Today is the beginning of our Week of Prayer and Fasting. Each day we will begin our times of prayer together with a reflection. All the reflections are in a booklet with the title, Praying the Lord’s Prayer. You can use those reflections for your own prayers if you aren’t joining with us to pray.
The best book on prayer I have ever read is “Prayer – finding the heart’s true home” by Richard Foster. In it he says, “Prayer is nothing more than an ongoing and growing love relationship with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” For every Christian, our life of prayer is the heart of our relationship with God. Every one of us needs to learn how to pray better. We all need to get to know God better. And as a church we need to learn how to pray, to release God’s love and power into our lives and into our town.
The disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” When we ask, “Lord, teach us to pray,” God’s answer to us will be the same. We can learn to pray through praying The Lord’s Prayer. For 2000 years Christians have been praying what we call the Lord’s Prayer but of course Jesus gives it to us to be The Disciples’ Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is a pattern prayer, not just a parrot prayer. Beyond the words and phrases, The Lord’s Prayer gives us a pattern for all our prayers, a way of praying. Over the next seven days we will learn how to pray better. And we will start today by learning just who we are praying to! This is the secret of all true prayer, to know who we are praying to. Prayer is conversation with God and in any conversation it matters who we are talking to. So the Lord’s Prayer begins by reminding us just who it is we are praying to – “OUR FATHER, IN HEAVEN.”
IN HEAVEN
We need to begin by reminding ourselves just how different God is from us human beings. God is God IN HEAVEN. Not just in a different place from us, but in a spiritual realm which is totally inaccessible to mere mortals.
IMMORTAL, INVISIBLE, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.
God is God IN HEAVEN. Consider the greatness of God – God is Almighty God, all-powerful, nothing is impossible for God! The prophet Isaiah gives us this vision of our magnificent God.
God is the creator of everything that exists.
Isaiah 40 12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?

God is all-knowing, omniscient.

13 Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD, or instruct the LORD as his counsellor?
14 Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge, or showed him the path of understanding?

God is Sovereign Lord of all God is so much greater than nations and kingdoms and all earthly rulers
15 Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. …
17 Before him all the nations are as nothing;
they are regarded by him as worthless
and less than nothing.

The one true God is so much greater than all the false gods and idols human beings have manufactured.
18 With whom, then, will you compare God?
To what image will you liken him?
19 As for an idol, a metalworker casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and fashions silver chains for it.
20 A person too poor to present such an offering
selects wood that will not rot;
they look for a skilled worker
to set up an idol that will not topple.

God is indeed almighty, ruler of all, King of Kings and Lord of Lords
21 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

Indeed God is creator and sustainer and ruler, not just of the whole earth but of the whole universe

25 ‘To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.

This is God Almighty! God IN HEAVEN
God is Almighty. God is All-knowing. God is Ever-present, everywhere all the time!
And God is ETERNAL – beyond space and time!
Psalm 90 1 Lord, you have been our dwelling-place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, ‘Return to dust, you mortals.’
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.

God is heaven is the eternal God. And God in heaven is the HOLY God.
Habbakuk 1:13 Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.
Human beings are selfish and greedy and proud. God is different. God is God is Holy and pure and just and righteous, and yet at the same time God is also all-loving: God IS love.
Almighty, eternal, holy, all-loving. And there is one more word which describes God very well – God is TRANSCENDENT. In every way God in heaven exceeds, goes beyond, rises above, excels over , surpasses ANYTHING we can begin to imagine. We thought about this before Christmas when we were thinking about the incredible miracle that God did not just become a human being, Immanuel, God with us. As Jesus of Nazareth God became a tiny new-born baby. Yet God is transcendent. God is above and beyond and unreachable and unattainable and incomprehensible. God is “Ineffable” – indescribable, inexpressible, beyond words, overwhelming. WHATEVER ideas you have about God, your God isn’t big enough! Your ideas about God aren’t great enough! God is infinitely beyond our knowing – beyond even our imagining. God in Heaven is transcendent. Bow down and worship, for this is your God.
This is the God we are praying to. Our prayers will become deeper and more meaningful the better we get to know the God we are praying to. So it is good to spend time meditating on just who God is. There is the expression that a person in high office has the ear of the Prime Minister, or of the Queen, or of the President. Christians have the ear of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We have the ear of God IN HEAVEN.
Last night I came across a quote from C.H. Spurgeon I hadn’t heard before which makes this point. “True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is a spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.”
The God we are praying to is God IN HEAVEN. Throughout their history the Jews recognised this truth. They would always come our God in humility, addressing God with deeply reverential titles such as “Almighty, holy and eternal God, Creator of heaven and earth and Lord of all”?
So what then is the name that Jesus gives to us for the God we are praying to? Nothing complicated. On the contrary, the name Jesus gives to his disciples to address God with is simply this.
FATHER
“Our Father in Heaven.” There are different words for Father in the languages Jesus spoke, Hebrew and Aramaic. The Lord’s Prayer in both Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel uses the Greek word Pater. But when Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane Mark’s Gospel keeps the Aramaic word which Jesus used to address God, Abba. That is the same word a young child would still use today to address their father. Abba. Not quite Daddy. Respectful but at the same time intimate. Abba. Scholars believe that Abba was the word Jesus Himself used for God, time after time, particularly throughout John’s Gospel and especially in his own prayers. Abba, Father.
No respectful Jew would ever have dared to address God in Heaven as Abba. The word is far too familiar, far too intimate. But Abba, Father is the word which Jesus teaches His disciples to use as they come to God in prayer. Christians are allowed to address Almighty God with the same language as Jesus Christ the Son of God himself did. We can come to God as our Abba Father because of what Jesus has accomplished by His death and resurrection.
After His glorious resurrection this is what the Risen Jesus said to Mary in the garden.
John 20 17 Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’
“My Father and your Father.” Jesus dared to call God “Father”, and now his followers can call God “Father” as well. Because of Jesus, all of us who put our trust in Jesus become God’s children. We are born anew into God’s forever family. We can call God our Father.
John 1 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Christians are born again into God’s family, and we are also adopted into God’s family.
Romans 8: 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
Here in Romans 8:15 and again in Galatians 4:6 Paul actually uses the Aramaic word, Abba, as the word Christians will use to address God in our prayers. Christians are God’s children, and that gives us the right to call God, “Abba, Father.”
Jim Packer wrote, “You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God.”
When we call God Father that reminds us of all our privileges as His children. We can come to God and call Him Father as naturally and easily as any of us would come to our own human parents. The Christian name for God is “Father.” Prayer is about having a relationship to God in Heaven which is THAT close!
We can come to the God of Heaven and call Him “Father.” The version of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke’s Gospel begins simply with “Father.” Matthew’s version begins instead with “Our Father” and that is the way the Church has generally used the prayer. Roman Catholics refer to the Lord’s Prayer as the “Our Father.” “Our Father” reminds us that our salvation and our access to God and indeed all the blessings God has for us come, not just to me individually. These blessings are shared with every other Christian. They come to us all together, collectively. For Christians, the emphasis is not on God as “my Father” but as “our Father”. Our salvation is corporate – it comes to us in the fellowship of the church. “Our Father” reminds us of our brothers and sisters every time we pray the Lord’s prayer.
We need to get to know God more and love God more and worship God more. The secret of prayer will be to really get to know the wonderful God we are praying to. We sometimes spend a long time thinking about what we ought to ask for in our prayers. We need to spend just as long thinking about the Person we are praying to
And we have here, right at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, two truths which we need to hold together as we come to God in prayer. God is God in heaven, almighty, eternal, holy, transcendent. And yet we have the incredible privilege of coming to this God in Heaven and addressing him as Abba, Father. That will give us plenty to reflect on as we begin our Week of Prayer and Fasting. God is inviting us into his presence. “Draw close to God and He will draw close to you.” So let us all set time aside to pray this week, remembering that whenever Christians pray, this is always the God we are praying to: “Our Father in Heaven.”