Father’s at the helm.” Yes! He’s at the helm! Let not your heart be troubled! “Your Father’s at the helm.” “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” The gospel is in that phrase. I have not been able to translate into language the half of the beauty and glory I myself have seen in it. You must find out for yourselves, by experience, the joy and peace it can bring into life. This name is ours to use; the love implied in it is ours to enjoy. Not one of us need go through life alone; not one of us need be orphaned and poor; not one of us need carry a troubled anxious heart. For Christ has taught us to see love on the Throne, and to call to the Almighty and Everlasting God who fainteth not, neither is weary, “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” III “Hallowed be Thy Name” “Hallowed be Thy Name.”—MATT. vi. 9; LUKE xi. 2. Last Sunday morning we talked together of the new and beautiful name by which Jesus taught us to address God when we draw near to Him in prayer. “When we pray, say Father.” This morning we pass on to the consideration of the first petition in the prayer itself. Between this first petition and the invocation there is the closest and most intimate connection. In the invocation Jesus gave us a new name for God. In the first petition He teaches us to pray for grace, to honour that new name of “Father” by thought and life. This “Pearl of Prayer” divides itself naturally into two parts, and it is a fact worth noticing that the petitions in the first half of the prayer are all concerned with God’s honour and glory. Our first thoughts when we kneel in prayer must be of God. Our first petitions must concern themselves not with our own personal advantage but with God’s glory and praise. This petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” stands first, because it is the first in natural order. For there is an order, “an order of precedence” shall I say, in prayer. I have seen a volume of sermons by Mr. Jackson, of Edinburgh, which bears the title “First things first.” “First things first” is a rule we may well remember in our prayers. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” said our Lord, and that precept is one for prayer as well as for life. Have you noticed how faithfully Jesus Himself observed the rule He here laid down for others? Examine His prayers, and you will find that with Him first things always came first. The glory of God was always the master petition in the prayers of Christ. He had to pass through times of sore distress and pain and agony—and Christ was not above asking for relief, deliverance, escape from the pain. But His own wishes were always kept in a subordinate place, it was ever “God first” with Him. “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” “Father, glorify Thy name.” That is the true order in prayer—God first. But we oftentimes reverse the order. Instead of “first things being first,” first things are often last and last things often first.