declare

15May/110

Hallowed Be Thy Name?

"To hallow God's name means to hold it in reverence; hence, to hold him in reverence, to honor, glorify, and exalt him. To do this, far more than a merely intellectual knowledge of the meaning of the divine names is required. Humility of spirit, gratitude of heart, earnest study of God's works until observation changes into rapturous astonishment and worship is certainly implied....

"Hallowed be thy name" means, therefore, that the one who has been brought into fellowship with this tenderly loving Father now calls upon everyone to share this experience with him, and to exalt this glorious God.

This means far more than that the petitioner does his utmost to fight profanity.

It has a positive content.

The supplicant calls upon the entire creation and especially upon the world of men to praise his God. He exclaims, as it were, "O magnify Jehovah with me, and let us exalt his name together" (Ps. 34:3). He traces God's steps in history (Pss. 76-80, especially 78; further 106; 107; 118; 124; 126; 136), and wants his children and everyone to adore and glorify God because of his wondrous deeds. He also is filled with gratitude and amazement when he observes God's wisdom and goodness in nature, and he desires that his own thrilling observations and lasting impressions shall be shared by others, so that they too may see the reflection of God's glorious attributes in the sky above as will as in the earth below, and may exult in the One whom he calls "my God" (Ps. 8; 19; 29; 63; 65; 104; 139; 145; 147; 150).

So also today the person who knows what it means to pray "Hallowed be they name; will joyfully magnify the Lord when he beholds the blue of the starlit sky, full of silent beauty and majesty, with its myriads of stars, scintillating like so many dewdrops upon the meadows of the heavens. He praises God when he sees his glory reflected in the softly blending hues of the rainbow, in wooded hills, fruited groves, murmuring brooks, sparkling lakes, and meandering rivers, as well as when he listens to the richly variegated, almost continuous song of the mockingbird. He marvels when he contemplates the wisdom of God revealed in the construction of the human body (Ps. 139;15, 16). and when from general revelation he ascends to special revelation, and ponders the implications of such passages as Isa 53; John 3:16; Rom. 5:8-11; 8:31-39; and I Cor. 8:9, is it any wonder that he fall is love with the matchless name of him who through Christ is his Father, that he pours out his heart in fervent doxologies (II Cor. 9:15; Eph. 1:3 ff.; I Peter 1:3 ff.; Rev. 19:16, 17, and urges others to do likewise?

...this means that the worshiper is so completely filled with unrestrained eagerness that the Father's name be adored, honored, and glorified, that he cannot wait to communicate his consuming desire that it receive this honor from the lips, hearts, and lives of everyone."

William Hendriksen on Matthew 6:9c

Tagged as: evangelism, God's name, praise, worship No Comments

17Jan/110

The surpassing power belongs to God

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
(2 Corinthians 4:7 ESV)

As Sherry and I sat around today with some new missionary friends I was reminded of the fact that God has entrusted his gospel in weak vessels. It's not that my friends were appearing weak, by no means...although they are....it's that I was reminded that as a jar of clay my view of the gospel and missions can be so weak. I can forget that Jesus is the great shepherd who will bring in his sheep.

"And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."John 10:16

But he does this using his people who are very weak in order to show us that the power belongs to God and not us. Jesus is our good shepherd who leads us in how we are to love on and share his good news with the world. We are to learn the culture and ask questions about how to best communicate the good news in that culture. We are to be learners of the Word and of the World. We are to learn the Word so we can best love the World with the gospel. We are to pray. We are to trust. We are to acknowledge our weakness and his strength.

As we seek to share Jesus with others we will clearly see that we are weak and need a shepherd who we can trust to lead. It's not always a tidy set of methods that best produce fruit, but it is the power of God through his gospel, his timing, his process, his power.

I was encouraged to not only believe in the power of the gospel to see souls saved, but to trust in the Lord of salvation to do it. Being results oriented can easily cause us to shuck evangelism down into tidy categories of what works and what does not. In doing this we can unfortunately depend on our clay-bilities instead of depending on the surpassing power that belongs to God.

Tagged as: evangelism, gospel, Jars of Clay, Jesus, Power, Weak No Comments

10Aug/100