The worship service is less like servants entering the throne room to wait on the king’s needs and more like a father joining his family around the dining room table.
We will always need comfort until the reign of God, his kingdom, comes in full with Christ’s return, and our suffering and the sin that causes it is no more.
We subject ourselves to the governing authorities for the sake of our neighbor, that they might be protected from our sinful nature that seeks our advantage over theirs (and vice versa)
So let’s go to dark Gethsemane. For there we see that even in his greatest moment of weakness, Jesus is our only source of strength. He drinks the cup of wrath so we can drink the cup of grace.
When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.
To pray that God’s name is hallowed among us is to pray for the continual proclamation of the gospel in truth and purity that we would hear the word about Christ crucified for sinners.