Pray like this: Our Father (Matthew 6:9)

.   “…pray like this: Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9)

It still amazes me sometimes that God wants us to pray to him. Although he reveals himself to us as Creator, Redeemer, Provider, Protector, King, etc., when Jesus taught us to pray he taught us to pray to God as our Father. The term “Father” indicates an intimate and personal relationship; a family relationship. As our Father God is not only the source of our existence, he is also committed to provide for us, protect us, teach us, guide us, comfort us, counsel us, discipline us, and whatever else we need.

But unlike our earthly fathers, God, our heavenly Father, already knows everything. This makes us wonder why we need to pray. The answer is that prayer isn’t about informing God of what is on our minds. Nor is it about revealing to him the plans we have for him, as if he exists to serve us. And it certainly is not an attempt to persuade him to do something he is initially reluctant to do. Prayer, instead, is us entering into the conversation that God has started with us through his word. God takes the initiative to speak to us and when we respond to what he has said that response is what we call prayer. When we were children we instinctively spoke to our earthly fathers in response to things they told us about the world, commands they gave us to obey, words of love and affection they expressed to us, guidance and advice they gave us, etc. And we also found it quite natural to ask them for help with all sorts of things and to cry out to them when we were afraid.

Very graciously God has chosen to communicate with us in his word. In his word he tells us what he is like, who we are, why he made us, what he expects of us, what will happen to us if we disobey him, what he has done to restore our relationship with him after we went against his plan for us, what to watch out for as we go through life, how to serve him correctly, what we have to look forward to in the future, etc.

In his word God reveals himself as trustworthy and worthy of our worship and devotion. In his word he invites us to pray and he assures us he will hear and answer our prayers according to his will. Likewise, in his word he reveals himself to be the greatest of all beings and the one we should devote ourselves to above all others. Consequently, when we fail to pray either because we lack the faith that he will answer or because we choose to spend our time doing other things we reveal more about ourselves than we do about him. Namely, we reveal that we don’t trust him as we should or that we don’t consider him worth our time. Both responses insult God terribly and we should repent of them.

We should also give God thanks for being our Father. He didn’t have to be. He did it because he chose to. He did it because he loves us. So let’s love him. Let’s trust him. Let’s spend time with him in prayer.