"Hallowed be Your name" (Matthew 6:9) is the next phrase of the Lord's prayer we need to look at. The most obvious interpretation is that Jesus encourages people to consider the name of God holy and worthy of reverence. But this seems to be a self-evident fact for true believers. There should be a deeper meaning in this statement.

In his book "The Sermon on the Mount", Emmet Fox writes: "In the Bible, as elsewhere, the "name" of anything means the essential nature or character of that thing, and so, when we are told that the name of God is, we are told that the name of His nature is, and His nature... is "hallowed". Now what does the word "hallowed" mean? Well, if you trace the derivation back into Old English, you will discover a most extraordinary and interesting fact. The word "hallowed" has the same meaning as "holy", "whole", "wholesome", and "heal", or "healed"; so we see that the nature of God is not merely worthy of our veneration, but is complete and perfect - altogether good... We have agreed that an effect must be similar in its nature to its case, and so, because the nature of God is hallowed, everything that follows from that Cause must be hallowed or perfect too".

Again, we see the Master emphasising the truth that knowing of God's nature is more important than verbal repetitions all the right phrases. Without this essential knowledge, our prayers are bound to be non-effective.

The epistle of James in the New Testament is a call to unity and wholeness. It is a challenging word to double-minded, innerly divided persons, who, as we are told, "are not dependable in all of their ways". James traces the root of their problem to grievous misunderstanding of divine nature. He writes:

"Do not err, my beloved brothers.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning".
James 1:16,17

One of the most important aspect of our prayer is cleansing of our mind from false ideas of God. We are to leave behind beliefs that God can be an author of sorrows and sufferings of any kind. Only good and perfect gifts come down from the perfect Source. God is Light, and there is no darkness in Him. How it is possible to pray for healing, believing that the Creator sometimes makes people sick to teach them a lesson? How it is possible to pray for divine supply of all our needs, believing that God allows some people to live in poverty in order to make them closer to Him? These are clear cases of double-mindedness, but there are many others.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, we've been taught to be double-minded when in comes to God and to our life. Now it is time to re-program ourselves.

The Bible tells that as we behold the glory of God, we are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory. This "beholding" does not necessarily imply some kind of mystical experience. "Beholding" means centering of our attention at something. So, in order to be radiant manifestations of all there is in God, we need to be persistent in centering of our attention at divine nature.

Many religious people are convinced that self-discipline is the way to achieve spiritual perfection. Yes, this quality plays its part in the process of our growth. However, self-discipline needs to be applied first not to our outward actions, but to our inner realm. All of our thoughts are to be directed to God - to the One who is all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present.

What will happen? We will fill the Presence. We will get in touch with the Wisdom and open ourselves to the flow of infinite ideas. We will sense God's power and love rising within us, to be demonstrated in all we say and do.