Matthew 6:9 | “Prayer is about God”

Preston Highlands Baptist Church

Growing in Prayer

A big part of our Christmas break was building Lego sets. Our whole family loves Legos. We love putting things together and seeing how things fit and what makes things work. The creativity and ingenuity of the sets is really fascinating to us.

A lot of us like seeing how things work. As we begin a new year and think about things we need to work on, a lot of us want to work on our relationship with God. We want to grow and mature and deepen in our understanding and experience of God.

If that’s you and you want to grow in your relationship with God, you have to grow in prayer. If you’re serious about your relationship with God, you know you need to grow in prayer. Maturing Christians are praying Christians.

How Does Prayer Work?

But how does prayer work? To grow in prayer you need to know how it works.

It must be said that there’s no secret key that unlocks the power of prayer. But it’s also wrong to think that we can’t learn how to pray, that prayer is just some mysterious thing we have to keep trying hard to do and hopefully eventually we’ll get it right. If that were true, when Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray (Lk. 11:1), he would’ve said, “I can’t, it’s just a mystery.” Rather, he gave them a set of words. He gave them the Lord’s Prayer.

During the month of January, we’re going to study the most famous prayer ever prayed. The Lord’s prayer are the words that have perhaps been spoken more often than any others in the history of the world. Why does this ancient prayer have such staying power? What does it teach us?

It may be short in size but it’s deep in meaning and application, so we’re going to look at it a little at a time. It can be found in Matthew 6 and Luke 11. We’ll be studying the longer version in Matthew 6, looking today at verse 9, at what’s called the address and the first petition of the prayer.

The main point of verse 9 is that prayer begins and ends with God. Prayer begins with God, not us, and is for his glory, not ours. We’ll see that prayer begins with God in verse 9a, and then that the end of prayer is God in verse 9b. Our two points could be two questions: Where do we start in prayer (v. 9a), and what’s the goal of prayer (v. 9b)?

Prayer Begins with God

At the beginning of verse 9, Jesus tells his disciples to “pray then like this.” He doesn’t say, “Pray this.” He’s not giving us words to repeat mindlessly. He’s giving us a blueprint for prayer. He’s saying that our prayers should be built out of these materials.

The first material that our prayers should be built out of is praise, and it’s right here in the first line of the prayer, “Our Father in heaven.” This line is called the address. It’s how we address or approach God. Ordinarily, Christians pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says we should approach God as “Father” and that he is “in heaven.”

More on those two things in a moment. How do you normally approach God? How do you start your prayers? If you’re like me, you’re prone to start by focusing on the mess you want God to get you out of or on the needs you want him to meet. We jump into prayer by jumping into a mess and then move right into our needs.

But Jesus is teaching us to orient our prayers more theologically than that. He’s telling us to start with praise. He’s telling us to get our eyes off ourselves for a bit and to start our prayers by focusing on God. Just as you praise one you love with words of kindness and affection, rather than giving them your laundry list of complaints, so also we approach God first with praise not petitions.

When we pray, we need to remember, as one writer says, that God is “not just a celestial cleaner-up and sorter-out of our messes and wants. He is God. He is the living God. And he is our Father. If we linger here, we may find our priorities quietly turned inside out. The contents may remain; the order will change. With that change, we move at last from paranoia to prayer; from fuss to faith. The Lord’s prayer is designed to help us make this change.”[1]

The first thing Jesus wants us to know about how prayer works is that prayer begins with God. Before we plunge ahead with petitions, Jesus teaches us to stop and recognize our situation and to revel in our God. He teaches us to start our prayers with praise.

Prayer starts by addressing God intimately as “Father,” and by bowing before his majesty because he’s “in heaven.” Prayer starts by acknowledging God’s goodness (“Father”) and greatness (“in heaven”). Let’s take these one at a time.

“Our Father”

First, Jesus says we approach God and call him “Father.” This is how he addressed God when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. 26:39) and in his high priestly prayer of John 17. But Jesus is God’s Son and we’re just creatures, so how can we call God “Father”?

If you remember our look at Galatians 4 a couple weeks ago, you know that we can only call God “Father” because he’s adopted us as his children through faith in Christ. People often think that everyone is a child of God, but that’s actually not true. The Bible says, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12).

By nature, the Bible says, we’re “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). This is why we have to be “born again,” or given a new nature that loves and follows Jesus. And when we’re born again, we’re adopted into the family of God so that God is now “our Father” and not merely “God” or “Creator” or “Judge.” As J. I. Packer says, “Prayer to God as Father is for Christians only.”[2]

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, it can be difficult for some to call God “Father” because of the pain that their earthly father inflicted on them. In his book on the Lord’s Prayer, R. C. Sproul says that when he talks with people struggling with that, he tells them to focus on the word that comes before “Father,” because “our Father” isn’t their father. He says, “‘Our Father’ is not the father who violated him. It’s our Father in heaven, our Father who has no abuse in Him, who will never violate anyone. We all need to learn to use this phrase and transfer to God the positive attributes that we so earnestly desire and so seriously miss in our earthly fathers.”[3]

“Our heavenly Father is perfect in all his ways and has worked to bring us into his family through his Son Jesus Christ. We aren’t naturally God’s children, but through adoption we can be.

Jesus teaches us to begin our prayers by remembering our adoption, be remembering that we’re loved by God, that he’s brought us into his home, and that even when we act like the prodigal, he’ll never stop caring for us or going after us. Our adoption means that God is more ready to hear than we are to pray, that he delights in us, that he loves us and likes us.

As John says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God” (1 Jn. 3:1). Do you see how remembering these things as you begin to pray will help you pray with confidence and joy?

If you have a desire to grow in prayer this year, it’s not so that you can maximize your spiritual potential. It’s because in your heart of hearts you want to know God as your Father.

“In Heaven”

But then next Jesus says we should come to God as “Our Father in heaven.” Why does he add that the Father is “in heaven”? What does this teach us?

Jesus is teaching us that God is good and great. Or as the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” puts it, he’s “merciful and mighty.” “Heaven” here doesn’t refer to the place where the souls of the redeemed are currently at. It refers to a different plane, not place, a different dimension. As Creator, God exists outside of and above time and space. He lives “in heaven,” not on the earth.

Jesus is teaching us to remember God’s bigness when we pray, to begin with worship because God is sovereign and self-existent and simple and eternal and infinite and incomprehensible and immutable and impassible and omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient and infinitely wise and good and righteous and glorious.

Our heavenly Father is in charge of everything. He’s free from all the limitations and weaknesses and sins of our earthly fathers. His fatherhood is perfect. Our divine Father is eternal and infinite so he’s big enough to deal with anything we bring him.

God has his eye on everything all the time, yet we have his full attention when we call on him. As Isaiah says, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (57:15).

The high and holy God stoops down to sinful mortals like us, to the contrite and humble who run to Jesus for refuge. The Most High stoops down to lift up those who see how big he is and how small they are. Do you understand God’s greatness and his goodness?

Let these thoughts of God grasp you and tell God how you feel about him and you’ll be worshipping in the way Jesus teaches us here.

Jesus is teaching us to start our prayers with praise. Do you always praise when you pray? Do you start with God or with your messes and needs? Jesus says that true prayer begins with God.

The End of Prayer is God

The first part of verse 9 says that prayer begins by focusing on God, not ourselves. But then the last part of verse 9 says that the end, or goal, of prayer is God.

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Hallowed be your name.” We need to understand what he’s saying here. The “name” of God in the Bible refers to his person, who he’s revealed himself to be. God’s “name” is God himself. And the third commandment tells us that God places a premium on his name (Ex. 20:7).

What does it mean to “hallow” his name? It means that it be known and honored as holy, as different from, higher, greater, purer, and sweeter than any other name.

Notice that this is a petition, not an assertion. Jesus isn’t telling us to pray, “God, your name is holy.” He’s teaching us to pray, “God, may your name be known as holy.” This is a petition, a specific request that we bring to God. The first thing Jesus told his disciples to ask for was that God’s name be honored as holy.

The end and goal of prayer is the glory of God. Jesus is teaching us that, in prayer, God matters more than we do. The most important word in this line is “your.” It’s God’s name and character that’s important above all else. As Psalm 115:1 says, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory.” God cares deeply about the honor of his name.

People often mispronounce our names and it can be aggravating or a bit embarrassing. It bothers us because it makes us feel like people don’t really know us or take us seriously, that if they really cared about us they’d get our name right. If we feel slighted when people get our name wrong, imagine how God feels when his name is dishonored?

You may think, “But isn’t God’s name already holy?” Yes, it is, but in our use of it it’s not kept holy. And I’m not primarily referring to our words. When we’re baptized, we have God’s name put on us. We’re baptized into “the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). We become his name-bearers in the world. As his children, we take his name as our own. Therefore, this prayer is about living lives that honor the family name.

As followers of Jesus, we don’t want to do anything that would bring shame or reproach on his good name. We want his name to be “hallowed,” or known and honored as holy and good. We want God’s name to be honored in every part of our lives. The goal of our work, marriages, friendships, ministries, free time, use of technology, finances, education, retirement, church membership is the honoring of God’s name.

But this is also a prayer that God’s name be honored by everyone in the world, that it be honored among the nations. It’s a prayer that the gospel would spread and that more and more people would call on God’s name. We want God’s holy name to be known and honored by everyone.

Honoring God’s name also means growing in gratitude. In Romans 1, Paul links dishonoring God with a lack of gratitude (1:21). So one way we “hallow” his name is by being grateful for his good creation, his word, his Son, his Spirit, his church, and his many blessings.

One way to dishonor God’s name in 2025 is by living in fear. When we live in fear we aren’t accepting life on God’s terms and we’re assuming that he’s lost control of his world. Remember, he’s “our Father in heaven,” so he can be trusted no matter how bad things get.

The “hallowing” of God’s name is our first petition in prayer. Jesus teaches us to care about the honor of God’s name above everything else. As a church, is our greatest hope this year that we make budget or add more members, or that God’s name be hallowed? Who’s name are we most excited about being known, ours or Gods?

Knowing God and Making Him Known

The first part of the Lord’s prayer says that prayer begins and ends with God. Prayer starts with God and it’s first concern is his glory. Prayer, then, is about knowing God and making him known. God made us to pray because he made us to know him.

In a world starving for spiritual experience, we have this prayer where Jesus gives us what we all long for: a way to commune deeply with God. He gives us a way to start a conversation where we encounter the living God.

And it’s not just by repeating the words of this prayer like a parrot. What parent wants their child to just talk to them in quotations? Rather, we can enter God’s presence as we let these words enter us, when we let the sense of what Jesus is teaching here remake our prayers, which in turn will remake us.

If you want to grow in your relationship with God this year, you have to grow in prayer. And the Lord’s Prayer shows us that it’s not about praying more, but about praying differently. Our priorities in prayer need to be “turned inside out.” We must learn how to praise God in prayer.

Do you want to know God better in 2025? Then let this prayer get into you and teach you that prayer begins and ends with God, not you. If you do, everything will change because you’ll change.

[1]N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), xiii-xiv.

[2]J. I. Packer, Growing in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), 182.

[3]R. C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 26.