“Hallowed Be Your Name”

“Hallowed Be Your Name”
Luke 11:2
August 9, 2026

G.K. Chesterton said about the spiritual life, “The spiritual life has not been tried and found difficult; it has been found difficult and left untried.”  In that statement he is inferring something important about the spiritual life — it is simple, but hard.  The spiritual life is not especially complicated; even a young child can understand the primary elements of the spiritual life.  But those simple elements are hard to do. 

That is true about one of the most basic aspects of our spiritual life as well — prayer.  Prayer is not especially complicated, but it is hard to pray.  It is hard to be focused and intentional in prayer.  It is hard to persist in praying in a given situation.  It is hard to persist in praying when God keeps answering “no” or “not yet.”  It’s hard to persist in praying when we can’t tell the difference between “no” and “not yet.”  It’s hard to set aside time to pray when so many things seem to be pressing for our attention.  It’s hard to pray.

But it wasn’t hard for our Savior to pray.  He delighted to pray, regularly prayed, and prayed so noticeably and effectively that His disciples asked Him to teach them to pray (Lk. 11:1).  And He responded with a simple outline for how to pray that has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer.”  (It’s probably better to call it “The Disciple’s Prayer,” because it was a prayer that He gave for them to learn the process.)

Over the next several weeks, we will look at this prayer phrase by phrase, and see the richness of how our Savior teaches us to pray.  And we are going to pray. 

As a reminder, these words are not a formula to pray, but a pattern to pray.  Someone has said that you should recite the Lord’s Prayer daily — but take an hour to do it.  It’s a model for what God-honoring prayer looks like.  We’ve seen how we are invited to address God in prayer — as our Father; this morning we are given the first instruction on how to pray, to pray for His name to be sanctified…

Pray (and live) so God’s character is revealed.

The first petition Jesus teaches the Twelve (and us) is about the character of God — Hallowed be Your name.  My guess is that most of you have not used the word “hallow” this week — so let’s consider this petition by asking three questions about the character of God…
 
1.     What is God’s Name?
2.     How is God’s Name Sanctified?
3.     How Can I Sanctify God’s Name?

Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 11:2.

The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.