The Lord’s Prayer: Honoring the Father

Recorded in both Matthew and Luke, the Lord’s Prayer is the prayer given to the disciples by Jesus. In Matthew, the prayer is given as part of a larger teaching; in Luke, it is given in response to the disciples’ request that Jesus teach them how to pray. This prayer still unites Jesus’s disciples today. Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians all use it as part of their service. Every time they meet together, they pray the Lord’s Prayer together, as it was meant to be prayed. Notice that the Lord’s Prayer is not, “My Father” but “Our Father” – it’s meant to be prayed in community with other disciples of Christ.

My particular interest in the Lord’s Prayer comes from a saying of the Church – lex orandi, lex credendi, or as it is sometimes seen, lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The first phrase roughly means “As we pray, so we believe.” The second phrase takes it one step further to say, “As we pray, so we believe; as we believe, so we live.” The Church has always understood prayer to have a formative effect upon the person who prays. That’s why there are prayers that are meant to be said again and again and again, like the Rosary. Repetition of prayers molds our minds, so that we can train our souls to pray. Much like we train our bodies and form our muscle memory, so do we teach our souls how to pray, even when we don’t feel like it.

I believe that there is another aspect of the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi – that the way we pray shows us what we really believe. Our prayers, our communication with God, reveal the things closest to our hearts that we consider worth taking before God. So, what are we saying when we take only our grievances to him with no praise, only our supplications with no confession? Prayer requests are good things, but the way we speak to God reveals much about our beliefs about him. By deliberately examining our prayer habits, we can see what we really think about God. Do we only give God a few minutes at night or in the morning, or do we make an effort to spend time praying? Do we only make requests for ourselves? Do we pray for things that don’t make sense, like asking God to help us with something while refusing to work with him? If we know what we believe, we can teach ourselves to believe the right things.

In light of those two phrases mentioned above, what does the Lord’s Prayer mean for us? How does it inform our beliefs and our actions? These are the two questions that I will attempt to answer. If prayer can inform our beliefs and our beliefs can inform our actions, then it seems like the prayer taught to us by Christ himself should be of utmost importance for our instruction and spiritual nourishment. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us what it means, to a large degree, to be a follower of Christ.

Matthew 6:9

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Luke 11:2

“Father, hallowed be your name.

Why do we honor God? At first glance (and especially to many Christians), the answer is simple enough – we honor God because he’s God. What other reason is needed? He’s the sovereign king of the universe, and that means that you have to honor him. However, I’m not a fan of this answer, because it’s an answer based on coercion and power and force. While there is definitely an element of God’s power in the reasoning of our honoring him, it should not be the sole reason. Jesus came in the form of an infant and spent his life around those with no power, persuading them to love and follow him. He didn’t come as a conquering king to force people to honor him.

A good reason to honor God is because of what he’s done. And while this is definitely related to who God is (God does things because of his character), it’s a reason that is based less on his being in authority and more on the way he’s treated us. Isaiah writes, “Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously” ¹Isaiah 12:5 and “I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure” ²Isaiah 25. In the Magnificat (Mary’s song of praise), she sings that “he who is mighty has done great things for me” ³Luke 1:49. It is for this reason that we honor God – for his character in chasing after his children and bringing about our reconciliation through Christ. In short, we honor God because he’s proven himself deserving of that honor. He has made clear to humanity that he is for us; therefore, we honor him in our actions.

There are three parts to honoring God.

• The first is to worship God. Jesus tells us that loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength is the greatest commandment ⁴Matthew 22:37-38. In worshiping God, we give him what is rightfully his. We cheerfully give of our income ⁵2 Corinthians 9:7, our time, our skills, our praise, and even our wills by choosing obedience to God. Honoring God in these ways means being present for worship in church (and really being there instead of letting our minds wander). It means that we willingly say “Yes” to God and not other idols that demand our time and money. It means serving him in some way. Some people serve as ministers, others greet people in the entrance to the church. Both are ways to worship God.
• We also honor God by serving our neighbors. Not only are we obeying the second greatest commandment ⁶Matthew 22:39, but we are honoring the fact that our neighbors bear the image of God in the same way that we do. Not only are we honoring that image of God, but we serve Christ by serving others, especially those whom society has declared to be unworthy of service ⁷Matthew 25:40. Serving and loving others means several things. It means taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves and expecting nothing back; it means treating people like they are indeed bearers of the divine image and creatures worthy of God’s love; it means putting the needs of others above the needs of oneself. Serving others doesn’t just mean working at soup kitchens or crisis centers (although it does mean that too). It means serving each person in your life in the way that you can. I can serve others by listening, by caring, by helping with chores, and I can do these things for anyone.
• Finally, we honor God in our own lives by pursuing purity and discipline. We bear the image of God as humans. Beyond that, we are temples of the Holy Spirit ⁸1 Corinthians 3:16-17, so we have a responsibility to treat God’s temple as holy. We should keep our bodies disciplined to lives that follow Christ. Regular prayer and reading of Scripture outside church should help us to keep our mind focused on Christ. As Paul says, we are to present our bodies to God as part of our spiritual worship ⁹Romans 12:1. In my opinion, honoring God in our bodies is hard because we aren’t used to it, frequently. We aren’t used to telling ourselves “No” and keeping ourselves from our desires. Learning to control our desires is important, though; doing so means that we can reject the sins that we desire when we are tempted if we’ve taught ourselves to care more about our spiritual health than our selfish desires.

All of these ways of honoring God produce growth in each other. By worshiping God, one gains a better understanding of the nature of God and his love and is better able to reflect that understanding onto others and onto self. By loving others in Jesus’s example and attempting to redirect one’s own desires to God, a person is better prepared to worship God in formal worship services. In the Lord’s Prayer, honoring God is the opening statement at serves as the basis for the rest of the prayer. Without this basis, there would be no need to pray, since the rest of the prayer relies on the premise that the person who is praying desires to honor God.