Our Father

Addressing our Father ‘in heaven’ (though he’s spirit and can’t be contained in such a tiny universe) reminds us that he is the Almighty God – unimaginably powerful and transcendently sovereign. For ‘Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him’ (Psalm 115:3) – the perfect dad for sorting out tricky situ­ation

our Father is the all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, invisible, immortal and unchanging supreme Lord of all

The great theologian J. I. Packer was in no doubt about the significance of this:
You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s Holy Father

The key to growth in prayer is not better technique, but better theology; not lessons in how to pray, but in whom we pray to; not meeting the ‘prayer warriors’ of history, but meeting our Father in heaven. Grasping this phrase transforms prayer from duty into joy, from pointless burden into daily delight. We need to know what it means to call God, ‘Our Father in heaven’. We must start with Jesus, the original Son.

This little opening phrase contains all the motivation we need to pray. Like two Rolls-Royce jet engines strapped to a Ford Escort, the little words ‘Our Father’ are packed with power to launch us towards God in prayer.

People of different religions pray in very different ways, depending on how they picture the god they are praying to. Muslims repeat ritual prayers five times a day for a distant judge. Buddhists meditate silently upon their own inner being. Witchdoctors summon demonic spirits with ecstatic frenzy. Roman Catholic nuns quietly intone the ‘Hail Mary’ using their rosary beads.

The way we speak to someone depends upon our relationship with them.

Our prayers sometimes resemble a hastily written shopping list: a muddled selection of timid requests that reflect the self-absorption of our hearts and lives.

It is certainly a masterpiece – crafted with divine genius. The Bible commentator Matthew Henry called it ‘remarkably concise and yet vastly comprehensive’. J. C. Ryle wrote, ‘No part of Scripture is so full, and so simple at the same time.’ The theo­logian A. W. Pink writes, ‘Every part or aspect of prayer is included therein.’ It has been called by other theologians a ‘compendium of the gospel’, a ‘body of divinity’ and a ‘marvel of compression’.

There is a story that the legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus would return annually to his golfing coach and ask him, ‘Teach me again how to play golf’. He knew that he had to keep returning to the fundamentals of the game to try to master them, in order to carry on playing exceptional golf.