Why Jesus Taught Us to Pray to God As Our Father
Confronting Lies About The Heart of God
Excerpt from “Enjoying Prayer”
A.W. Tozer said that what comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us (The Knowledge of the Holy, AW Tozer, pg 1). Knowing who we are praying to is more important than knowing how to pray. If prayer is communication with God, then our view of God profoundly affects our ability to communicate well with him. Perhaps that is why Jesus began his most famous prayer, often called the Lord’s Prayer, in Matthew 6:9 with “Our Father.” He wanted us to know the One to whom we are praying, not just the correct language to use. He wanted to introduce us to His Father.
In Luke 11, the Jesus’s disciples had the unique experience of witnessing the incarnate Son of God praying to the Father (Luke 11:1). It would have been incredible to be present at that moment. We get small glimpses of Jesus’s earthly prayer life in the Gospels, but being there in person would have been life-changing. When Jesus was done praying, the only thing the disciples knew to say was “Lord, teach us to pray.” (Luke 11:2) When they encountered God talking to God, they realized they did not truly know how to pray. Without hesitation, Jesus said:
“When you pray, say: “Father.” Luke 11:2
I believe this one word is the most important word in the Lord’s prayer. Father. Jesus did not encourage His disciples to address God as their “King” or “Lord” or “Creator.” These are all aspects of how God relates to us. But Jesus surprisingly encouraged them to approach prayer the way a child talks to a parent. What is it about the nature of a Father that is important to how we pray and relate to God?
Challenges to Seeing God as a Father
For many of us, speaking to God as a Father will bring up mixed emotions. The idea of a “father” may evoke a variety of good and bad memories, depending on your upbringing and experience with your earthly father. To some, the idea of viewing God as our dad is actually painful. That is because we are all wounded by our earthly fathers who are imperfect and prone to human weakness. Even the best human dad will make many mistakes that hurt his children along the way. And the worst fathers can leave deep physical, mental, and emotional wounds from trauma that take years to heal.
To see God as our Father, you must go on a journey of dealing with your own childhood experiences. You need to sort through painful memories and learn to recognize any lies you have believed arising from the inadequacies of your earthly father (or father figures in your life).
You will need to forgive. You will need the Holy Spirit to help you know and see what’s really going on in your soul. And ultimately, you must renounce the lies you have believed and accept the truth of God’s Word about who He really is and who you really are in Him.
This process can be complex and may require assistance from a pastor or trained counselor. Some churches offer “inner healing” ministry from individuals trained in helping people work through these kinds of things in a Spirit-led and biblical way. You may want to get additional resources that will guide you through the needed process with more depth and clarity. (Two books that have helped me are Receiving Love by Biuso & Newman, Experiencing Father’s Embrace by Jack Frost.)
But I urge you to take the time to deal with anything in your heart, mind and soul that may be a hindrance to understanding God as a good and loving Father. Your view of God will be distorted by unbiblical lies you have accepted, even subconsciously. They will negatively impact your prayer life, your intimacy with God, and your personal relationships.
As you continue to study the nature of God as our Father, certain lies may be exposed. When that happens, simply renounce them (I suggest doing so out loud) and speak the truth of God’s word. I believe God’s fierce love has the power to cut through any wounds, pain, trauma, and lies in your life. He can heal you, set you free, and make you new again. This will be a process. I don’t expect any of you to have renounced every lie and fully embraced the Fathers’ love by the end of this chapter. But you can begin a lifelong journey of freedom. Don’t be frustrated if it feels slow. And again, please consider reaching out for help from pastors, a trusted inner healing ministry, and/or professional counseling, as needed.
Confronting Lies About the Father
I was raised by two Christian parents who were married until the death of my father. I was not abused or neglected. We had a great middle-class upbringing in North Carolina with friends, education, sports, music, and all the things you would expect for a healthy childhood. Yet even a fantastic childhood leaves wounds. Parents make mistakes. And while I do not have a lot of traumatic childhood memories, I do have painful ones. There are moments where, even if my parents did something right, I perceived their actions in a way that wounded my heart. In those situations, I made a vow or believed a lie that began to shape my worldview even into adulthood. I’ll share some examples from my journey to give you context. (I am not a counselor or therapist, so I share my stories only as an example of how God can heal wounds from our pasts. My story is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive.)
Growing up, my brother and I were occasionally spanked for our bad behavior. My dad would often use a wooden ruler. There was one ruler in our home that had a metal edge to it. It was a more expensive ruler, and the metal edge made it easier to draw a good straight line. If Dad spanked one of us with this ruler and it caught our “bottom” the wrong way, it would inflict extra pain and sometimes even break the skin. After pleading with my dad not to use that particular ruler anymore, he promised my brother and me that he would avoid it.
Shortly after this time, my friend Adam had come over to the house to play. We wanted to play outside, but my mom said to stay inside the house. We had the bright idea to disobey my mother and go outside through the window. We were about as sneaky as most elementary aged boys are, and we ended up breaking a window in our attempt to get out of the house.
As expected, my dad was furious and proceeded to grab the nearest ruler (which happened to be the one with the metal edge) to dispense some much-needed discipline for my foolishness. While the spanking hurt, what hurt even more was the fact that he had broken his promise. In retrospect, I can understand my dad’s perspective. I had broken the window, which would cost him hundreds of dollars and cause him lots of trouble. He wasn’t thinking about which specific ruler he was grabbing. He just wanted to deal with the situation. But as a young boy, this instance wounded me in a particular way.
You don’t always know why a certain moment becomes a marking moment in your life. You can’t predict why something a person says or does becomes lodged in your soul. But you have certain memories that never leave you. They shape your approach to life, consciously and unconsciously. And maturity requires that you take the time to explore these memories and the beliefs you developed because of them.
My dad had broken his promise. I had gone too far, and so he hurt me. Honestly, this probably wasn’t the only time my dad inadvertently broke a promise or went back on his word. But it is the one I remember. It was a key moment that caused me to question things:
Can anyone be trusted? Will anyone keep their promises? Will God keep His promises? Maybe He will as long as I’m good. I need to be perfect so I don’t get hurt. If I sin too much, God will lose his temper, get mad and hurt me. I need to put my guard up and be suspicious. I don’t want to ever trust anyone too deeply, because it might bite me in the back. Etc.
I was obviously not self-aware enough as a child to understand that I was building an entire belief system off this experience. At the moment, I was simply hurt and trying to cope. Yet as I went through life, the lie (that I can’t trust people) continued to come along with me, impacting my relationship with God and others.
The truth that I had to learn to accept is that God can be trusted. The Father does keep His promises. He is slow to anger and rich in love.
Over the years, as the Holy Spirit has brought multiple painful memories to my mind, I have been able to identify the lies that accompanied them and receive the biblical truths about my heavenly Father.
What comes to mind when we think about God as Father? Most of us have filters from our past that taint our understanding of who He really is and how we should relate to Him. We must allow the truth of God as Father to set us free and draw us into joyful prayer. Let’s dive into some of the truths about our Father in heaven.
The Father Pursues Us In Love
Perhaps the most illuminating revelation that Jesus gives about God as our Father is nestled in the parable commonly known as the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The story begins with a father and two sons. One of the sons decided that he wanted to get his inheritance early in order to leave home and be on his own.
After squandering his money on lavish (i.e. “prodigal”) living, he found himself feeding pigs, which were unclean animals for the Jewish people. He was so hungry that he ate out of the pig trough, which would have been not only humiliating and gross but also utterly sinful. Finally, the son came to the end of himself and decided it would be better to return home as a slave to his father than to continue in his current situation.
The son expected condemnation and rejection. He anticipated the need to beg for an opportunity to even be a servant in the household. He was stinky, dirty, broke, embarrassed, and exhausted. Jesus described what happened next:
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”Luke 15:20
Rather than condemnation, the son received love. Rather than begging for acceptance, the father ran to the son and embraced him. The son tried to start his rehearsed apology, but the father totally ignored him and started throwing a party to celebrate the child’s return.
The older brother, who had stayed at home the entire time, became jealous of the way the younger brother was being treated. He became resentful about the grace being shown by his father, and he refused to come into the home during the celebration. Again, we see the father moving in love towards one of his sons. He went outside the house, pleaded for reconciliation with his older son, and reaffirmed his love and acceptance.
This beautiful story captures the heart of the Father who we come to in prayer. He is a Father who pursues us in love. He is a Father who is patient with us. He is gracious. He does not condemn us when we come to Him after a mistake. We do not have to earn our way back into His presence. Jesus has earned our way into the Father’s house for us. All we have to do is keep returning to Him.