Our Lord and His PrayerSample

As a young family, we developed a habit of saying The Lord’s Prayer before every meal. My 3-year-old son really took to it. Every time we sat down to dinner, he’d beg, “Daddy, can I lead Our Thather?” As a three-year-old, my son was beginning to realize that in addition to having the coolest dad ever, he had a heavenly Thather. He was understanding the powerful relational context of prayer.

When Jesus teaches us to pray to our Father, He is not reimagining who God is. Since the beginning, God has wanted to be known by His people as Father.

Notice Exodus 4:22-23. God summons Moses to go rescue Israel from slavery in Egypt, and He calls Himself Israel’s Father. Catch that - the first time that God is announced as Father in the Bible is in the context of the hope of liberty and freedom. The slaves were, and would become, sons and daughters!

Not only does God want His people to know Him as Father, but He also wants us to know that we have a role in this relationship. Specifically, He calls us to be priests. Notice Exodus 19:6.

Because we know God as Father, we relate to God in a way that others don’t; therefore, we get to reveal God’s character to His not-yet children. As a kingdom of priests, our job is to help others see our Heavenly Father and taste the freedom He wants to offer them.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, they expected him to start the prayer, “Blessed are you Lord our God, King of the world.” That’s the way all Jewish prayers start. Instead, Jesus prayed words that brought to mind Exodus, where God first called Himself our Father.

Starting a prayer like this was new, and it was also a renewal of what God has always been doing. It’s a lifeline of hope: “God is going to deliver us! He is our Father; He will rescue us so we can help rescue others.” This wasn’t just a nice bedtime prayer or a quick and easy prayer to say at the dinner table, this was a revolutionary prayer: “Our Father, rescue us. Let it be now and let it be us.”

May you know your Heavenly Father as your rescuer.