In our church we started the year with a week of prayer. It’s a good pattern, which fits in with one of our sayings “Pray First!”.

But prayer is, of course, ongoing and daily. So I thought it would be good to take a closer look at what we call The Lord’s Prayer over the next few blogs.

The prayer is recorded twice in the Gospels. In Matthew (Matt 6:9-13) it forms part of the Sermon on the Mount, while in Luke 11:2-4, it’s a response to one of his disciples asking Jesus to “teach us to pray” In both instances, Jesus gives more teaching on prayer as well as the prayer itself – not heaping up empty phrases, being persistent and so on.

The wording of the prayer is slightly different in the two accounts, which implies this was something Jesus regularly taught. It also suggests that it’s a model prayer, a pattern to follow, not one we have to repeat word-for-word. Obviously there’s nothing wrong in reciting it as written, but we can also use it as an outline and example of the way we should pray.

Our Father

The very first word is plural. Jesus is talking about praying together. While we can and should pray on our own, there is something special and powerful about praying together. Elsewhere, Jesus refers to “where two or three of you agree … about anything you ask” (Matt 18:19-20). In Acts here are several examples of the church praying together.

Since we introduced the idea of ‘Pray First’ in church, it has become increasingly common to see groups of two or three praying for each other after the services. It’s brilliant, and reinforces the community aspect of ‘church’.

To call God ‘Father’ is pretty much taken for granted in our day. But in Jesus’ time it was revolutionary. The Jews had a sacred name for God YHWH (derived from ‘I am’, the name given to Moses) which they dared not even say out loud. So to refer to him in a familial way would have been a shock. While the word here is ‘Pater’ in Greek (meaning father, parent), elsewhere the Aramaic word ‘Abba’ is used (Mark 14:36 and Romans 8:15). This word is equivalent to ‘Dad’ or even ‘Daddy’.

A friend of ours once described how he was in a motorway services café and was sat near to a Jewish family. One of the children was running up and down between the tables, and the father called to her to come back. She turned round and called out ‘Abba!’ and ran into his arms. A perfect picture of God as our Father.

In the New Testament, the fatherhood of God is reserved for Christians. We have been adopted into his family, giving us the right to be called children of God (John 1:12) and to call God our Father (Romans 8:15). There is a sense in which God could be considered father of everyone, but that is by virtue of creation. But nowhere does the Bible indicate that anyone can approach God as father – in fact the opposite is true. It is not until we trust that Jesus has died for our sins and submit to his Lordship (i.e. become Christians), that we then have the enormous privilege of being adopted into his family. This is the meaning of Romans 8:15-17 – it is only by the Holy Spirit that we can call God ‘Father’, and approach him as that young girl ran to her father.

Martin Luther once said that if he could just understand the first two words of the Lord’s prayer, he would never be the same again.

In Heaven

To say that God is in heaven means something more that his spatial location. After all, God is omnipresent so is not limited to a particular place. To say he is in heaven is to say that God is not of this earth. He cannot be confined, he is ‘other’, above and beyond us. The theologians refer to this as God’s transcendence. 

Heaven is also the place of authority and power. God rules from heaven (e.g. Heb 8:1).

So, there is a kind of tension in the first phrase of the Lord’s prayer. On the one hand, we can address God as Father – an intimate, filial relationship. On the other hand, God is separate, different from us. It’s a healthy balance that prevents us from becoming over-familiar (‘matey’) or becoming presumptuous (see Psalm 19:13), but enables us to come confidently into God’s presence (Heb 4:16)

It means that when we pray, we need to remember who we are, and who we are praying to.