Grown Up's Guide to PrayerSample

Day 6: Show Us the Father 

Prayer

Heavenly Father, show me my blind spots. Show me where I’m resisting what I don’t know or can’t control. Through your son, Jesus, help me see you, God, for who you really are. 

Reading

Grown-up prayers make for grown-up faith. Jesus teaches us how to pray grown-up prayers. He’s instructed us not to pray for the admiration of others, but to get alone with God. He shows us in the Jesus prayer to address God as Father, declare his greatness, and align our will with his, asking for his provision, pardon, and protection. Let’s put it all back together . . .

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’” (Matthew 6:9–13)

In summary, here’s a model to use when you pray:

• Address God as Father.
• Declare his greatness.
• Surrender your will.
• Acknowledge your dependence for provision, pardon, and protection.

Don’t get the wrong impression, though. Jesus’s prayer is a pattern or template for prayer. It’s not a formula. It’s not magic. Jesus’s prayer represents a posture and perspective for prayer. It underscores the purpose for prayer—to align our will with God’s. Prayer is not so much about receiving as it is about re-syncing and remembering who God is and who we are in relation to him. 

Prayer is a call to surrender our lives and follow Jesus. But you still might be wondering: What about me? Can I pray for other things? Other people? 

Absolutely! 

The apostle Peter encourages us in “casting all your cares on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7, CSB). 

Peter encourages you to bear your soul and cast all your cares on the Lord who loves you. All your cares—your deepest burdens, your biggest heartbreak, that thing that is so on your mind you can barely think about anything else—are to be laid at the feet of your heavenly Father after you’ve acknowledged his right to rule, after you’ve surrendered to his lordship, and after you’ve decided, yes, you’re going to follow him. 

Today and tomorrow, we’re going to learn about asking for something Jesus doesn’t mention specifically in Matthew 6, though it’s certainly implied. It’s something we can ask for multiple times a day. We’re going to learn about asking God to help us see him for who he really is. 

But first, we need to recognize what gets in our way: It’s human nature to resist things we don’t understand or can’t control. On one hand, we want to be open-minded. But we want to make sense of things too. We want the world to make sense. Our worldview, whatever it is, enables us to make sense of the world as we experience it. Our worldview is our framework, and when it’s challenged, we naturally cross our arms and become defensive, retreating to our corner. 

Again, it’s human nature to resist what we don’t understand or can’t control.

But that limits us, doesn’t it? It limits us in our view of God. Think about it: What does the way you pray say about your view of God? Some of us have reduced God to a wish-granter, a conscience-cleaner, a rescuer to be summoned. Listen to how you pray, and you’ll learn about how you view God. Listen to Jesus’s prayers, and you’ll learn how he views God. 

Do you want to know what God is like? Do you want to see him? Listen to Jesus pray. Listen to the way he instructs us to pray. To pray as Jesus taught us, we have to view God not as we imagine him. To pray grown-up prayers, we need a grown-up version of God—the Jesus version of God. Jesus came to reveal the Father and show us what God is like. 

Philip, one of the twelve apostles, understood this. One evening, he became frustrated with Jesus’s parables and analogies. He said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). 

To which Jesus answered:

“Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

In other words, we’ll never get any closer to knowing God than through Jesus. Do you want to know what God is like? Or what God likes? Follow Jesus. Following Jesus requires change. And it requires you to give up some assumptions and perhaps things you’ve believed your entire life. That’s difficult to do. It’s difficult because, again, it’s human nature to resist things we don’t understand or can’t control. 

That explains why people in Jesus’s own time resisted Jesus. First-century religious leaders pushed back. Jesus’s audience misunderstood him. Right up to the end, folks thought they had Jesus figured out. It’s why at the last minute, Judas betrayed Jesus, and the other 11 disciples bailed on Jesus and ran for their lives. Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Jesus’s followers had preconceived notions about what the Messiah should be like, what he should accomplish. How about restoring the nation of Israel, Jesus? How about delivering us from Roman rule? They didn’t get it when Jesus said:

“We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him . . .” (Luke 18:31–33)

If the disciples were really listening, they might have, right then and there, headed for the hills. But “the disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about” (Luke 18:34). 

They could not hear. They could not see. 

They thought they knew. But they had some unlearning to do. Guess what? So do we. 

Reflection

Can you think of an inaccurate or unhealthy view of something or somebody you inherited from your upbringing that you corrected later in life? What enabled you to see clearly?