“Hallowed be Your name” is a time of seeing how forgiving, understanding, loving, gracious, and merciful your heavenly Father is. It is a time of learning how to feel guilt about something you have done wrong and still WANT to come to Him and let Him help you with it. It’s a time to appreciate that He NEVER sins against you; He has chosen to always be holy, generous, forgiving, loving, and sinless.

This is a praise time for you to tell Him how much you appreciate His purity, grace, and mercy. He isn’t allowing you to get by with hurting yourself, others, and His reputation and plan; but, He isn’t condemning (separating Himself from you) or rejecting you either.

When you have done something that you feel God shouldn’t forgive you for; or, you have repeatedly failed in some area and feel God should give up on you, that is the time to learn to appreciate how patient, loving, and forgiving He REALLY is. Bring your disappointments and frustrations about your failures to Him and realize just how wonderful He is. See that He keeps loving you even when you don’t deserve it (grace and mercy).

Peter thought he was being very gracious when he forgave someone for a sin against him, if he forgave them seven times. But Jesus showed him a grace and mercy that was much greater than anything Peter had ever seen.

There came a day in Peter’s life where he denied that Jesus was his Lord. He not only denied Him once, he denied Him three times. The guilt he felt from that moment on was so intense that Peter thought Jesus would never forgive him or ever accept him as His friend. But, Satan was lying to Peter and telling him that Jesus would never accept such a sin. It was good that Peter felt guilty about what he had done; but, Satan was ADDING an intense guilt to Peter’s healthy guilt from God.

Now go back to Peter’s discussion with Jesus in Matthew 18:21-22. It was about Peter thinking he should only forgive someone seven times for them sinning against him. Remember how Jesus said seventy-seven times? When it was Peter forgiving others, seventy-seven times it sounded like too much. But, when Peter had committed such a horrible sin, that seventy-seven times sounded wonderful; that is how big and how powerful God’s grace and mercy are for you.

You will make a lot of mistakes, have a lot of failures, and hurt yourself, others, and God’s plan many times; we all do. But, if you continue to WANT to stop doing these things, God will continue to forgive you. Jesus will keep training you and empowering you to sin less and less.