Luke 11:1-4 -Hallowed be your name

11:1

“One day ...” The “One day” and “in a certain place” show that Luke’s emphasis is on the teaching, here he is not particularly concerned with exactly when or where this took place. Evidently, John the Baptist had taught his disciples how to pray, Jesus’ disciples now wanted him to do the same.They had just seen, or at least been aware of, Jesus praying. They wanted to be able to pray like Jesus did.

11:2-4

We have here a prayer similar to that found in Matthew 6:9-13, though a slightly shorter version, and debts are replaced by sins. First of all we address God as Father, we forget how profound this is. Muslim’s would never dream of addressing Allah as Father. We are meant to live as children of God, in an intimate and trusting relationship with Him. We are not alone in the universe, and we need to remind ourselves of this daily.

The name of the Lord is to be honoured and treated with reverence. We live in an age when God’s name is not held in respect in our society. This should encourage us to pray all the more earnestly that His name will be honoured. Alongside this we are to pray that His kingdom will come. Our desire is to see God’s kingdom come on earth. Again, we should not be discouraged when we see men rebelling against God, but should pray all the more fervently.

So we start with praise to God and praying for His kingdom to come. Then we pray for ourselves and our daily needs. It is not that our daily needs are not important, but if we seek first the kingdom, then these things will be taken care of (Matt 6:33).

As well as practical needs, we need forgiveness, and we need to forgive. We are to live in an atmosphere of forgiveness, not one of bitterness or seeking revenge. In teaching about prayer Jesus tells us that we need forgiveness. We should change, we should become better Christians, more Christlike, but this side of eternity we will still sin. This is not an excuse for sin, or for taking a lackadaisical approach to sin, but we should not let our sin utterly dishearten us.  And we must have an attitude of forgiveness towards others.

We can fall so easily. Part of our response is to act carefully, but part of our response should also be to ask God to keep us away from temptation.