Hallowed Be Thy Name

¹“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” (Matthew 6:9). The third of the Ten Commandments is that we do not take the Lord's name in vain. We generally call this cursing. Therefore, to take the Lord's name in vain is to curse it or profane it or to make it unholy. In the Lord's prayer, Jesus taught a higher and holier version of the third commandment. Rather than simply refraining from making God's name unholy, we ought to do everything we can to increase its holiness. “Hallowed be thy name,” Jesus prayed, and so should we. If we are only using prayer to ask God to bail us out of difficult situations, we are not unlocking the full potential of our prayers. If we both pray for help but also offer our sincere gratitude, we are improving, but we are still falling short. A true prayer is one where we approach our Heavenly Father and we tell Him that we know that He is engaged in a great work to ease the burdens and save the souls of as many of His children as possible and we want to consecrate our lives to His great work and take His name upon us, not for vain or selfish reasons, but because we truly want to see His will done. If we truly want God's name to be hallowed, then we have to really mean it. We have to give heed to His call to love and serve one another with all of our hearts. I know that God's name is not nearly as Holy as it could be and that each of us have the opportunity and the responsibility to hallow His Name.