Lakeland Seventh-day Adventist Church

Our relaxing ride on the bicycle ended with a shattering surprise, with the smashed back window of our car. After the feelings of violation and anger settled in, we realized we needed to hurry. We were out on the Van Fleet Trail at the Green Pond Trailhead and there was no cell service at all, nothing we could do until we got back into range, and the clock was ticking.

As fast as we could race back we started calling and the bad news started to roll in—hundreds of dollars of charges had already been made on our credit cards. The money wasn't the big loss. How would we get our good name back? What would happen to our credit score?

The New Living Translation of Matthew 6:9 begins the Lord's prayer like this, “Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.” That makes it a bit more understandable for most of us.

You see, when we take the name of Christian, we are charging the things we do in life on Jesus' credit card. We don't have any goodness, and so the world doesn't extend to us the credit for being good. But they want to see if Jesus is credit worthy.

Remember, we can't steal His name, He gives it freely when we come to Him in our poverty. Not only did Jesus pay our debt because of sin, crediting our account, but He has also given us the power to stay out of debt. “Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault,” Jude 1:24, NLT. Or maybe we could understand that as “without a single DEfault.”

When you use His name in your life what is it doing to His credit rating? With His grace in our accounts and flush with the cash of His power, God wants to answer in us this first part of Jesus' teaching on how to pray.