Notice two things about the Lord’s Prayer. It begins with the words ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name’ (Matthew 6:9 NKJV), and ends with ‘For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen’ (v.13). God wants us to begin and end our prayers thinking of Him. It helps us to keep our focus on God and make Him our priority in life. Psalm 34:3 says: ‘Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.’ When we magnify an object, we enlarge it so that we can see and understand it more. When we magnify God, we do the same thing. We enlarge our awareness of Him, so we can understand Him more. This is what happens when we worship Him – we take our minds off ourselves and set them on God. We put the emphasis on Him. In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrases the final words of the Lord’s Prayer this way: ‘You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes’ (Matthew 6:13 MSG). Speaking about Jesus Christ, Peterson paraphrases Paul’s words like this: ‘God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the centre of all this, Christ rules’ (Ephesians 1:20-23 MSG). So when we magnify the Lord, we’re saying: ‘You not only rule the universe, you rule my heart!’

What Now?

Every time you pray, try starting your prayer with the first line of the Lord’s Prayer and ending it with the last line of the Lord’s Prayer, to help you magnify God.