Why we Pray Our Father
Our Father in heaven,
— Matthew 6.9-13, NIV/NLT
may your name be kept holy.
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
What does God look like?
How you answer that question may reveal the most important thing about you. Because the most important thing about you, I believe, is what you think about when you think about God.
And if that’s true, what you think about God probably goes all the way back to your childhood.
At some point, someone somewhere along the way either directly or indirectly taught you about God, or taught you what to think about God. And when they did, they gave you an image of God. And in that moment, they taught you whether or not you could trust God.
In her book, OMG!: How Children See God, Monica Parker collected pictures from more than 300 children ages 4-12 who she asked to draw pictures of God.
There were some pictures you might expect to see from a child who was asked to draw a picture of God.
Brandon drew a picture of God as a superhero with red hair.
Gabby drew a picture of God with a long white beard and big ears so he can hear everything we say.
Makayla pictures God with advanced cloud technology sitting behind his desk.
And Olivia sees God with a cheesy grin, throwing lightening bolts, and apparently some armpit hair!
Our Image of God
Somewhere along the way, we all came up with an image of God, with a way we see God, a picture God. And that image of God affects everything about us, including… and maybe most importantly, the way we pray.
Albert Haase once wrote in his book on the The Lord’s Prayer that,
“Our image of God is one of the most, if not the most, important aspects of the spiritual life.”
– Albert Haase, O.F.M.
That’s true for a multitude of reasons but perhaps most importantly because the way we see God, the way we image God, affects the way we pray to God, or the way we spend time with God in prayer.
How you pray may be directly connected to whether you picture God with big ears or with lightening bolts in his hands. It may depend on whether you imagine God behind a desk surrounded by computer screens or as a superhero waiting for your call for help.
And for a lot of us, we simply haven’t replaced the picture of God we had as kids with an adult version of God. We haven’t updated the picture frame.
We thought of God one way when we were 12 and we haven’t matured in our thinking of God since then. We haven’t grown in our understanding of who God really is or what he really looks like since we were children. Now we’re in our 20’s, our 30’s, our 40’s, our 50’s, or 60’s or older… and we still have a childlike image of God.
Having faith like a child is something Jesus encouraged us to have. But having a childlike image of God as adults results in an immature faith that Jesus would challenge us to change.
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
As the story goes, one day one of Jesus’ disciples came to him and he came with a request. And I love that Luke, one of the gospel writers, includes this detail. Matthew and Luke both give us what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” But only Luke gives us this detail in chapter 11.
Luke tells us that one of Jesus’ disciples comes to him and says, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11.1
And Jesus does! He answers the request of this disciple and teaches them how to pray.
You can find how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6 or in Luke 11. I’m going to use the prayer found in Matthew 6.9-13. Jesus begins with these words…
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
If I had time, I would break down every word in this prayer. Every word is so important and Jesus doesn’t waste a single word in this prayer he gave his disciples to pray. And you see this from the very first word. He teaches his disciples to pray, “OUR Father.”
OUR:
So often we forget to address God as OUR. We’ve zeroed in on my personal relationship with God. It’s become all about ME, MY needs, MY wants, MY issues, and MY desires. ME, MYSELF, and I.
Yet, when Jesus teaches His disciples to pray, he says… begin with this word: OUR.
When I pray and I begin with OUR, I now have more in mind than just me. I might pray for my needs, wants, and desires… but when I pray in the context of OUR, I always pray with others in mind.
Praying “OUR FATHER” keeps me from being self-centered, selfish, self-seeking. Praying “Our Father” reminds me that my God is NOT just my God. He’s your God. Your Father. He’s Father of my friends. He’s Father of my enemies. Father to my neighbors. And Father to those around the world.
FATHER:
And it’s significant that Jesus doesn’t teach us to pray, “Our God.” Or, “Our King.” Or, “Our Lord.” Jesus chooses the word, “Father.”
The same word he would have used growing up as a child for his earthly father, Joseph, he now teaches his disciples to use in prayer to YHWH. This would have been scandalous for those who heard him say it. YHWH deserves so much reverence, fear, awe, and honor!
BUT Jesus doesn’t take any of that away by calling God Father, he ADDS to our understanding of who God is. He adds something to our image of God, to their image of God, that perhaps they didn’t have before.
When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, “Our Father,” he changes their image of God and in so doing he changes their relationship to God.
When they thought about God, they no doubt carried into adulthood their childhood images of God. As Israelite children, they grew up with the image of God who at times seemed distant.
Up to this point God has been silent for 400 years. There’s been no prophet of God, no word from God, no one like Moses or Elijah for some 400 years. They had an image of God who was Law Giver and they understood God as a rule enforcer. Break the commands of God and you are no longer considered in right standing with God. In fact, you can see your way out of the synagogue if you don’t fall in line with the religious leaders and how they viewed God.
So God was seen as all powerful, but also as an enforcer. God was seen as Deliverer, that’s what they were best known for… how God delivered them from Egypt. But that was a long time ago. And now God the Deliverer feels distant. After all, there’s a new superpower, a new Egypt called Rome, and where is God now?
What they needed was to trade in their childlike image of God for a new image of God. And Jesus gave them a new image, a picture of God that to be honest they had never really considered before. FATHER.
Who Gets to Define Father?
That may or may not be a helpful image of God for you. Some of you, if you’re honest, have a hard time thinking of God as Father because your earthly father wasn’t all that great and not at all what you imagine God to be like. I understand that. And hear me when I say, God understands that, too.
What happens so often is that we let our earthly father define what father means. But hear me when I say that God wants to be the one who defines the word father. God wants to be the one to show you what a father looks like.
And our God isn’t just a good, good Father, He is the PERFECT FATHER. And here’s why this is so important… When God defines fatherhood our father wounds can begin to be healed.
Maybe you need to trade the picture of your earthly father with Jesus’ picture of your heavenly Father. He would never harm you. He would never ever disappoint you, discourage you, or let you down in any way. He would never abandon you. He would never do anything to hurt you.
Whether your picture of God is of an earthly father who hurt you, or a God with thunderbolts in his hands, or big ears, or a cape, or whatever… maybe it’s time to trade in that childlike image of God for a new image of God. The picture Jesus gave His disciples in this moment was the picture of a perfect Father.
The first move Jesus teaches his disciples in prayer is to pray, “Our Father.”
Jesus changes their image of God and in so doing he changes their relationship to God.
HOLY:
In changing their RELATIONSHIP TO GOD and their IMAGE OF GOD, Jesus does NOT change what is UNCHANGING…
the HOLINESS of God.
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
In other words, we don’t pray to Our Father with any pretense. We don’t pray with hypocrisy. We don’t ascribe praise and worship to God and declare his holiness in prayer and THEN ACT any way we want, and THEN SAY anything we want.
We keep his name HOLY in and out of prayer. The way we live on Monday declares his holiness in the same way we pray on Sunday. The way we talk with friends on Friday declares the holiness of God just like the songs we sing in worship on Sunday.
We pray, “Our Father,” and we keep his name “Father” holy! This is Jesus’ way of saying that we don’t take the name of the Lord our God in vain. If I say, “O my God,” then you know I’m either praying or I’m singing my favorite worship song! I would never disrespect the name of my Father, our Father, in Heaven.
How do you see God?
What if the greatest hindrance to your spiritual growth is your image of God?
There’s a story about a young priest who was asked about his image of God, about how he pictured God. He told this story from his childhood, how once, when he was a kid, his mother had baked some delicious chocolate chip cookies. She put them in a cookie jar and then she told him, “Don’t you dare sneak in here and eat any of these cookies. Remember, God is watching you.”
For years, this was his image of God. He lived in fear of the God of the cookie jar, the God who had created so many good things but was just waiting to catch him doing something he shouldn’t do.
But that all changed one day when he realized that if he had sneaked into the kitchen and taken a cookie from the cookie jar, God might have said, “Aren’t these cookies so good? Go ahead and have another!”
Everything changes when you realize that God is a good Father. When you image God as a good Father. And don’t misunderstand, this isn’t to say that God wants you to be happy. I know that’s a popular idea in American Christianity. It’s not a biblical idea, but it is a popular idea.
The truth is God is a good Father, He wants good things for you, He knows what’s best for you, and He’s always watching out FOR you. He knows how many hairs are on (or are not on!) your head (Matthew 10.30). He loves to give good things to those who ask Him (Matthew 7.7-11). And He loved you before you loved Him (1 John 4.19).
He longs to speak over you the same words he spoke over Jesus at His baptism, “You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1.11).
This is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray,
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
Because God IS OUR FATHER. You are God’s son. You are God’s daughter. He is HOLY. And He longs for you to be holy.
When you understand in prayer how God sees you it changes the way you SEE HIM.
Seeing God as Our Father
Here’s my contention, most of us don’t understand how God sees us so we can’t really see Him for who He is.
But this is who God is. He is OUR FATHER. He is HOLY. And He wants us to know He loved us SO MUCH that Jesus came to teach us how to pray, to teach us who God is, and to make a way for us to become sons and daughters of God.
Jesus did that by dying on the cross. He made a way through his death, burial and resurrection so that we could come to know the Great I AM as Our Father.
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