Praying the Lord's Prayer: Father

1. Begin with prayer asking the Holy Spirit to reveal to your heart his love and care for you and ask him to teach you today as you look at his word.  

2. Read Matthew 6:9-13 (3 times slowly)  

3. Use a journal to reflect on theses truths: 

Family one of the areas we cast vision for growth in this year was prayer. As we enter into this new uncertain season as a church and world we have a great opportunity to not just cry out in fear for help but to build a deep relationship with our Dad who not only loves us but actually has the power to heal this world.  Prayer is communication with God that realigns our hearts with the reality of our place in life it is a recognition of who is in control and our total dependence on God for all of life. 

The good news is that God is in control of the entire universe, he has all power, there is nothing He can’t do so we are free to live without fear and anxiety.  A word we sometimes use to describe this reality is sovereignty. “God is sovereign” means that he is in control of all things, that nothing escapes his notice, that nothing happens that he doesn’t know about, that He is the one who keeps the earth spinning on it’s axis and rotating around the sun. He is never surprised and says wow look at that didn’t see that coming. That everything that takes place in your life and mine is for a purpose. The purpose of showing us His power and control, and how much He loves us and cares for us.

When we pray we get to remind our hearts of the truth of who He really is and who we are. Not only do we get to remind our hearts but as we go throughout the day constantly relying on His wisdom for all of our decision and conversations we get to display the reality of who He is and who we are in light of that to others as well.  

As we begin studying the same content in our personal devotions as a church we want to work through the Lords prayer to help us grow in these realities. The Lords prayer isn’t just something to repeat, that was never its intention. Rather Jesus is giving us a framework for our ongoing conversation with the Father. Each section or petition within the prayer is really a reminder that we need God to be Lord within that area of our life. The verse that I want us to reflect on today is verse 9  

Our Father in heaven

The prayer begins with a recognition of name, there are many names in scripture for God reflect on those names and take a few mins to write down the names that you personally call God. 

There are over 100 names given to God through the bible they are  all names given to describe who He is, to bring out a different attribute of His greatness. They all try to help us rap our brains around all that he is and does. So when Jesus begins a says pray like this “Our father” there is something that we are to learn to remind our hearts of when we call God father. 

Reflect on this for a few min: Why do you think father is the name that chosen? Why not almighty sovereign holy one?

Ever notice kids start out life grow up with dad being super man, dad can do anything- some how we grow out of that we see the frailty of his humanity. Our dads fail us, don’t live up to our expectations.

God allowed me to grow up in a home where my Dad loved me and encouraged me, prayed for me, pointed me to Jesus, my Dad wasn’t perfect and but I learned a lot from Him and he did his best to image God the father to me. 

But I know some of you that was not the case. Some of you didn’t grow up with a dad, or you may have grow up in a home where even though he was there he was never around. I know for some of you, maybe even many of you don’t have a good image or picture of father, because your earthly father didn’t do a very good job reflecting what God looks like.

You see when we pray father – what we are doing is we are remind our hearts of all of the names for God. Wonderful, counselor, mighty God etc. That because of the gospel the father image we get to have is that He is the father who gave us life, who sustains our life, who does everything always for your good, who cares deeply for you , who gives you everything that you need, who discipline you because he loves you so that you might return to him and become everything that you were meant to be. He is a good dad the best dad.  

When John says anyone who receives him, he gives the right to be the children of God, that is the father you get to have.

The good news is that when the gospel penetrates our hearts we received him as our dad, fundamentally what we are saying is that God is saving us back to the prefill state in the garden. To make us back into what we were meant to be, His children in His family, brothers and sisters with God as our father. 

This is only possible through Jesus. Through his death and resurrection, taking the penalty for our sin.  Thus when we pray and begin with “our father” it is a reminder of the gospel of what he has done to make you His child and it is a reminder to our hearts – that we are now the kid that still thinks his dad can do anything- but this time it real. That is good news.

God is that reality. He is the ultimate father that we get to have relationship with and He desires to have relationship with you. That father that is never to busy with work to stop and love us, talk to us, care for our needs Shepard our hearts instruct us. He never says wait a minute or I am too busy running the universe, or I am tired of you asking me the same question, he says come unto me. With open arms he says come to me, let me care for you and serve you.  

This is the God we are talking to when we pray, he is the father that we seek during these troubling times and in the future. He is the father that LA needs. Then verse 9 says hallowed be your name:

“hallowed be your name”

Hallowed is not a word we use often, so what does it mean to hallow something? Hallowed means “Treated with the highest honor set apart as holy”. Basically to hold the Father up as glorious. When we ascribe glory to someone, the word GLORY means to hold something or someone as –the source–the ultimate, the ultimate reality”.

The name Father is a reminder of his weight, that He is ultimate reality. That there is a proper response to him, a fear, reverence, respect, deference, that we are going to defer to His wisdom not ours. 

If pray is a realigning of ones heart with God’s, and God tells us when we pray to hollow his name, that probably means that we need to be reminded of that reality. 

Reflect on areas of your life where you don’t Hollow Gods name, where you don’t see Him as the glorious one the ultimate reality, as the one who holds the most weight in your life? Some questions to ask yourself are as a form of self diagnosis are:

  • Who do we fear? 

  • Who or what do we have reverence for? 

  • Who do we respect? 

  • Who do we pay deference to?

  • What is the most important thing to you in this moment of time? 

Take some time to talk to Dad and confess the areas of life where you have incorrectly ascribed glory and hallowed something or someone else. 

Final reminder: 

At the cross Jesus gives up his glory so that we might reflect his glory!

The most glorious One becomes inglorious so that we might share in his glory.
Jesus was rejected so that we could hear the voice of the Most Weighty One affirming our adopted status as sons and daughters. The good news is God is our father in heaven, hollowed be his name.  

That is our new identity, that is what we get to be reminded of when we pray, it is what we get to live as our new reality, as the new norm. We have the perfect father, the one who always does what is good right and perfect, who loves us completely, who opinion of us defines us not someone else’s, or even our own opinion of ourselves, and He is the one who is most glorious the one who’s name is to be hollowed.

The good news is that not only is He those things, but He is a father who desires to be in relationship with you, to spend time with you, to walk along side of you and hold your hand all day long, to guide you threw every decision and circumstance so that you don’t have to live in fear. When we fail and lose sight of who He is, He is still right next to us saying there is grace for you, come to me let me help you walk in my ways.