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Prayer Guide

“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.”

 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
 Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”

Luke 11:1-4

Father. It is a loaded word for many of us. Loaded in good ways for some and in difficult ways for others. But it is the first word Jesus taught us to pray. Who we are praying to is more important than what we pray for, because prayer is at its most basic level is a living and vital connection with another person. And this person (because through the death and resurrection of Jesus we have been adopted into his family) wants us to call him “Father” or “Abba” (Daddy). 

The first step of prayer is to come to God as our Father. The one who brought us into the world, the one who cares for us, the one who loves us so much that He would sacrifice what is most precious to Him in order to be close to us. He loves us. And as hard as it is for some of us to believe, He likes us. 

So many of us have a deeply flawed image of God in our minds and hearts. Employer. Angry judge in the sky with arms crossed and gavel about to come down. But when Jesus taught us to pray, He taught us to pray to our “Father.” 

Many of us need God to heal our vision and image of Him. When we don’t pray to a father who loves us, we are actually not praying to the real God but to an idol made up in our own imagination. God’s heart breaks. He longs for intimacy with us more than we can understand, even when we have done things that hurt Him or break His heart. Any of us who are parents can grasp what this is like. 

If we, the church, need God to heal our relationship with Him, how much more so does a lost and hurting world which keeps looking for love and peace and meaning and value in all the wrong places. What we and they need is simple. We need to come into the arms of the Father, and to receive the blessing and love of the Father, which is available to all in Jesus.

For prayer/reflection:

• Who do you pray to? What is the God that you pray to like? Is this God your loving Father? If not, ask God to reveal his fatherly love to your heart.
  
• Pray for others who are alienated from God and are unaware of or have not received the love of the Father.
  
• Pray for a revelation of the Father’s heart to our hearts by the Spirit.
  
• Pray for the healing of mother and father wounds, in you, in others, in the church, in those who are not in the church.