As we approach God in prayer, Jesus directs us, first of all, to relationships. He does not call us to prayer as a means to have our needs met, although God regularly meets our needs through prayer. He does not call us to prayer by appealing to our craving for worship, although, across the world and throughout history people have sought out the experience of prayer (and other “religious” activity) to assuage their longing for the eternal. Soon enough in the model prayer we will engage in praise. Soon enough we will find room for our petitions. But the beginning point of the model prayer is recognition of relationship – “Our Father”.
So much is included in those two words. They encompass both the sweet fellowship of believers and the life-giving, personal adoption into the family of God.
Jesus often refers to God in the singular and personal “My Father”, but only here, as he teaches us to pray, does he use that inclusive possessive – “Our”.
When Jesus teaches us to pray, he teaches us to pray with an awareness of our unity. It is a paradox of Christianity that our remarkably intimate and deeply personal experience with God is found only in the context of community. Consequently, we pray in concert and in harmony both with Jesus and with one another. God encounters each of us individually and personally, yet it is the church that is “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23). God seeks us, each one, like the sheep lost from the ninety and nine, but we are together his body, his family, his bride. This is not to imply that personal and individual prayer is inappropriate. To the contrary, we know that the Spirit communes with us and intercedes for us even when we are incapable of comprehension or articulation with “groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) What it does mean, however, is that our prayer life, even that private prayer life practiced in our secret closets, exists with the sense of family that is the church. We never pray alone. We pray with the confidence that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father on our behalf, mediator and high priest. We pray with the confidence that others in God’s family are seeking our good before God; that others stand ready as ministers of God’s will on our behalf. Prayer ushers us not only into the presence of God, but also into the company of his Son and into the heart of his family.
We are both humbled and exhilarated to find ourselves in the company of those called out from the world and made one in Christ, but Jesus’ teaching on prayer also directs us into an even more compelling relationship. We come before God Almighty, Lord of the Universe, Creator and Sustainer of all that is, He who is from everlasting to everlasting, He who dwells in unapproachable Glory. And Jesus instructs us to address Him as “Father.”
Of course, we are to recognize God as Father in the sense of his ultimate ownership of and authority over all things, including ourselves. When we pray, “Our Father”, we acknowledge him as the head of our household and yield in submission to Him. For those disciples to whom Jesus first spoke these words, the concept of father played a powerful, central role in their lives. Generally, a man continued to live in his father’s house even after marriage and the father exercised possession and control over the family property and wealth. The child was required by both culture and law to extend honor and respect to his father. Even a man’s name was defined by the name of his father (e.g. Simon bar Jonah or Simon son of John). Our tendency to approach God with pride, petulance and demand ought to dissolve when we consider his rightful authority over his creation; when we call him “Father”.
But the model prayer also takes us to a deeper level of understanding when we call God “Our Father”. David reminds us that “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.” (Psalm 68:5) A father is teacher and mentor, hero and model. He instructs in righteousness, imparts wisdom and gives strength. He is protector and defender. Another psalmist says of God, “You are my Father, my God, the Rock, my Savior.” (Psalm 89:26) Like the child who goes confidently among strangers alongside her father, we enter our prayer with confidence, knowing our walk in this world is ever in the company of God, our Father.
We find, however, a yet deeper relationship with God in these opening words. As Jesus approaches the agony of the cross, he falls before God in the garden of Gethsemane. His prayer is marked by submission and obedience to the authority of God and by his plea for protection and deliverance. He is the perfect Son; supplicate before the perfect Father. His prayer begins, “Abba, Father, …”. (Mark 14:36) This is no formal request. There is neither ritual nor ceremony in this prayer. There is no “religion” here, only relationship. “Abba, Father.” That word, “Abba”, is Aramaic for father, but in the intimate, diminutive form. In English it would be “Daddy”. What profound empathy between Father and Son is displayed here. What deep affection. What passionate communion.
Jesus does not use “Abba” in the model prayer, for the relationship inherent in the word is intimate and revered. One does not lightly address the Almighty with familiarity. But here is the nature of God’s love for us. He will not leave us as orphans, nor abandon us to the dominion of darkness, nor allow us to be subjected again to a spirit of fear. Rather, he says, “you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” (Romans 8:15) God’s desire is to have with you an intimacy of relationship that would bring you into his presence calling, “Abba, Father.” When we come to God in prayer, our foundation is laid upon this fundamental truth – “Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)
I think this personal relationship with God as our Father, putting myself as his little baby girl, his dear child, his daughter, ties into the comment made about what struck me in the Willing post. Even when I am broken, and ugly with disease and grim, even when I have broken the rules and decided to do my own thing. He loves me. It is a relationship most akin to our own relationships with our children. Things that have always caused my own gag reflexes to kick in when involving others, turn into intimate comforting interactions when they involve my son. Behaviors that cause the reaction of annoyance when done by a passerby become a intense desire to train when done by my son. It is striking that God Almighty sees me in the same light of love that I see my son, and even to a stronger degree, because He is the perfect Father, and I am still just a child in the process of learning to be a parent.