We know our God is 3 parts 1 God. God the Father, God the
son - Jesus, God the Holy Spirit.
It has got me thinking lately about the way we address God
in our prayers. Do we have a formula when we pray? Is there a formula? Probably
the only formula is what Jesus showed us...
Our Father, in heaven, Holy is your name.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and
forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us
from evil.
Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the
Glory, forever, Amen.
My question to myself was am I addressing the right part of
God when I pray and am I doing it in a way that is respectful to Him? Am I
getting my point across and even more important - am I praying His will?
I think it takes knowing the 3 parts of God intellectually as well as having an physical
experience with each of them, to know how to address God properly in our
prayers.
I know that the Bible has the utmost authority. It is the
actual Word of God. It is more powerful than my human brain can grasp but in
saying that I think we can take away from that power when we neglect engaging
God as an ACTUAL being.
We could easily start
to treat Him as a 'far off' - way too busy to talk to me right now - kind of
God... so we tend to throw out a bit of a "hoping this gets to Him"
prayer - repeating ourselves and addressing Him too many times in a 2 minute
long prayer - all the while hoping in our heads that He can make sense of our
requests! We hope that He understands that we reeeeeallly want what we are
praying for and He at some stage feels inclined to answer it!
Something mum said to me yesterday, when I was talking to
her about my thoughts:
"Well I suppose you wouldn't say, 'Hi Mum, Nanna,
Desma" when you visit me ...or when in conversation with me you wouldn't
continue to refer to me as Mum, Nanna, Desma several times during the
conversation.
I said ... mmm yes I think I would be looking cockeyed if
someone did that to me.
So what mind set should we be in when we pray?
MARK 11:24
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in
prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And
when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that
your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."
So who do we address when we are praying? How is this whole
thing set up so we can experience an intimate relationship with God and not
just hopeful prayers that could sound like begging or bargaining?
Well we know that Jesus is the part of God that came to
earth as a man to sacrifice himself for peoples sins so that who believes in
him has eternal life... (John 3:16) or in other words Jesus is the dude who
died to make a bridge from you to the Father.
The Holy Spirit is the part of God that comes to live on the
inside of us that gives us the "born again" part causing us to become
the temple of God... causing us to have the actual spirit of God living inside
of us to be our counsellor, comforter and teacher.
So the Father? Who is He? What does He do? He must be
important if Jesus died to make a way for us to be in a relationship with him!
Romans
1:20
English
Standard Version (ESV)
20 For his
invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the
creation of the world,[a] in
the things that have been made. <---- that's how we start to perceive
Him! Through the things that have been made!
READ GENESIS 1- The Creation Story
He refers to Himself as "US" (Let US make man in
our image) He gives each part of Himself acknowledgment as being separate to
the other ("and the spirit was hovering , then God said...").
We know God has
feelings and a will that plans - in Genesis "Let us DO THIS and let us DO
THAT". He is amazingly creative and after He has finished creating the
earth and everything on it, it says 31 "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was
very good".
The Heavenly Father is important to the health of our
spiritual life. He cannot be ignored. He will not go away. He is the one we are
meant to be glorifying!
Romans
15
English
Standard Version (ESV)
5May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same
attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, 6so that with
one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Jesus is the guy who
gives us the earthly example to live by - in relation to how we are to have a
spiritual relationship with the FATHER!
Matthew 23:9
English
Standard Version (ESV)
9 And call
no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.
I wondered why Jesus would instruct this as I thought he
wants us to honour our Father and Mother... but now I realise what He is saying
is ... don't project your earthly Dads personality onto Him. When we think of
our who our Father is I think a lot of us would project our earthly experience
of our own Father to how we see how Heavenly Father. I believe that depending
on our experience of our earthly Father is how we will engage our Heavenly
Father.
HEBREWS 12
7It is for
discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is
there whom his father does not discipline?8But if you
are without discipline, of which all have become partakers
, then you
are illegitimate children and not sons.9Furthermore,
we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not
much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?10For they disciplined us for a
short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good,
so that we may share His holiness.11All
discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those
who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of
righteousness.
It's funny how Paul is talking about discipline when He is
explaining our earthly and Heavenly Father. Maybe he knew that our
predisposition to project our dislike of discipline onto the Father because of
our earthly Dad would not be right.
Personally I did not have a Dad who disciplined me at all so
I am not afraid to run up to my Heavenly father and jump in Him lap and tell
him everything I want! Unfortunately a Dad that doesn't discipline produces a
rebellious and prideful grown up!
What we believe about the Father will determine how we feel
when we come to Him in prayer.
If we had an earthly
Dad who was absent - you will not see the Heavenly Father as there for you.
If you had a heavy
handed Dad who physically abused you - you will fear the Heavenly Father.
If you had a Dad who was just too busy to really sit and
listen to you, but you knew he loved you - you will be feeling as if our
Heavenly Father has just stuck you on this earth, given you a little push in
your back and let you go to work it out on your own.
These ideas that have been formed in us as we grew up are
what will come out when we try to establish our prayer life. So how can we
start to put our Heavenly Father in the right context in our minds... well
first as always we need to read:
1 Corinthians
1By the
humility and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am “timid” when
face to face with you, but “bold” toward you when away! 2I beg
you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some
people who think that we live by the standards of this world.3For though we live in the world, we do not
wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the
weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish
strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every
pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take
captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
We need to change our thinking. Just like Phillip in John 14:
Jesus the Way to the Father
5Thomas
said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the
way?”
6Jesus
answered, “I am the
way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really know me, you will know my Father
as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8Philip
said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9Jesus
answered: “Don’t you
know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who
has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in
me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is
the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in
me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I
have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am
going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be
glorified in the Son. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
That scripture right there is the weapon you need to tear
down the stronghold (or lie) that you have in your mind about the knowledge of
God.
We should meditate on that scripture this week!
It is difficult to understand 3 parts to one God... just
like a mother who is pregnant 1 woman 2 humans... or an egg - 1 egg 3 parts:
shell, yoke and white. Just as we can separate these things at some point we
have to with God too. It doesn't make him less a God, just different.
We need to acknowledge the Heavenly Father in our prayer. We
need to glorify Him. Jesus did a lot of work to give us that gift of reconciliation.
I sure want to be thankful and a good steward of that gift.
