Date of message: 30 December 2002
Subject: The Family Prayer - "Holy Is Your Name"
Shalom, Boker-tov (good morning),

May the year 2003 indeed be a more blessed year for you and your loved ones and may the Lord grant to you good health and special favor in all your endeavors.

As you can see, starting next year I might be sending you the weekly message from my home email as well besides this address. This will give me more options in the event that I do not have my notebook computer with me and also this will give me something to do in the evenings as the Lord leads me. So please do not be surprised if the sender does not look familiar to you. In fact you will find my home email address at the addressee line.

This week I want to share with you the next section of the Family Prayer which is "Holy is Your Name". What goes into a name? I remembered when I first received the Lord into my life as my personal Lord and Savior I wanted to announce to the world that I am a new person and therefore I wanted a new name added to the name given me by my father.

At birth I was given the name "Lap Wai" which means "Excel (Wai) in Independence (Lap)" because he wanted me to do well in life and improve on his lot. He had it rough as a youngster running away from the Japanese army in starting from Guangdong Province in China all the way through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia between 1937 till 1945 and he did not want me to end up like him. He confided with me that it took him a couple of months to come up with my name and I am grateful for that. I chose the name "Andrew" for myself because I wanted to be like the Apostle Andrew in the gospel accounts who was portrayed as one who was always pointing others to our Lord Jesus Christ.

And when my wife was pregnant with my son, I asked my father to choose a good name for him. He spent a month thinking through a list of possible names and when he gave me the list, there were about twenty different combinations. Of course I had to make the final choice as he is now my son and as the father, it is now my responsibility to give him his name. I chose the name "Qi Wen" or "Beginning (Qi) of a new Culture (Wen)" because he symbolizes a new generation born in a Christian family.

Names are important as they tell many things about the people involved. Likewise the Lord has many names and each name gives us a different facet to His character. In the Old Testament, the children of Israel were instructed that the Name of God was so holy that they were not even allowed to pronounce it. That name was none other that YHVH or "Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey" or as the bible translators would use the word LORD to represent Him. The Jewish scribes would go to great lengths to purify themselves before they would even write down the name "YHVH" and then they would purify themselves again after that had done so. They were not to take the name of the Lord lightly as to do so would have brought blasphemy to the name of the Lord.

The Lord is so marvelous that numerous names were given in the Old Testament to describe Him. We had seen His provisions in YHVH Jireh, His healing power in YHVH Rophe, His tender shepherd heart in YHVH Rohi, His victorious might in YHVH Nissi, His righteousness in YHVH Tsidkenu, His omnipresence in YHVH Shamma, His sanctification power in YHVH M'Kaddesh and His everlasting peace in YHVH Shalom. We also learnt about His all-sufficiency in El Shaddai and His creation power in Elohim.
The name of the Lord is so holy that even the evil spirits tremble whenever His name is declared. Wherever Jesus went during the three years that He was ministering on this earth, demons flee when they came face to face with Him. Who can stand before a holy God? None except those whom He has redeemed for Himself.

For us who believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are placed on different grounds from those who do not know and experience Him. We are now called children of the Father and being children, we have full access to the Father. This is made possible not because of our own goodness; indeed we are all sinners condemned. No, we are able to come before Him as children because of what the Lord Jesus Christ had done for us on the cross at Calvary. When He died on the cross, He was able to satisfy the Judicial Father and had all our sins removed from us. His one act of redemption was sufficient for all eternity because He lives outside our time zone and to the Lord, everything is in a continuum. When we put our faith in the Lord Jesus, the Father now looks at us not as who we are but as "whose" we are - we are in Christ Jesus - and we look good to Him.

We pray "Holy is Your name" because we want to acknowledge to the Father that indeed His name is holy and that we should not take His name lightly. It is rather sad to hear so many take the name lightly by making jokes with that name and also as curses and as swear words. It is as if it has become a fashion statement and the "in" thing to do and that one would be viewed as weird if one does not swear by the name of the Lord.

My friends, let us not bow to worldly pressure and do as the Jones do. With the love of Christ implanted in our hearts, let us revere the name of the Lord and worship Him with the praises from our hearts. That pleases the Lord.

Have you placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted Him into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior? Why not spend a couple of moments and pray this prayer and invite Jesus into your hearts and your life will be turned around. You will begin to experience His love for you as we all did when we received the Lord Jesus into our hearts.

Our Heavenly Father, our Daddy God, thank you that You loved us so much that even when we were still sinners, You sent Your Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, down into this world to die for all our sins.
Lord Jesus, thank you that You came, You obeyed the Father, You died for all on the cross, You conquered death and You rose again on the third day. And now, because of Your death and resurrection, we, who believe in You as our Lord and Savior, will no longer have to die but we receive Your eternal life. Come into my heart, I pray, and make my heart Your home.

Thank you that because of what You have accomplished for us on the cross, I am now a child of God the Father. I am eternally forgiven of all my sins, greatly blessed as Your child, highly favored as a joint-heir with Jesus, deeply loved because of my position in Jesus and completely protected because of You, Lord Jesus and in Your precious Name I pray.
Amen.

If you have prayed that prayer for the first time, welcome to the Family of the Father (and it is a very large universal family). It is important that you are not alone facing your personal trials but that you can obtain good help wherever you are. Why not take the time to find your own local Christian family (local church) and worship the Father together? You will be greatly encouraged when you meet together to worship the Father, for fellowship and for the study of the Word of Christ.
The Lord blesses you and keeps you,
The Lord makes His face shine upon you and be gracious to you and all your loved ones,
The Lord lifts up His countenance upon you and gives you His shalom peace.
Numbers 6: 24 - 26

Have a blessed week ahead, Shavrou-tov
Shalom,
Andrew L W Lee

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