
Therefore, you should pray this way: Our Father who is in the heavens, may your name be honoured. ~ JESUS (Matthew 6:9)
BEFORE WE BEGIN: Three announcements...
PASSPORT: I'm happy to announce that the Kingdom of Heaven Passport is now available on Amazon. You can find it here. And if you do buy a copy and read it, thank you in advance for leaving a review.
COMMENTS: Blog Post Comments are back on! Thank you for engaging with the material. I'm excited to hear your thoughts.
DANCING: Our next Toronto area Retro dance is March 29, and it should be a lot of fun. 70s Disco and 80s New Wave - who can beat that? Please purchase tickets here.

Okay, on with the study...
SUMMARY: Read this and skip the rest (if you want)
The Lord's Prayer is located in the centre of the Sermon on the Mount, with the topic of forgiveness being in the centre of the centre.
In Luke's version, Jesus gives his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to them asking him to teach them how to pray. For the disciples of Jesus, it was prayer more than any other spiritual practice that seemed most important to learn.
Jesus says to pray this way, not pray these words. This suggests a pattern for prayer, rather than a mantra to be memorized and recited.
Even when we pray in private, we remind ourselves that we are part of a bigger spiritual family through the word "our".
We pray to the Father God with a Mother's heart.
By referring to God as Our Father (Abba) in the heavens (that is, all around us), Jesus is stressing the immanence over the transcendence of God.
God may be the King of the universe, but this king is our Dad.
Praying the Lord's Prayer should help us live moment-by-moment with a greater awareness of the presence of God with us. Come, Lord Jesus!
CORE
(The heart of the message)
The Lord's Prayer is a gift from Jesus to every believer. It is our daily opportunity to run into the arms of our loving Father and find freedom, rest, and peace.
"If we are serious at all about our Christian commitment, we will want to learn and grow in prayer." ~ N.T. Wright (The Lord and His Prayer)
"This is a prayer for the desperate, who recognize that this world is not as it should be and that only God can set things right - the broken to whom Jesus promises the blessings of the kingdom (Matthew 5:3-12)." ~ Craig Keener (The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary)
CONTEXT
(What’s going on before and after this passage)
We have arrived at the centre of the Sermon on the Mount (about 116 lines before and 114 lines after). And at the centre of the prayer is mercy - the request for forgiveness as we offer forgiveness. No wonder the Early Church leaders taught that the Lord's Prayer was a summary of the Gospel, our first Christian Creed, and the central expression of Christian faith and spiritual practice.
Here in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus teaches the "Lord's Prayer" in the context of his discussion about practising regular secret spirituality. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus teaches this prayer in response to his disciples asking him how to pray:
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” ~ Luke the Historian (Luke 11:1)
This is the only recorded instance of Jesus' disciples asking him to teach them a specific spiritual practice. This tells us two things:
The disciples believed that prayer - more than preaching, prophesying, healing, or any other spiritual practice or gift - was the most important thing they should learn from Jesus.
There seems to have been something about what they observed in Jesus' way of praying that made the disciples eager to learn more.
Some scholars argue that the title "the Lord's Prayer" is better fitted for Jesus' own long prayer recorded in John 17, sometimes called his "high priestly prayer". They prefer to call this prayer in Matthew 6 "the Disciples' Prayer" or "The Model Prayer" or simply the "Our Father" (in Latin, Paternoster). That makes good sense, and yet, since Jesus our Lord teaches us this prayer, and since people know it as "the Lord's Prayer", it seems fine to call it by this name too.
Whatever we call it, this prayer became a pattern for praying in the early church. In fact, the Didache (our earliest known discipleship manual for Christians) recommends praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day (Didache 8:2-3).
Prayer for Christ-followers is less about asking God for favours and more about reminding ourselves of what is most important - knowing God. Jesus prayed in the garden (the other "Lord's Prayer"):
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ~ JESUS (John 17:3)
And this rightly became the emphasis of the prayers of the early Church. Here are a few examples of typical prayers of the apostle Paul:
I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. ~ The apostle Paul (Ephesians 1:16-18)
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ~ The apostle Paul (Ephesians 3:16-19)
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. ~ The apostle Paul (Philippians 1:9)
Notice his emphasis? Yes, the early church prayed for their leaders and for healings and for other needs, but the overwhelming emphasis of their prayers was to know God better, to experience the love of Christ more, and to have boldness when sharing their faith. (Also see Colossians 1:9-12.)
On one occasion, when threatened with persecution, the gathered church prayed:
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. ~ Early Church Prayer Meeting (Acts 4:29)
Wow. They didn't pray for the persecution to go away, but for Christ-followers to have courage and confidence in the face of persecution. Apparently, they felt the Good News of God's love was so life-changing, it needed to be shared no matter what. In fact, how we respond to people in the face of persecution can become just one more way we shine the light of God's unconditional love. (Recall the word "martyr" - to be killed for your faith - comes from the Greek word martus, meaning witness. Early Christians knew that how they died was one more way to shine God's light.)
And all of this began with Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. It is safe to say that praying the Lord's Prayer in the Lord's way can help us experience more love, more peace, more courage, and more joy.
Here it is in the good ol' King James Version:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. ~ JESUS (Matthew 6:9-13, KJV)
There is power in these words. Usually our mind thinks a thought and then tells our mouth what to say. These words allow our mouth to tell our mind what to think. And what we think influences who we become.
"The Lord's Prayer may be the single set of words spoken more often than any other in the history of the world. Jesus Christ gave it to us to unlock all the riches of prayer." ~ Timothy Keller (Prayer)
Scholars point out some similarity between Jesus' model prayer and the Jewish prayer called the Kaddish. Jesus could be riffing on that known prayer and modifying it, except we have no existing records dating the Kaddish back as far as Jesus. In fact, the earliest record of the Kaddish dates to almost a thousand years after Jesus. So it is also possible that Jews were influenced by this popular Christian prayer rather than the other way around. Either way, as a Jew, it would make sense that the prayers of Judaism and of Jesus overlap in content, yet with significant distinction. For instance, when Jews and Christians pray for God's kingdom to come, they may have very different ideas in mind.

"Christians have always understood that this was not just another prayer. It is the prayer that teaches us how to pray every other prayer." ~ Kevin DeYoung (The Lord's Prayer)
CONSIDER
(Observations about the passage)
Therefore. Please see our last study for the teaching Jesus is referring to. Context is key.
Pray this way. Pray this way, not pray these words. Jesus doesn't say "pray this" (which would use either the Greek word legó or touto), but "pray like this" (Greek, houtó). Jesus is teaching us how to pray, not what to pray. In other words, he is giving us an outline of a conversation and a pattern to guide our prayer, not a formula to get verbatim or a mantra to be repeated over and over. In our daily times of conversation with God there should be freedom within structure. The Lord's Prayer takes less than thirty seconds to say, but easily thirty minutes or more to pray. (See our last post on how to pray conversationally.) The Lord's Prayer is a kind of trellis upon which we can grow our daily conversational life with God. At the same time, Jesus not only gives us freedom from having to recite the Lord's Prayer, he gives us the freedom to recite it if we want to. In Luke's version Jesus says, "When you pray, say (Greek, legó)", which suggest using the actual words of the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:2). When our minds don't know what to pray, our mouths can take the lead and our thoughts will follow. Perhaps saying it and praying it, saying it and praying it, line by line, that is, reciting a line and then using that line to guide a more conversational prayer, is the best Matthew-Luke power pack approach. (Again, see our last study for more about conversational prayer.)

Our. We do not pray to "My Father" (individually) or "The Father" (abstractly) but "Our Father" (corporately and collectively). Once we get alone in our inner room (see our last study) we remind ourselves that we are a part of something larger than ourselves. So we start this prayer by reaching in two directions at once: up and out. At the same time we are reaching up to God, we are linking arms with our spiritual family near and far and stretching back and forward through time. Each of us prays as a we not as a me. Notice that every pronoun referring to humans in this prayer is plural. The words I, me, and mine never occur. Even in the most vertical teaching of Jesus about praying privately in our prayer closet with the door closed, we are reminded that the Jesus Way is a way we walk together. Note: The "our" here stresses our equality with fellow disciples, while Jesus remains distinct. Interestingly, Jesus never uses the phrase "our father" to refer to God as being in equal relationship with him and his disciples together. He always references "my father" and "your father" separately (e.g., John 20:17). Yes, having God as our shared Father makes Jesus our brother (Matthew 12:49; Mark 3:34; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:11). Yet, in his language, Jesus maintains unity with distinction. He sees himself as God's son in a unique way. So, Jesus does not pray the Lord's Prayer - we do (which makes sense since it includes asking for forgiveness for our sin). When we say "our" we declare our membership in God's family. When we pray "our" we fight against all group divisions that would classify believers according to any other characteristic than our faith. We decry all classism, nationalism, racism, sexism, ageism, and any other "ism" that can too easily become our unacknowledged idol. Let's push this thought further: We even - and this will be harder for many of us - turn our backs on any pride of nation or neighbourhood, race or appearance, gender or sexual identity, age or stage, class or career, education or experience, personality type or political leaning, artistic appreciation or hobby engagement that competes for our group identity and loyalty beyond God's global family of faith. While intersectional identity politics may be the world's best way to fight against discrimination, things work differently within the Kingdom of Christ. We are family and nothing should even come close to this as our primary identity. It's time to put the "Our" back in the Our Father.
EXAMPLE PRAYER: Dear father, thank you that you have brought me into your family. I'm so grateful for the spiritual sisters and brothers I have in my life, and ask that you help me be a blessing to them. (Then you might pause and pray for any particular people God brings to mind.)
While pointing toward his disciples, Jesus said:
Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. ~ JESUS (Matthew 12:49-50; Mark 3:34-35)
"The prayer of Jesus assumes we are connected - that we are part of a community. ... We all are part of the great family of God that transcends every boundary: national, ethnic, cultural, even generational. When we bow our heads and pray these words, we are taking part in a family prayer. The Lord's Prayer binds the people of God together across time and space." ~ Skye Jethani (What If Jesus Was Serious?)
"In the simple word 'our' is the joy of the whole gospel. Through it the Lord's Prayer plants a democratizing time bomb in culture; it is both leveler and elevator." ~ Frederick Dale Bruner (The Christbook)
Father. Three thoughts:
i) Language then and now. The Greek word here, patēr, is likely a translation of Abba, an Aramaic term for Father or Dad. Jesus seems to have used "Abba" to refer to God regularly and it is kept in its Aramaic form in Mark 14:36; Romans 8:15; and Galatians 4:6. In each instance the writer follows Abba with patēr, to explain its meaning to Greek speaking readers. The New Testament writers translated Jesus' teaching into Greek, but in this instance, it seems they wanted to hold onto this one word in its original language that was so precious to Jesus. God as our Abba was a significant concept for Jesus and the early Church worth passing on, understanding, and honouring, no matter what the language of believers. And yet, by using the word "Abba" Jesus was already breaking with tradition. Although Jews in Jesus' day spoke Aramaic, they always prayed in Hebrew, the language of God and his Scriptures. (Similar to how our Muslim friends claim Arabic is God's language of revelation, and the Quran must be read in Arabic to fully appreciate it.) Jesus prayed to God as Abba (Aramaic), not Abinu (Hebrew), which pulls prayer out of the realm of the religious and into the realm of the relational, placing priority on intimacy over formality. Our lesson in English is that we can use whatever fatherly title feels most close and meaningful for us - Father, Dad, Daddy, Papa, or Abba, etc.
ii) God the Father and Gender. But doesn't calling God our Dad/Father engender him, locking God into the role of a male parent only? The Bible is clear that God is the origin and source of our full humanity, including the best of male and female traits (Genesis 1:26-27). For instance, God gives birth and nurtures us all (Deuteronomy 32:18; Isaiah 49:15; 1 Peter 2:2; 1 John 3:9), and Jesus describes himself as having the protective and nurturing instincts of a mother hen (Matthew 23:37) and of a woman searching for what is lost (Luke 15:8-10). The New Testament calls all believers, male and female, "brothers" and all of God's children, male and female, "sons". So calling God "Father" in no way limits our broad understanding of his full parental personhood. Rather than de-gender God with neutral titles ("The Deity"), or to double-gender God in title ("Father-Mother God"), which the Bible does not do, it seems best to align both our language and our understanding with Scripture, which means we will call God "Father" while we understand this Father also has a Mother's heart. (Besides, as Kenneth E. Bailey points out in his masterful book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, the Devil is always depicted as masculine in the New Testament, and no one is arguing for gender inclusion there.) In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus redefines fatherhood in terms of God's counter-cultural norm-shattering love, and that is the father we pray to. Rather than import our earthly understandings about human fathers onto God, we should let God redefine for us what fatherhood is really all about.
iii) The centrality of God as father. In ancient Greek, word order was one way to highlight the emphasis of a sentence. They didn't have italics or bold lettering, so word order did the trick. The word representing the most important thought or concept is placed first in the sentence. And the word order in this Greek text puts "Father" first - that is, the Lord's Prayer really begins not "Our Father" but "Father of us" (we change the word order in English translations simply for ease of flow). Jesus is saying the most important thing to get right is God's relationship to us as our loving and engaged Dad. Most prayers at that time began with titles exalting the name and status of the deity (e.g., "Oh great and glorious God, exalted Sovereign and Ruler, Lord of heaven and earth, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the great Ancient of Days..."). Whereas Jesus says - ya, just call him "Dad". This is radical and revolutionary. In the Hebrew Bible, when God first refers to Israel as his "son", he does so giving Moses instructions on what to say to Pharaoh about letting his people go. They will no longer be Pharaoh's slaves because they are free children of God (Exodus 4:22-23). When we pray to our Father in the heavens, we are praying as free people, refusing to bow as slaves to any earthly power or distraction, whether money or media, sex or substances, politics or possessions, condemnation or shame - we declare our freedom. We are no longer slaves but sons. Jesus does not say God is like a father, but that God is our Father, more real than any other earthly reflection of fatherhood. Family is the foundation of everything that matters. (More about this in the Commentary section.) Few people ever prayed this way in Jesus' day. On rare occasions, only fifteen total, the Old Testament refers to God as a "Father" (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:6; Psalm 103:13; Isaiah 63:16; Malachi 2:10), and it was even more uncommon for someone to actually address God directly as their "Father". (Compare this to 245 times in the New Testament.) Knowing philosophically and intellectually that God was a "Father" in that he was the head of the family of Israel and the source of all life (the Father God with a Mother's heart) - that way of thinking was common. But calling God "Father" and relating to God as their Dad - that was not. So when Jesus shows up calling God his "Abba", his Dad, and even teaching his followers to do the same, well, this was revolutionary speech.
EXAMPLE PRAYER: Dear Father (or Dad), thank you for loving me like the perfect parent that you are. I'm so grateful to be your child, not just your subject or servant. I accept your unconditional love for me today, and I want to live in a way that makes you proud of me. Thank you that even when I mess up, your love never changes, and I will always be your son/daughter. (Then sit with God as your Father for a moment and meditate on how much he loves you no matter what. Maybe think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and picture yourself going into the house for the party.)
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! ~ The apostle John (1 John 3:1)
"Father. Nothing shapes our prayers more than this word." ~ Daniel M. Doriani (Matthew)
"Father... The mission of the church is contained in that word." ~ N.T. Wright (The Lord and His Prayer)

In the heavens. Recall that in most instances in the Sermon on the Mount when "heaven" is mentioned, the word is actually in the plural (with four exceptions). This helps us remember that God is not just sitting on a throne in a celestial city in another dimension, but is right here with us and all around us. In ancient Greek, the word "heavens" can mean the place we go to when we die and where God rules from another dimension. Jesus uses it this way earlier in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, "But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool" (Matthew 5:34; note here it is singular). But the heavens can also mean space (the starry heavens) and the sky where birds fly - Jesus uses the word this way later in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:26). This explains why, when the apostle Paul wants to say he had a vision of post-mortem Paradise, he calls it “the third heaven” to be clear to his first-century audience that he is not just talking about the atmosphere or space (2 Corinthians 12:1-4). Our Father "in the heavens" means all of the above: 1) Our Father on the throne, 2) Our Father in all creation, and 3) Our Father who is with us, around us, and in us, like the air we breathe. So, when God’s voice speaks “out of the heavens” in the Bible (e.g., Matthew 4:17; Acts 11:9; Ephesians 4:6), it is not a booming and distant voice shouting from beyond the clouds; it is an intimate and gentle voice, whispering from right beside us or within us. God is not watching us from a distance (sorry Bette Midler). God is our spiritual atmosphere, as the apostle Paul affirms saying: “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We literally live in love.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ~ The apostle Paul (Ephesians 4:4-6)
"We are surrounded by the heavens. The heavens are the atmosphere in which we live. ... Jesus is praying: 'Father in the heavens': 'Father all around us'; and 'Father close at hand.'" ~ Darrell Johnson (Fifty-Seven Words that Change the World)
EXAMPLE PRAYER: Dear Father, today I want to walk with an awareness of your presence doing life together with me. Help me tune into you alongside me, inside me, and all around me. (Take a few moments right now to become aware that God is with you.)
May your name be honoured. This phrase could be a request and/or a commitment: "May you make your name honoured" or "May we make your name honoured". We could translate this phrase "We treat your name as sacred". Matthew uses the verb form of "holy", which means to be sanctified or set apart as special - it is the opposite of common, mundane, or ordinary. In ancient times, someone's name represented their full personhood (e.g., Psalm 138:2). Think of the Great Commission where Jesus says we should make disciples, baptising them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), or when the angel tells Joseph to name the baby "Jesus" (Yeshua, which means Yahweh Saves) because he will save people from sin (Matthew 1:21). The name and identity went together. To honour God's name is to say the fullness of who God is will be set apart as paramount to Christ-followers. Our heavenly Father is not just one more person in our social world - he is everything to us. In his public ministry, Jesus brought honour and glory to the name of God (Matthew 9:8; 15:31), and Jesus wants us to do the same. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus showed us one way we can partner with our own prayers to see God's name, God's personhood, lifted up, honoured, and glorified - through our good deeds (Matthew 5:16). We can also think of this line in the Lord's Prayer as the praise part of prayer. Praise is more than thanksgiving, which is expressing gratitude for a specific thing someone has done for us. Praise lifts someone up for who they are. Praise is declaring something that we all know is true but deserves to be said anyway. Some Christians use the "ACTS" model of prayer - Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Praise is the "Adoration" part of that pattern. Before we pray about our own lives, we pray that God would be glorified. This is the request that shapes everything else that follows. What a beautiful and meaningful mental focus to hold in prayer and throughout our day. We care more about God's name being lifted up than our own. There is freedom in this.
EXAMPLE PRAYER: Father, you are love, you are light, and in you is no darkness at all. Your greatness astounds me (think about how powerful and vast God is), your goodness encourages me (think about God's commitment to caring for the details of our lives), and your kindness draws me closer (think about how much God has shown his love for us through Jesus). Your creativity amazes me (think about God's riotous artistry in nature - plants, animals, weather, space, and human diversity - and in the art and architecture and music and other creations of humans). Your love surrounds me (think about ways God may have been caring for you over the past 24 hours that you may not have noticed). Your truth lights my path (think about ways God may have been speaking to you, guiding you, since the last time you prayed). Father, I want your greatness and goodness to be seen by others around me. May I walk with you today in a way that glorifies your name.
You can see in this Matthew-Luke Dynamic-Duo combo approach we are both reciting the Lord's Prayer (Luke) and using it to guide our conversation with God in our own words (Matthew). We are also taking time between our words to "be" with God, and we are making space for using our imagination to remind us of God's activity in our lives, in the world around us, and throughout history. Prayer can be a full left and right brain activity, and when we lift our hands or kneel or lie prostrate or stand gazing upward, we are engaging our whole selves in a holy time with God.
COMMENTARY
(Thoughts about meaning and application)
It is popular in some church circles to emphasize the transcendence of God over his immanence. That is a fancy way of saying they emphasize God's above-and-beyond-out-there-high-and-mighty-hugeness rather than God's right-here-with-us-gentle-leading-and-loving-closeness. Those groups that emphasize God's transcendence highlight concepts like God's Sovereignty, Holiness, Lordship, Kingship, Wrath, and Omnipotence. God is primarily viewed as Creator, King, and Judge. When we say "God is, above all, a loving Father who knows us intimately, accepts us unreservedly, and loves us unconditionally" they might feel the impulse to add "Yes, but God is also a holy and sovereign King who will judge all sin with his righteous wrath", or something like that.
Even in commentaries on our current passage, many say something like: "Yes, Jesus encourages us to think of God as our loving father, but he immediately reminds us that God is both intimate and distant by calling him not just 'Our father' but 'Our father in heaven'. This 'in heaven' description should remind us that God is high and above all, seated on his throne as our King and Judge." The problem, as pointed out above, is that "heaven" is in the plural in the Sermon on the Mount and refers both to the celestial city in another dimension (transcendence) as well as the atmosphere all around us (immanence).
To be clear, all Christians believe all of the above. God is both transcendent and immanent, both above and beyond us, as well as right here participating in our lives with us. It's all true. But history shows that entirely different religious subcultures can be created simply by what we put our emphasis on. And Jesus cares about where we put our emphasis.
God is not my mushy-gushy cuddle buddy, or my go-get-it-for-me fetch dog, but neither is he a dictator, parole officer, or detached Emperor of the Universe. God is our Dad.
"Whatever it may mean for God to be omnipotent, omnipresent, all knowing, eternal, infinite - none of these descriptions are more important or significant than Jesus teaching us to address God as Father."
~ Stanley Hauerwas (Matthew)

Yes, God is the King (Sovereign) of the universe to whom we owe our fealty. Jesus never denies this and, in fact, will go on to talk about the kingdom of God in his next sentence of the Lord's Prayer. Yet Jesus reminds us first and foremost that this King is our Dad. He calls God our "Father" (Greek, patér; Aramaic, Abba) seventeen times in the Sermon on the Mount alone (and over forty times in the Gospel of Matthew). This super concentration of Father imagery is meant to correct our hyper-God-is-Sovereign emphasis. Because the King is our Dad, we can boldly bust through the crowds and run up to him while he sits on his throne.
Let us therefore approach God's throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)
"Avoid being bashful with God, as some people are, in the belief that they are being humble." ~ Teresa of Ávila (The Way of Perfection)

Israel knew God was their "Father" theologically, but they primarily related to God as their King, their Sovereign, their Judge, their Master, and Maker. Israel had a concept of God that was theologically true, but relationally deficient.
You forgot the Rock who fathered you, and put out of mind the God who gave you birth. ~ Moses (Deuteronomy 32: 18)
This was sad for God, who said:
How gladly would I treat you like my children and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’ I thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me. ~ Yahweh (Jeremiah 3:19)
I thought you would call me 'Father' - one of the saddest lines in Scripture. Jesus reintroduces God's people to the privilege of being the King's kids. And this reality changes everything.
Think of bringing home a report card to your loving parents, knowing that they will be proud of the A, okay with the couple of Bs and Cs, and disappointed with the F. You want to do better, sure, but you don't expect to be kicked out of the family because of the F. Especially if your parents have seen how hard you have been working at your schoolwork. In fact, if they have been a part of your life and seeing the subjects you struggle with, they are not surprised by your grades. They are with you in every part of life, usually proud, sometimes disappointed, always compassionate.
It really is Good News to know the Judge of the universe is our Dad, and our Dad loves us like crazy!
Some may wonder:
But what about those of us who have negative father experiences in this life? Doesn't God being thought of as our 'father' become good or bad depending on our earthly family experiences?
This is an important issue. Step 3 of AA says: "We entrusted ourselves to God as we understood God." And indeed, the only way any of us pray to God is as we understand God. But this will be a problem unless we allow Jesus to purify our vision of God. Remember Jesus' words:
Whoever looks at me is seeing the one who sent me. ... Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. ~ JESUS (John 12:45; 14:9)
Praise God, like Father like Son.
In fact, our experience of fatherhood should not help us define God, rather, our experience of God should help us define the entire enterprise of fatherhood.
Thinking of God as our Father who gives us birth - that is, the Father God with a Mother's Heart - this is our most foundational reality. Jesus does not say, "Think of your earthly father and know God is like that." Instead he redefines our concept of fatherhood. Jesus tells the Parable of the Prodigal Son and says, "If God's love were expressed through a human father, it would look like this - absolutely bonkers". In the order of meaning, our earthy fatherhood is defined by God, not the other way around. If we've had a great earthly father, wonderful! If we've had a bad earthly father, then all the more reason to be reparented by God himself, our original and defining father.
"It can be argued that the remedy for a bad father is not the still greater removal of any father figure at all; it is the gift of a finally good Father. The Lord's Prayer gives this gift." ~ Frederick Dale Bruner (The Christbook)
To pray to God as the Father challenges the status quo of human fatherhood, just as calling the church our family challenges the limitations and sins of our human families. ~ Stanley Hauerwas (Matthew)
In the words of the apostle Paul:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ~ The apostle Paul (Ephesians 3:14-15)
So, it's not like God was looking for a good human analogy to describe his care for us and thought "Oh look, humans have fathers and are organized into families - I'll use that!" No, God as Father came first! The Trinity as family came first! And human relationships were patterned after God.
Jesus says God's IS our Father, not just like our Father. This is different than saying God is our Shepherd or King or Judge or that Jesus is the Bread of Life. These are analogies based on human phenomena. God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that is the essence of everything.
Jesus even uses his typical Jewish hyperbole to drive this point home - God is our father and fellow believers are our family and those truths are more real than their purely human counterparts:
And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. ~ JESUS (Matthew 23:9)
For whoever does the will of my Father in the heavens is my brother and sister and mother. ~ JESUS (Matthew 12:50)
So, let's not allow our faltering human relationships to limit our appreciation and embrace of God's love. Let's allow God's love to reorient and purify our understanding of all human relationships.

A question arises:
Is God everyone's "Father" or the Father of believers only?
Since God as our "father" describes a relational intimacy, we can understand why neither Jesus nor any early church leaders ever refer to God as the Father of everyone. For Jesus, God as Father was more than a way of saying God is everyone's source of life (as in Acts 17:28-29), but it was an invitation to acknowledge God's daily loving care.
God is not everyone's father, but he wants to be. God invites everyone to be "born again" into his family (John 1:13-15; 3:1-16; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:3, 23; 1 John 3:9). Or, using a different analogy, God wants to "adopt" us into his family (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:5: Ephesians 1:5).
As the Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine points out:
"In antiquity, to be adopted into a family was a sign of special welcome. Julius Caesar had a biological child with Cleopatra of Egypt, but his heir was his adopted son, Octavian (later, Augustus)." ~ Amy-Jill Levine (Sermon on the Mount).
CONFESSION
(Personal reflection)
I confess that I am often lonely. And yet, I like being alone. Go figure.
What I feel may go beyond loneliness; I regularly feel a severe sense of "aloneness". It is a pervasive feeling of hopeless malaise that I am utterly and absolutely alone, regardless of whether or not I am around other people. I live with a near constant, sometimes painful, awareness that within my own mind I am an entire universe of images and emotion, light and sound, thoughts and feelings, words and wordless experiences that no one else will ever enter into with me. My experience of myself happens all by myself.
This is true for all of us, but it only really bothers some of us. We can use our word labels, as I am doing right now, to describe to others our inner experience, but no one can actually indwell it with us. So even if I overcome my feelings of loneliness by being around other people I still cannot overcome my sense of aloneness.
Unless... God. But more about that in a moment.
As a kid, I loved the original Star Trek. And to this day, one scene lingers with me still, from the episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?". In this episode the good ship and crew of the USS Enterprise host an ambassador named Kollos from a race known as the Medusans. The Medusans are non-corporeal, pure energy, and live always connected to one another telepathically. They don't have to talk to communicate their thoughts, feelings, or experiences to one another; they just know. When the Medusan ambassador temporarily inhabits Mr. Spock's body, he delights in the sensory experience. But quickly senses how separated and isolated embodied living really is:
"How compact your bodies are. And what a variety of senses you have. This thing you call language though, most remarkable. You depend on it for so very much. But is any one of you really its master? But most of all, the aloneness. You are so alone. You live out your lives in this shell of flesh. Self-contained, separate. How lonely you are. How terribly lonely." ~ Ambassador Kollos (Star Trek, "Is There in Truth No Beauty?")

Then during my young adult years, I came across this quote from Aldous Huxley (what a cool name!) and maybe for the first time since my nerdy Star Trek days I felt like someone really got me. Here it is:
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
Whoa. Every time I read that paragraph it hits me afresh. Yes! It feels like pure truth syrup, undiluted and unadulterated. But it is only half of the truth of human existence.
God changes everything.

I believe there really is someone who can experience what I experience, who can really be with me, alongside me, inside me, viewing the world through my eyes and thoughts and feelings.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ~ The apostle Paul (Ephesians 4:4-6)
Soren Kierkegaard writes extensively about this in a few places, especially his masterful book, Fear and Trembling (written under a pseudonym, Johannes de silentio - Latin for John of the Silence). In brief, Kierkegaard examines Abraham's inner world when God tells him to sacrifice his son Isaac. He points out that God gave Abraham such a horrific and unjustifiable command that Abraham could not talk it over with any other human being. What could Abraham say to his wife Sarah? "Honey, please pray for my courage today. I have to go kill our son." Nope. Abraham couldn't even talk it over with Isaac, the supposed sacrifice God wanted. By giving Abraham such an unexplainable and incomprehensible task, God placed Abraham in a crucible of aloneness, where only God could enter. That entire three day journey to Mount Moriah to sacrifice Isaac was pure one-on-one time between Abraham and God. (See Genesis 22 for the whole story.)
And then there is the story of Mary being told by an angel that she will become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Ya right. Who is she going to tell? Not even Joseph, who needed to be convinced by his own encounter with an angel in a dream. Not the shepherds who were told by an army of angels. Not the Magi, who were invited by God through a star. Not her cousin Elizabeth, until God confirmed the truth to her through her own miraculous pregnancy. Unless God personally invited others into the experience, Mary's approach was simple: she treasured all these things in her heart (Luke 2:19).

Because Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), he changes everything. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit, another Person who can experience our experiences with us, think our thoughts with us, feel our feels with us. The Holy Spirit brings God into our hearts and us into God's (John 14:15-20). The Holy Spirit knows our own inner worlds so well, he can even pray for us when we run out of words (Romans 8:26).
Step aside Ambassador Kollos - you Medusans ain't got nothing on the Holy Spirit.
We are never actually alone; we just feel like we are alone because we live in functional denial of God. But when we tune into God, we will find that God is already tuned into us.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. ~ The apostle Paul (Romans 8:26)
What intimacy!
What togetherness!
What shared experience!
What - whatever is the opposite of aloneness!
Prayer is how we immerse ourselves in the more real reality that we are never actually alone (meeting our need for connection) and that together with God and others we can change the world one life at a time (meeting our need for purpose).
For me, this is the important reality I am reaffirming every time I pray, "Our Father in the heavens". The Lord's Prayer helps me reimagine reality in a more real way.
The thought recently occured to me - In living each day, we don't actually think our way through every decision of every moment of our day. Nor do we feel our way through the myriad of micro-choices we make every day. We imagine our way forward. We mentally picture outcomes. Imagination rooted in hope is how we move from one moment into the next.
This is true for prayer as well:
"The vitality of prayer lies largely in the vision of God that prompts it. Drab thoughts of God make prayer dull." ~ J.I. Packer (Praying the Lord's Prayer)
And so, when we pray, who we imagine we are talking with may be the most important thing we do.
CONCLUSION
(One last thought)
The second last verse in the Bible records one of the shortest and most meaningful prayers:
Come, Lord Jesus. ~ The apostle John (Revelation 22:20)
This isn't just a prayer for Jesus to return and judge the world at the end of time, but a request to experience more of Jesus' presence here and now and everywhere and always. When we can't remember all of the Lord's prayer, we can remember to pray this, and then to open our eyes and look for signs of God's love.
Come, Lord Jesus.
CONTEMPLATE
(Scripture passages that relate to and deepen our understanding of this topic)
Psalm 105:1-3; Ezekiel 36:22-27; John 1:13-15; Ephesians 3:14-19
CONVERSATION
(Talk together, learn together, grow together)
What is God revealing to you about himself through this passage?
What is God showing you about yourself through this passage?
What has been your experience of loneliness, fatherhood, and family? How do these ideas affect your prayer life?
What is one thing you can think, believe, or do differently in light of what you are learning?
What questions are you still processing about this topic?


Thank you for this Bruxy. As I've said in the past, your insights have introduced me to a loving God, the creator of the universe, who is both intimate and infinite at the same time.