"He continued to pray just as he had always done." Daniel 6:1
Begin
Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture
Reading: Matthew 6:9-13
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation
but rescue us from the evil one.
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation
but rescue us from the evil one.
Devotional
“Hallowed be Thy Name”. Most of us don’t use the word “hallow” very much. Therefore “hallowed be” is hard is understand. As I learned in seminary the grammar itself is daunting. It’s future or present passive subjunctive if I remember correctly. So what does that mean?
“Hallowed be Thy Name”. Most of us don’t use the word “hallow” very much. Therefore “hallowed be” is hard is understand. As I learned in seminary the grammar itself is daunting. It’s future or present passive subjunctive if I remember correctly. So what does that mean?
I
like how the NLT puts it (above).
The Message renders it “reveal who you are”.
I like that too because it makes the point that I am asking God to reveal
Himself to the world in all His Fullness which is both really, really scary and
really, really amazing and also really, really comforting unless you’re a
person who refuses to allow your world to be messed with by someone who has a
right to do exactly that, in which case you’re in trouble.
When
I pray, “may your name be kept holy”, I am praying a prayer that will mess
with my day.
God will answer that prayer but be prepared to be made really
uncomfortable.
Be prepared to be confronted today with the clash between what you want
to do and what God wants and that’s not only irritating but it also changes
the course of your life depending on the decision you make at the moment of that
clash.
“May your name be kept holy” may mean choosing an honest and
forthright action that makes you vulnerable to criticism or worse by your boss.
Choosing the easy but not fully honest route means that you have
obfuscated the holiness of God by your behavior.
And you have certainly discovered by now that every decision you make,
either in favor of honoring God or the opposite, at any point in any day has a
cumulative effect, in fact becomes a habit in the particular direction you first
took.
Of course the worst of these scenarios is that you choose against God’s
holiness in so many little ways, for so very long, that you no longer even
notice.
In that case you have rejected God and that means you’re in trouble.
The Good News, however, always trumps the bad. If you have any sense at all that you have been walking away from God, that means that God Spirit is at work in you and on you and you can still repent. Repentance is huge and simple and hard. Huge because it turns you back to God. Simple because it’s simply a turn around. Tell God you’re sorry, go back and fix what can be fixed, then go a new direction. Hard because old habits are hard to break and asking forgiveness is humiliating. But it is through humility, even humiliation, that the road to salvation is found
Questions
to Consider
In
what areas of your life have you been taking God for granted?
Where might you have been cheapening God’s Grace and his
sacrifice on the cross by treating the holy things of life as less than
the big deal that they are?
Prayer
Lord,
“may your name be kept holy”
As I come face to face with your answer to that prayer today, be
it at work, at home, on the highway, in grocery store, or in private at
my computer, please give me the desire, the strength, the courage to
choose to keep your name holy at that very juncture.
May that decision be a true act of repentance setting me on the
path to salvation.
Amen”
http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/dailyoffice.pdf
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