When you pray, come to God as to your father

Rev Enoch Thompson | FEBRUARY 11, 2023 | MATTHEW 6:9-10

KEY VERSE:

⁹"This, then, is how you should pray:

"'Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

¹⁰your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:9-10 (NIV)

MESSAGE:

Much of our prayer tends to focus on us and our needs and requests for others. This is necessary, as we shall soon see as we proceed in the lesson on prayer. But the Lord Jesus teaches us when we pray to think of our relationship with God, focus on God as our Father, and start our prayer from that point.

Prayer as communication is based on a relationship we have with God. It is an exciting thing to think of and to understand that God is our Father. Some religious thoughts cannot entertain the belief that we humans could become children of God. But the Bible teaches us that at conversion God becomes our Father, and we are accepted as His children. What a thought!

God as our Father means that we define and derive our source from Him. It means that we are loved by God and kept by Him (Jude 1). Being children of God means we are a people indwelt by the Holy Spirit, are no longer slaves to Satan and sin, and are inheritors of all that God has (Eph. 4:6-7). These and many other great truths go along with the fact that God is our Father, and we are His children. It is in this understanding that the Apostle John declares:

¹How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

³Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. 1 John 3:1-3 (NIV)

FEET AND HANDS FOR THE MESSAGE:

When you come to prayer, do not come as a poor stranger or with a sense that you will not be accepted. Come as a child of God, that is if you have accepted the opportunity God gives us through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the sacrifice to reconnect us to our God and creator. Come boldly to your Father in Heaven.

PRAYER:

Lord, I am privileged to be your child, through faith in Jesus Christ. Please enable me to remember always that I am accepted in your heavenly presence.

Please remind me daily to help others come to faith in Christ by my lifestyle and my evangelistic efforts. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

THERE SHALL BE SHOWERS OF BLESSING.

SHOWERS! BLESSINGS!!