ever dreamed. Let’s pray all year in the fullness of this prayer.
© Desiring God

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/our-deepest-prayer-hallowed-be-your-name

 

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Sign In | Cart (Empty) | Contact | Support DG Desiring God International Home Resource Library Blog Store Events About Us Home / Resource Library / Sermons / Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit January 03, 2010 | by John Piper | Scripture: Matthew 6:1-15 | Topic: Prayer Subscribe to... Watch: Full Length Listen: Full Length Excerpt Download Click To Play This is the first Sunday of our annual, year-beginning, Prayer Week. The very fact that we have such a thing as a Prayer Week raises the question I want to deal with today. But the question is much bigger than Prayer Week. The question is the relationship between discipline and freedom and spontaneity in prayer. Discipline By “discipline,” I mean planning to do certain things in regard to prayer, like… have a Prayer Week, or pray for before meals, or pray before an elders meeting, or kneel and pray in your wedding right after your vows, or at the beginning of a sermon, or early in the morning before breakfast going down in the basement nook with the space heater running, or with your spouse, just before you go to bed at night, or over the lunch hour in your cubicle, or on Tuesday and Friday mornings at church, or three times a day on your knees like Daniel (Daniel 6:10), or seven times a day like the psalmist (Psalm 119:164), or in the watches of the night (Psalm 119:148), or during and after your read your Bible in the morning. I call these “disciplines” of prayer because they don’t just pop out of you. You think about them, and decide they are a good thing to do, and then you intentionally do them. There is a certain measure of intentionality. Some people are very intentional, and we call them “disciplined.” And others are somewhat intentional. And others are not very intentional at all. And there are hundreds of gradations in between. We are all different. Freedom Alongside this, we think of “spontaneity.” Sometimes we use the word “freedom” to distinguish the difference from discipline. But I don’t want to put freedom alongside discipline because that would imply that there can’t be freedom in discipline. Which is not true. You can plan to pray in your wedding, and work out all the details down to how you will help her with her wedding dress, and hold each others’ hands, and yet, in that moment, feel an overwhelming, joyful, unfettered freedom of spirit—which means, you are doing just what you want to be doing and you are loving doing it. That’s what I mean by “freedom”—doing a good thing and loving doing it as you do it. The same is true for everyone of those disciplined acts I mentioned. In those acts of discipline, there can be wonderful freedom and joy. But it is also true that, because something is planned and we do it with some intentionality, we might also wind up doing it whether we enjoy it or not. You might be so light-headed when you kneel to pray at your wedding that you would just like for his moment to be over, and the sooner the better. This is not what we usually call “freedom.” You are not enjoying this moment, and can hardly compute what the pastor is saying. Or you might plan to pray with your roommates each night, and then have the joy go right out of the act because of tensions in the room. Or you might continue the tradition of praying before meals, and drift so far from God that the prayers become empty words, and they are done more like a machine than lover. Which would not be freedom. So I don’t put freedom alongside discipline as distinct from it. It can be wonderfully and powerfully present in any act of discipline. That’s what we long for. Spontaneity But alongside disciplined praying, like the ones I mentioned, I do put spontaneity. This is different from discipline. “Spontaneous” means that you didn’t plan it, but it rises up in your heart, and you do it without any specific earlier plan or intentionality. Something in the situation, or from the Holy Spirit, awakens the desire to pray. There is intention, but it happens in the moment spontaneously. You might… whisper a thank-you to God after a close call on the highway, or ask God for help in the middle of an exam, or confess to God your sin after saying something hurtful to a friend, or pray out in church during one of our congregational prayer times, or praise God for a beautiful sunset, or silently ask him for wisdom in the middle of a difficult phone conversation, or ask for strength when you are ready to drop and have another task to do, or pray for a missionary when you open his email and realize he needs help right now, or stop several times during an elder meeting to thank God and seek his guidance on some difficult matter facing the church. None of this is specifically planned. It is spontaneous. We tend to feel most free in our spontaneous praying, and often not as free in our disciplined, planned praying. A Swing of the Pendulum? So my question is: What does the Bible say about discipline and spontaneity and freedom in prayer? I was drawn to this topic this year because my sense is that, at least in the part of the evangelical church that I watch most closely, I think there is a swing of the pendulum from discipline to spontaneity in the name of gospel freedom. In other words, there is a concern to be gospel-driven, not discipline-driven. And this is often put in terms of legalism versus freedom. Or law versus grace. Overall, I think this way of thinking is a very good sign. If we don’t live on the gospel—that is, on the work of Christ for us on the cross—all our praying will indeed become a bondage and a stench in God’s nose. A Legalism of Resisting Discipline? On the other hand, it is possible to be a half-biblical person, and get real excited about the freedom and spontaneity of the gospel, and lose touch with the place that God has assigned to discipline, or intentionality. Our experience with God may be so shallow that the only way we have of conceiving of discipline is in terms of legalism—as though any intentionality that drives you to do a thing when you don’t feel like it can only be a work of the law, or an act of merit, or a way of earning salvation, or a strategy to get God on your side. And indeed, any act of discipline, no matter how good, may be just that. But what some fail to realize is that steadfast opposition to discipline may reflect a heart of legalism also. It is possible to turn any act or any resistance to an act into a legal performance that fails the gospel test. Which means that whether you are a person who leans toward discipline or a person who leans toward spontaneity, you are just as liable to trust in your own righteousness—your righteousness of discipline, or your righteousness of spontaneity—rather than Christ’s righteousness. The Heart of the Gospel The heart of the gospel is that Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3). That is shorthand for saying that the only way to be right with God is on the basis of who Christ is and what Christ has done, not who you are and what you have done. Or another way to say the gospel is this: God’s being 100% for you is based on Christ alone, which we receive and enjoy by faith alone. You can’t get God any more on your side than he is on the basis of Christ alone received by faith alone. The biblical basis is 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He takes our sin. We become his righteousness. And that happens not by our doing a few righteous works—like disciplined praying or like the anti-discipline of spontaneous prayer. It happens by faith in Christ alone. As Paul says in Philippians 3:9, I want to be “found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” The Dangers of Discipline and Spontaneity So when it comes to prayer and our standing with God, discipline counts for nothing, and resistance to discipline counts for nothing, but only faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). And that faith may be expressed in love through acts of discipline, or through warning against legalistic discipline. And that faith may be compromised by turning disciplined prayer into performance to get God on your side, or by turning the warning against legalist discipline into a performance to get God on your side. The opposite of legalism is not spontaneity. And the opposite of faith is not discipline. Spontaneity may be legalistic. And discipline may be an act of faith. Praying Both in the Closet and in the Spirit So let’s let the Bible teach us about the discipline of prayer and the spontaneity and freedom of prayer. I titled this message “Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit.” And the point of the title is to say that both are good and needed. The text from Matthew 6 refers to prayer in our closet, or our inner room. The texts that refer to praying “in the Spirit” are Ephesians 6:18 and Jude 1:20. Ephesians 6:18: “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.” Jude 1:20: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Spontaneity in the Spirit What does it mean to pray “in the Spirit”? There is a good clue in 1 Corinthians 12:3, where Paul says, “No one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” It seems clear to me that speaking “in the Spirit” means speaking under the guidance of the Spirit, or energized and helped by the Spirit. That’s why no one can say “Jesus be accursed” when speaking “in the Spirit.” And no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” (and mean it) unless he is speaking “in the Spirit.” So I take it that praying “in the Spirit” means praying under the guidance and with the help and energy of the Spirit. The Spirit is shaping our prayers and helping us pray. This is the way we pray when we are living on the gospel. This is the prayer-counterpart to faith in the gospel. When we are trusting God to love us and accept us and help us for Christ’s sake alone, the Holy Spirit is at work. He moves in and through that faith. How the Gospel Leads to Spontaneous Prayer The key verse is Galatians 3:5: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” The answer is that God supplies the Spirit by hearing with faith. That is, the Spirit moves in our lives and helps us pray and do everything else God calls us to do, not by being coerced by works, but because we are trusting God on the basis of Christ alone for this help. We don’t work our way into the Spirit. We trust God that, because of Christ—because of the blood and righteousness of Christ—the Spirit comes to help us and guide us. This is how the gospel relates to our praying in the Spirit. We don’t deserve this help from the Spirit. How do we get it? By works or by faith? Galatians 3:5 says by faith. We look to God, not as our enemy or as a frustrated father who can never be pleased, but as our Father who is 100% for us because of Christ alone. Therefore, we trust him, that because of Christ (his death and righteousness), he will give us the Spirit—and everything else we need. That is how we pray “in the Spirit.” That is what it means to be gospel-sustained. That is gospel-praying. Discipline in the Closet Now, what about praying in your closet—in your inner room? Jesus says in Matthew 6:5–6, When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Jesus says in verse 6: “Go to your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Now, to go to your room and shut the door requires some movement. You have to be intentional about it. To leave people and find a private place, where you won’t be heard by others, takes some effort. Jesus says this is good. Do this. This simple command stands for a hundred ways you may plan to pray or be disciplined. This is just one: Be sure to make part of your praying the private prayer where it is just you and God. Take whatever steps necessary to secure this kind of praying in your life. And if this kind of intentionality can be a fruit of the gospel, so can the other kinds that the Bible talks about. How the Gospel Leads Us to Disciplined Prayer And my point is that this intentionality—this discipline of private prayer where no one else can hear you—is indeed a fruit of the gospel. It is a fruit of faith in God’s love for us on the basis of Christ alone. You can see this in three simple ways. 1) Obeying Our Savior Gospel-based faith trusts Christ, so that if he tells us that something is good for us, we believe him and do it. We have no reason to doubt his word. He died for us to prove that he and his Father are 100% for us. So if he says go to your room and pray to the Father, we trust him—not to make him be on our side, but because he is on our side. 2) Desiring to Receive More Gospel-based faith has tasted and seen that the Lord is good and is always eager to receive as much of Christ as we can. So when he bids us go to the closet to be rewarded by our Father, we go with great expectation that he has a gift for us—more of himself. In the gospel, we have seen that not only is Christ the basis of all we need, he is the sum of all we need. Because of what we have seen in the work of Christ, we have fallen out of love with the praise of men, and now crave the surpassing value of Christ. We come to the closet to have all that God is for us in Christ. He is our reward. That’s what faith does because of the gospel. It seeks more of Christ, more of God in private prayer. It’s not what man can give that satisfies us, but the reward of God himself. That’s blood-bought, gospel faith. 3) Knowing All Our Needs Are Met Finally, because of the gospel—because Christ died for us—we know that everything we need has been purchased for us. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). In other words, every answer to prayer that would be good for us, Christ purchased by his blood. We did not and cannot purchase them. So when we go to our closet, we are not going to make a purchase. We are not going to negotiate. We are going because God has ordained that what Christ obtained for us, we receive by asking. Intentionality Rooted in the Gospel If you were starving, and the food of life were in a locked container, and Christ died to open the container, you would not be a legalist if you walked five miles and stood all day stood in line to receive your food with tears of expectancy and gratitude. Knowing that he had absolutely secured your food at the cost of his life would make you confident and humble and grateful, but it would not make you say, “I don’t need to stand in line. I don’t believe in such discipline.” “I’ll just wait till it spontaneously falls into my mouth.” No. There is simple discipline. Simple intentionality rooted in the gospel. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7). “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6). For More of Jesus For the sake of your own soul. For the sake of your family. For the sake of his church. For the sake of your vocation. For the sake of the nations. Plan this in 2010. Be intentional about this. Because Christ died for you, and through prayer God will give you what you need—mainly more of himself. © Desiring God Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Desiring God. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. 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