Pray Above All Things that God Would Be Glorified

"Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. ..."
- Matthew 6:9 -

This first petition of the Disciple's Prayer is first by design. This request for God's glory is a filter through which we pray. Everything we ask for in prayer and everything we do in our lives is to be asked for and done so that God would be glorified - that the beauty of His manifold perfections would be magnified for all to see.

This is the highest request we could ever attain to make of God, for it is this which is His own most foundation and most ultimate commitment. He Himself has stated that He does all He does with a chief regard for the glory of His own name.

• Isaiah 42:8 – I am Yahweh, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another.
• Isaiah 43:7 – Everyone…whom I have created for My glory.
• Isaiah 43:25 – I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake.
• Isaiah 48:11 – For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; for how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.
• Ezekiel 36:22-23 – It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.…I will vindicate the holiness of My great name.
• Ephesians 1:11-12 – …according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.

And He has given us the same command: to glorify Him – to make much of Him – in everything.

• 1 Corinthians 10:31 – Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
• 1 Peter 4:11 – Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

And Jesus Himself prayed this way:

• John 12:28 – As He acknowledges that His soul has become troubled as He contemplates His work to be completed on the cross, the request He makes to God for the comfort of His soul is: “Father, glorify Your name.”
• John 17:1 – As He began to pray concerning His crucifixion, He opened with these words: “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.”

And so a great cloud of witnesses counsels us on what this instruction means for our prayer lives:

He is teaching us to ask that God's name would be regarded as sacred, that it would be treated with reverence, and that it would be seen as holy. We must see this if we are to pray according to the pattern Jesus set for us. - R. C. Sproul.

We pray for ourselves and for other followers of Jesus and for the world that we would reverence and cherish the name of God above things. This is the first function of prayer -- to pray that people would pursue the glory of God. - John Piper.

It means a burning desire that the whole world may bow down before God in adoration, in reverence, in praise, in worship, in honour and in thanksgiving. Is that our supreme desire? Is that the thing that is always uppermost in our minds whenever we pray to God? I would remind you again that it should be so whatever our circumstances. - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Is that your supreme desire? Is that the thing uppermost in your affections, in whatever you do? May God grant that it would be so.

And so this first petition of the Disciple's Prayer teaches us that we must re-orient all our thinking and all our desires to be entirely in tune with God's glory. As a disciple of Christ, I want to follow Him. I want to think like He thought, and be concerned about what He was concerned about. And, as He makes evident both by His example and by giving priority to this first petition, He was concerned about glorifying the Father.

The desire for the name of God to be glorified in the sight of all people must drive all of my life as a follower of Jesus Christ. This includes my prayer life.