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. O let us live for this, and let, on each act of
adoration, Our Father! there follow in the same breath, _Thy_
Name, _Thy_ Kingdom, _Thy_ Will;--for this we look up and long.
'_Hallowed be Thy 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
ye 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 Thy name.'
'_Thy kingdom come._' The Father is a King and has a kingdom. The
son and heir of a king has no higher ambition than the glory of
his father's kingdom. In time of war or danger this becomes his
passion; he can think of nothing else. The children of the Father
are here in the enemy's territory, where the kingdom, which is
in heaven, is not yet fully manifested. What more natural than
that, when they learn to hallow the Father-name, they should long
and cry with deep enthusiasm: 'Thy kingdom come.' The coming of
the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the
Father's glory, the blessedness of His children, the salvation of
the world depends. On our prayers too the coming of the kingdom
waits. Shall we not join in the deep longing cry of the redeemed:
'Thy kingdom come'? Let us learn it in the school of Jesus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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