Prayer For A Life That Reflects God As Father
I Love the prayers in the Bible
15 This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16 I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit,v of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.
Men who do works so they will be seen by men receive the applause of men. Those who do works for God’s glory receive God’s smile. The reward for the latter is overwhelming—and always will be.
Jesus was not condemning public prayer. He was condemning the desire to be seen praying publicly. The early church thrived on public prayer, as the opening chapters of Acts so beautifully attest (see 1:24; 3:1; 4:24ff.). Jesus was emphasizing that prayer is essentially a conversation between the believer and God. It is intrinsically private, not exhibitionist. Man is to shut out every distraction and focus on God. In verse 7 Jesus added further advice: “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Our Lord was not and is not impressed with a lot of words. He is impressed with what the heart is saying.
Perhaps a few questions would help us. Do I pray frequently or more fervently when I am alone with God than when I am in public? Is my public praying an overflow of my private prayer? What do I think of when I am praying in public? Am I looking for “just the right” phrase? Am I thinking of the worshipers more than of God? Am I a spectator to my own performance? Is it possible that the reason more of my prayers are not answered is because I am more concerned about bringing my prayer to men than to God?
Perhaps a few questions would help us. Do I pray frequently or more fervently when I am alone with God than when I am in public? Is my public praying an overflow of my private prayer? What do I think of when I am praying in public? Am I looking for “just the right” phrase? Am I thinking of the worshipers more than of God? Am I a spectator to my own performance? Is it possible that the reason more of my prayers are not answered is because I am more concerned about bringing my prayer to men than to God?
How Not To Pray
Prayer is not for the purpose of informing God. Rather, prayer expresses to him (and to ourselves) the fact of our impotence to meet our own needs. Biblical prayer is an act of faith, an expression of dependence on God. Meaningless repetition signifies dependence on oneself to manipulate or badger God into compliance.
When are believers guilty of meaningless repetition? For example, we add “in Jesus’ name” as a mere punctuation mark at the end of our prayers. Would not it be better actually to pray in Jesus’ name (with his authority, according to his will), instead of merely adding the phrase? We can pray in Jesus’ name without using those words.
When we pray over meals or with our children at bedtime, do we really think about what we are saying? When we sing the words of a song of worship to the Lord, do we really mean them?
Pray Like Jesus Not Merely What Jesus Prayed
Not Merely What Jesus Prayed
How We Should Pray
This, then, is how you should pray (6:9). The pattern of meaningful prayer is to begin by majoring on the person and nature of God and his kingdom interests, coming to personal requests and needs only secondarily.
we need to remember that God sees all. The psalmist in Psalm 139 says, “If I make my way to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (v. 8). He sees and knows all. He knows the words that are forming on our lips. Each day we should pray something like this: “God, because you know all things, you know my motivations. God, help me to live my life for you.”
“Throughout the whole of this day, everything I do, and say, and attempt, and think, and imagine, is going to be done under the eye of God. He is going to be with me; He sees everything; He knows everything. There is nothing I can do or attempt but God is fully aware of it all. ‘Thou God seest me.’ ”
But when Jesus came on the scene, he addressed God only as Father. He never used anything else! All his prayers address God as Father. The Gospels (just four books) record his using Father more than sixty times in reference to God. So striking is this that there are scholars who maintain that this word Father dramatically summarizes the difference between the Old and New Testaments. No one had ever in the entire history of Israel spoken and prayed like Jesus. No one!
Our Father In Heaven (verse 9)
The plural pronoun our indicates that prayer should be an expression of corporate desires to God, and should often be prayed in fellowship with other believers.
To the traditional Jew, Jesus’ prayer was revolutionary. Think of it! God was referred to only fourteen times in the Old Testament as Father, and then it was always as the corporate Father of Israel—never individually or personally. And now as his disciples ask him for instruction on how to pray, Jesus tells them to begin by calling God their Father, their Abba! As Jeremias says:
… in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus authorizes His disciples to repeat the word abba after Him. He gives them a share in His sonship and empowers them, as His disciples, to speak with their heavenly Father in just such a familiar, trusting way as a child would with his father.
Addressing God as Abba (Dearest Father) is not only an indication of spiritual health but is a mark of the authenticity of our faith. Paul tells us in Galatians 4:6, “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father!’ ” The impulse to call on God in this way is a sign of being God’s child. Romans 8:15, 16 says the same thing: “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.” True believers are impelled to say this.
Do you know that God is your Father? Do you think of him and address him as your “Dearest Father”? If you cannot answer in the affirmative, it may be that he is not your spiritual Father and you need to heed the words of Scripture and come into relationship with him through Christ. “Yet to all who received him [Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
Dr. J. I. Packer considers one’s grasp of God’s Fatherhood and one’s adoption as a son or daughter as of essential importance to spiritual life. He writes:
“If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.”
God’s Fatherhood helps drive home the reality of our forgiveness.
the sense of God’s Fatherhood helps drive home the reality of our forgiveness. It is significant that the first word to fall from the prodigal son’s lips when he returned home was “Father”: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you” (Luke 15:21). And those words were followed by forgiveness. The more deep-seated our sense of God’s Fatherhood, the deeper will be our sense of forgiveness—the wholeness that comes from being loved and being forgiven.
Knowing God as Father also brings confidence, security, and wholeness into our lives.
have sentimentalized God’s fatherhood so much that they have little concept of his holiness. Many Christians are flippantly sentimental about God, as if he is a celestial teddy bear.
Sovereign and reigning, he surpasses all that is human. He is our Father and our King! We can affectionately call him “Abba,” “Dearest Father,” but we do it with a deep sense of wonder and reverence.
He is our Father, but he exceeds our earthly fathers in every way because he is “our Father in heaven.” He always understands. He is always caring and loving. He never forgets us. And he always comes through for us.