Prayer 2: Praying to the Father Gal 4:1-7; Ps 103:1-14; Mark 14:32-42
Audio: https://www.daleappleby.net/index.php/mp3-sermons/51-recent-sermons/960-2-prayer-to-our-father
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uzoo7MA8mw
Introduction
I began this series by saying all Christians know prayer is central to our spirituality because of the central place it held in the life of Jesus (Luke 3:21; 6:12; 9:18, 29; 11:1; 22:41; 23:34 etc.). The key passage for last week was Jesus’ Parable of the Unjust Judge, which starts with, “he told them a parable to show that they should always pray and never give up” (Luke 18:1). The message was that God longs for our prayers, and Jesus taught this with full conviction because he knew how much the Father treasured his prayers. When I say this someone might be thinking, “But I’m not Jesus. God can’t possibly treasure my prayers like that of his own Son.” But the gospel message is that by grace Jesus’ Father has become our Father (John 20:17). A revelation of this truth draws us close to God’s heart and moves us to pray with confidence.
I remember being in a counselling session for a very sincere believer who was struggling to connect with God in prayer. There always seemed to be this distance. An insight into his struggles came when he described the sort family he’d come from. Mum and dad hardly ever talked to the kids because were always watching TV. So I asked him what his own little children would do when he went home and came through the door. “They’ll run to me with open arms and I’ll pick them up and give them a big hug.”, he replied. Then I said, “God is that sort of a Father for you.” He immediately broke down in tears. God is that sort of Father for us all.
In the New Testament it is usual to pray to the Father, as the Lord taught us (Matt 6:9), in the name of Jesus (John 16:23) and through the power of the Holy Spirit. This shape to prayer honours the Father as the source of the divine plan for the world, the Son as the mediator of the plan and the Spirit the completer of that plan (1 Cor 8:6; Eph 1:10; Ps 104:30). Prayer immerses us in the loving fellowship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Occasionally there are prayers to Jesus in the Bible (Acts 7:60; 1 Cor 1:2; 16:22; Rev 22:20), these seem to be in special circumstances. (I will refer these instances next week.) I need to say that the common practice across the contemporary Church of praying to “God” is a sign of a significant spiritual sickness. Our distorted prayers are healed and empowered as we enter more deeply into the prayer life of Jesus in his communication with the Father.
Jesus’ Prayer to the Father
At the centre of Jesus’ praying was a vision of the Father. He taught us to pray to ““Our Father”” (Matt 6:9) as the source of all goodness, wisdom, love, power and provision because he was filled with understanding that he had been sent by the Father (John 6:57; 10:36) for our healing and wholeness. Since Jesus’ own heart was filled with love, joy and peace in the Father’s presence (John 14:27; 15:11; 17:26 cf. Rom 14:17) his whole being longed for us to share in such a wonderful communion with God.
The prayer life of Jesus was so powerful because he was a true Son who submitted to the Father in everything. He boldly says, ““the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing…. I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 5:19-20, 30). Through his communion with the Father the human nature of Jesus was progressively filled with a knowledge of God’s will, so that his words and deeds perfectly reflected all the Father wanted to say and do. He always looked to his Father. Before making his ministry public, he prayed for 40 days (Luke 4:1), before breaking the loaves and fishes to feed the 5,000 Jesus “looked up to heaven” (Mark 6:41), before heading on his final trip to Jerusalem he went up the mount of Transfiguration to pray (Luke 9:28) and so on. Through prayer the Son of God was filled with the Father’s understanding love. This is most dynamically expressed in Christ’s praying on the eve of the cross.
In John’s account of Jesus in prayer in John 17 Jesus lifts up his eyes to heaven and addresses God as “Father” six times (John 17:1, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25). When he most profoundly prays “Holy Father” and “Righteous Father” (17:11, 25) his heart is directed towards someone he knows he can totally trust. As he prayed on the threshold of the cross Jesus was certainly filled with a sense of wonder, glory and love concerning God’s great plan to save us. He prays amazing things on our behalf, “Righteous Father…I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”” (17:26). The Son of God prays that we will know that we are loved by the Father exactly as he is loved by the Father. This is incredibly great news; we are loved by God as our Father as Jesus is loved by his Father (cf. 1 John 4:17). To have a revelation of this Fatherly love drives out crippling doubts and fears. There is however an ever-deeper place of prayer for Jesus than John 17, it is in Gethsemane.
““My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.….Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”” (Mark 14:32, 36). This is the first recorded time in the history of human devotion that the God of Israel is directly addressed as “Abba, Father”. While “Abba” is not a baby word like “Daddy”, it is the word that an adult child would use of their own father in the intimacy of a family home. On the edge of the cross Jesus is being drawn inside the heart of God at a deeper level than even before. “Abba” is a revelation to Christ himself of how totally and eternally the Father has desired to fellowship with us as our Father (John 17: 5; Heb 9:14). Here, in Gethsemane, Jesus counts the cost in terms of his own life in satisfying the Father’s desire for fellowship with us. Only the revelation of the Father as “Abba Father” would be powerful enough to enable Jesus to face the shock of unanswered prayer that would come at the cross.
Unjudged in Prayer
Christians call on God as Father and Judge (1 Pet 1:17), but no one in scripture, including Jesus, ever prayed to an “Angry Father”. However, in our sinful unbelief and alienation we chronically conjure up images of God in our hearts as distant, indifferent, harsh or disappointed with his children. (As in the counselling example I used earlier.) The mystery of the one place where Jesus doesn’t address God as “Father”, the inner terrible truth of the “cry of dereliction”, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 14:36) is that the Son of God is bearing and carrying away all our corrupt conceptions of God’s Fatherhood (2 Cor 5:21; Rom 8:3; 1 Pet 2:24). The power of the death of Jesus to heal our praying is that the Lord experiences Fatherlessness in prayer so that we might know the Father always hears our prayers. James puts this matter bluntly, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God” i.e. in prayer, “who gives generously and without finding fault, and it will be given him.” (1:5). One of my worst sins as a husband was once criticising my wife’s prayers. I will never do that again, not primarily because she quite rightly told me off, but because I could sense God the Father telling me, “How dare you judge the praying heart of one of my children.” (cf. Matt 18:10). When you receive a revelation that the Judge of the world will never criticise your prayers this will set you free to pray openly and aloud in any company!
Thankfully, the cry of dereliction wasn’t the final prayer of Jesus on the cross. We know even this was received by the Father (Ps 22:24) because his final utterance breathes full assurance of acceptability to God in heaven, ““Father into your hands I commit my spirit.”” (Luke 23:46).
Confident Prayer
The New Testament breathes an atmosphere of boldness concerning Christian’s prayers. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15). It is the reality of being close to my heavenly Father which draws prayer out of my heart in a way that never happened with my earthly father. In Jesus we stand blameless before a Father who will never condemn us (Rom 8:1), he is our, “Abba! Father” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). The Father of Jesus is essentially a prayer hearing and answering God. It is the role of the Spirit to testify to your spirit that the Father proudly recognises you as his child. Whoever has this witness will pray with the unique boldness of a child of God. The Spirit testifies to God that we are his children so that we might in prayer testify he is our Father (Gal 4:1-7). cf. “We commit ourselves to a heart that confesses us.” (Thielicke). We can ask God to fill our hearts with this reality (cf. Rom 5:5).
Conclusion
The Father’s great plan for our praying is that we share more and more in his Son’s own prayer life in the power of his Spirit. (I’ll expand on this next two weeks.) This communion with God as Trinity is remarkable and wonderful. It means we don’t simply pray to God we pray in God. We are, in Paul’s language, “God’s fellow workers” (1 Cor 3:9) praying into being on earth what is God’s will in heaven (Matt 6:10). Prayer is an incredibly high calling and as such it comes at great cost. Prayer in touch with the heart of God humbles us over our selfishness again and again as we are being led to become more like Jesus in the way of the cross. At the same time it is such self-sacrificing faith that keeps on assuring us that God is really our Father (Heb 12:21-2) who loves to hear us pray and to answer our prayers. The Father humbles himself to receive our prayers in Jesus. If you have ever thought that God the Father is too great to approach with your petty requests then today you can repent of such unbelief. Our Father, the Father of Jesus, is not like your mother, your father, some human dignitary, or even the parish priest. Today, let go of those wrong thoughts about God’s Fatherhood and ask for his cleansing and forgiveness in Jesus’ name. Ask him to fill you with the Spirit who cries “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:6) and life will never be the same again. PTL