Lord’s Prayer 1. Our Father

Preamble

The strength of my personal convictions about the importance of prayer come from God’s dealings in my own life. About 30 years ago I was in the middle of a period of intense and fruitful ministry but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was deeply missing in my life. The Lord began to speak to me about my struggles to pray and eventually led me to a conference where I sensed in advance I would be challenged about prayer and revival. It was then that Christ called me to dedicate the first hour of my day exclusively to him in private prayer[1]. Since then time spent in prayer has become the most fulfilling part of my life.

Introduction

Schoolchildren in Australia were once taught the Lord’s Prayer (LP), today there is move in federal parliament to have its use there scrapped[2].  The decline in importance of the LP in Australia reaches into the Church, most young Christians in non-liturgical churches do not know the LP by heart and are not being encouraged to do so. This is a great loss, for coming from the lips of Jesus this prayer has a unique power to impart intimacy with God.

There are two versions of the LP in the Gospels. Matthew’s version appears in the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke however the disciples are moved by hearing Christ’s own prayers to ask, ““Lord, teach us to pray.”” (Luke 11:1, ESV). To hear Jesus pray was to experience the near presence of God[3]. Like the disciples we all need to ask Jesus to teach us how to pray so that we might share his awareness of the presence of the Father (cf. Rom 8:26; James 4:3).

The way I find most helpful to understand the LP is to reflect on what each part of the Prayer meant for Jesus.

“Our Father”

The most outstanding feature of Jesus’ own spirituality was that he related to God as “Father”. Whilst the Old Testament occasionally speaks of God as the Father of Israel[4] it contains no direct prayers to “Father”. On the lips of Jesus “Father” took on a quality of intimacy, presence and reality that the Jewish teachers of his day had never experienced. Apart from one terrible exception, to which I will come back later, Jesus never prayed to the Father as “God”, for such a use in prayer was too distant to convey the closeness of what it meant for him to be God’s Son. Throughout the New Testament it is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” who Christians love, worship and pray to (Rom 1:7; 15:6; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3)[5]. God’s central identifying feature is not his universal power, knowledge or presence[6]  but his being as the Father of Jesus. Jesus did not come to point us to himself but to share with us his own wonderful relationship with God as Father. He said, ““I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”” The climax of John’s Gospel is the risen Lord’s words to Mary Magdalene, ““go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17, ESV). Those who call God “Father” share together in a family relationship with Jesus[7].

 “In heaven”

The Father to whom Jesus teaches us to pray is “in heaven”. By calling God the heavenly Father Jesus contrasts him to all earthly parents. Compared to the heavenly Father all earthly fathers are remote and unaware of the depth of the struggles of their children. According to Jesus the sign that we truly know God as our all approachable Father is that we ask him for the power of the Holy Spirit, “““You fathers—if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? ¹² Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not! ¹³ So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” (Luke 11:11-13).

It is easy to say “Our Father in heaven” but to believe in our hearts that God is our Father we needs a supernatural revelation from heaven (Gal 4:6 cf. Mark 7:6-7). Such a revelation only ever comes through deep inner struggle at the level of heart and conscience. Conscience as a sense of good and evil is a gift from God[8], but through sin our consciences have become distorted (cf. 1 Cor 8:7ff; 1 Tim 4:2). Your conscience will never allow you to trust anyone who you believe will use their power against you in any way that is abusive, controlling or harmful. Without a revelation from heaven of the purity of God’s love as Father and his sensitivity towards our suffering his power is simply too scary to be trusted[9].

I am saddened when I hear Christians regularly pray things like “Dear God” or “Daddy”; “Dear God” is too impersonal to be used by a child of God and “Daddy” is a misunderstanding of what the word Abba actually meant in New Testament times[10]. Apart from a revelation of the difference between divine and human fatherhood human beings will always find ways to keep their image of “God the Father” safe and manageable. The trustworthiness of the heavenly Father can only be known through what Jesus teaches us next.

“Hallowed be your name”

I was with a pastor a few weeks ago who mentioned that this part of the LP never meant anything much to him until he read an up to date translation, “‘Our Father in heaven:
May your holy name be honoured;” (GNB). The honouring of God’s character as Father is at the heart of what it means to love and worship him, and despite all possible misunderstandings there is something in the word “holy” which is indispensible.

Holiness essentially means separation from evil and separation to God. The life of Jesus displays/defines true holiness. There was an intense spiritual presence about Jesus that the powers of evil could not tolerate. In his presence the demons were distraught, ““Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”” (Mark 1:24).  They were inescapably aware that Jesus was set apart by and for God; they recognised that he was the Son of the Father (Matt 8:29). The aura of holy presence which surrounded Jesus is exactly why the disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Australians are often more spiritual than they let on, but they have rarely found in the Church the sort of intense spiritual atmosphere that would lead them to Jesus and to his Father.

On the threshold of the cross Jesus prayed in the hearing of the disciples, ““Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name…”” (John 17:11). The biblical revelation of God as “Holy Father” takes us to the very centre of Christ’s own understanding of the God to whom he prayed and for whom he gave his own life. Many people find the idea of a heavenly Father endearing and attractive; far fewer seek the Holy Father. The author of Hebrews grasped that holiness is central to our awareness that we are God’s children; “So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.” (Heb 2:11). Our greatest struggle is to allow Jesus to impart holiness to (cf. Col 3:12; 1 John 4:17) so that we come to share his awareness of the presence of the Father. The revelation of holiness involves a vision of the cross.

Jesus fully and finally hallows the name of God as Father through the manner of his death. I mentioned earlier that the Son never prayed to the Father as “God” apart from one terrible exception. This terrible exception is the cross, the place where Jesus hallowed the name of God to the uttermost. The prophet Habakkuk once prayed, “O LORD my God, my Holy One…you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil” (1:12-13). Habakkuk had insight into God’s holiness, but as a sinful man he could never understand the full weight of these words. The ultimate evidence that God is truly a Holy Father is found in that terrible cry, ““My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34). Here on the cross Jesus takes upon himself every element of abuse, fear, rejection, abandonment, disillusion and disappointment we have ever experienced at the hands of uncaring people in this world, and which compels us to the conclusion that there is no Father in heaven intensely aware of the depths of our sufferings. When Jesus takes upon himself the unbelieving state of the world God ceases to be for him “Father”[11] and is only experienced as a remote distant power who leaves us in the midst of our darkness, depression, fears and anxieties (John 1:29; 2 Cor 5:21). In this way, by Jesus carrying our blindness to God’s holy love, the cross becomes the place where God hallows his own name and fully and finally reveals that he hates evil with a perfect hatred and loves us with a perfect love (Heb 1:9). The death of Jesus on our behalf is the assurance that we may approach God[12]as our heavenly Father without the slightest fear of rejection, blame, condemnation or harsh judgement.

Application and Conclusion

The LP is not a fine set of words given by a moral teacher but expresses the depths of God the Son’s devotion to his holy and heavenly Father. This prayer contains immeasurable power to change the lives of those who pray it in union with Christ. Unlike Jesus however, every one of us has many places in our lives where our experience seems to teach us that God is not a perfect Father.

Every one of us experiences periods of darkness and deep despair[13]. In the midst of such a time I woke up around 3.30am Thursday morning with a completely clear consciousness that I had no awareness of the presence of God with me. Thinking and praying about the meaning of this experience over the next hour I knew the Lord was speaking to me about US ……the whole congregation…without exception.  He was speaking about those places of darkness in all our lives where it seems like God is unaware of the measure of our struggles and sufferings –he just seems absent! He was speaking about taking Church on the Rise as a whole on a journey together; a journey where we all know that we are noticed by the Father.

If we would honour and hallow the name of God as Father we need the power of the Holy Spirit to pray (cf. Luke 10:21; John 14:16; Eph 6:18). It was “the eternal Spirit” who moved Jesus to pray “Abba Father” as he struggled to feel close to God in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:34; Heb 9:14); it is by “the Spirit of sonship (that) we cry, “Abba! Father!”” (Gal 4:6). To prayer the LP as Jesus prayed it and as he meant it to be prayed is a supernatural activity. If we would honour the Father today, if we would acknowledge him as heavenly and holy, we must ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit as the power of prayer (Luke 11:13). This fullness communicates to us that the Father is always aware of our needs and wants to be constantly present for us (Luke 4:1; Acts 6:3, 5; 11:24). Today each of us is being called to become men and women of prayer.