What Does It Mean to Pray to God as a Loving Father?

The Lord’s Prayer is an excellent example of our tendency to stop hearing the familiar parts of the Bible. The notion that “I know what this says” sends us racing through a passage without stopping to be amazed, but if you think of God as your Father in Heaven, you have Jesus to thank, for when he said, “Pray then like this,” he gave us permission to join him in addressing God as, “Our Father in Heaven.”

A Rare Address

Seen through the fresh eyes of a slow and thoughtful read, this is an amazing privilege! In addition to being incredibly generous, it’s also extremely rare, for the typical Jewish address for God in Jesus’s time would have been YHWH (Lord) or Elohim (God). While Old Testament saints may have occasionally referred to God as “Father,” it’s clear that they did not relate to God primarily as Father.

However, it was Jesus’s favorite name for God and it ushers in a new beginning, a new name for a new covenant! God is now known through his work of redemption accomplished by his Son.

Not a Mere Creature

Do ever you think about, when you pray, in whose presence you are speaking? Do you ponder the marvel of being able to say to God, “My Father.”

If I say that, what am I saying? 
I’m his child. This establishes my position before him.
I’m not a mere creature.
Not a slave.
A child.

If you are God’s child, you have a Father in heaven! You could do nothing more important every morning than to wake up in the awareness that the Creator and Sustainer of the universe is your Father. His heart is always for you. He is relentlessly committed to your good.

It’s Complicated…

For some of us, this is complicated. We live on a fallen planet and the only kinds of fathers available to us are sinners, some worse than others.

The fatherhood of God is not a relationship to be feared or scorned. He is your perfect Protector and Provider. God is the exact opposite of every way you have been failed by an earthly father.

The fatherhood of God is not about the superiority of men over women, and we’re not going to get bogged down in this today, but suffice it to say that God has chosen to reveal himself in scripture with masculine pronouns and titles, so we submit to his divine prerogative.

We are praying to the one who is in charge of his whole kingdom. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us so vividly that, “‘Our Father’ is the one who rules the whole cosmos, and who speaks in earthquake, wind, and fire. Any less of a god wouldn’t do us much good.”

God is the exact opposite of every way you have been failed by an earthly father. Saying “Our Father,” we have both the transcendence of God and the immanence of God.

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Here, in one phrase, “Our Father,” we have the transcendence of God and the immanence of God. He is far beyond all that we can imagine, and yet he is nearer than the air we breathe.

It Is No Small Thing

If today you’re celebrating Father’s Day with an annual dose of ambivalence, let your heart and mind go to the safe and abiding truth of your relationship with God. It is no small thing for us to have the right to call the Holy One of Israel our Father, and ourselves his children.

At great cost…

 …the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:3-6

We do not relate to God merely as a subject relates to a king or only as a sheep relates to a shepherd. So spend some time on Father’s Day thanking Jesus for giving us the right and then teaching us to say, “Our Father.” And then let your heart rejoice in the truth.

Holding You in the Light,

We do not relate to God merely as a subject relates to a king or only as a sheep to a shepherd. On Father’s Day thank Jesus for giving us the right and then teaching us to say, “Our Father.” Then let your heart rejoice in the truth.

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