Our Father in heaven

The disciples saw Jesus pray all the time. They witnessed him going off by himself to pray, they heard him pour out his heart to his heavenly Father in prayer. They knew they were missing out on something in their lives. So one day they approached Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray …” (Luke 11:1).

Jesus teaches prayer because praying to God is not natural to us. Over the course of nine articles, we will listen to Jesus teach us the Address, Seven Petitions and the Doxology of the Lord’s Prayer.

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The triangle with rays of light is reminiscent of the Eye of Providence and is typically representative of divine providence. Divine providence infers an impersonal God who distantly watches over the affairs of humankind. However, the Lord’s Prayer challenges this conception of God. We know that God is our good and gracious Father in heaven.

Pastor Aaron Goetzinger

Barriers to Praying

Pride interrupts our prayers. We don’t want to humble ourselves to need God’s help. With this pride, we take care of the regular things of life on our own. We save God only for the really big things – like cancer, a car accident or a job loss. But just like you want to hear about your children’s day at school, so your heavenly Parent wants to hear about his children’s day. Just talk to him.

Impatience disturbs our prayers. We know God answers our prayers, so we expect all our prayers to be answered with an immediate affirmative. God does answer all our prayers. But sometimes his answer is “No.” Or even worse, “Wait.” So we pray for patience.

Frustration disrupts our prayers. We become frustrated with the results – or lack thereof – to our prayers. But that’s often because we confuse our will with God’s will.

Our sinful heart does not want to talk to God. It foolishly imagines that we can hide our sins from God’s view. We don’t really want to tell God how we’ve failed him. And when we concentrate on our failures as his children, we perceive that God does not want to hear from us.

Our Father in heaven.

Martin Luther sums up the purpose and power of prayer in The Address of the Lord’s Prayer in his Small Catechism:

What does this mean? With these words, God tenderly invites us to believe that he is our true Father and that we are his true children, so that we may pray to him as boldly and confidently as dear children ask their dear father.

We are invited to pray for everything

God is honored when we come with our prayers. The fact that we recognize our dependence upon God and our trust in him to give us what is ask brings glory to God. There is nothing too big for the God who created the universe to handle. There is nothing so small for the God who became an embryo in the womb of Mary to control for our good.

But we need to be taught to pray. Prayer is a language. As children, we learned how to speak from our parents. To learn how to speak properly, we had to listen as our parents spoke to us. We then repeated their words back to them.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer is God’s Word to us. He speaks to us and teaches us what to say and what to ask for. We speak God’s prayer back to him.

Luther wrote about the Lord’s Prayer, “There is no nobler prayer to be found upon the earth.” (Large Catechism, Part III, The Lord’s Prayer, par. 23). However, Luther also called the Lord’s Prayer “the greatest martyr” because “everybody tortures and abuses it; few take comfort and joy in its proper use” (AE 43:200).

Since we know this prayer so well, it is easy to allow our mind to wander as we pray these familiar words. We may at times utter the Lord’s Prayer thoughtlessly. Yet, our Father is fully attentive at all times to our needs and desires. This is our comfort and joy.

This prayer encompasses everything we could possibly pray for. When we don’t know what to pray, pray the words of the Lord’s Prayer. As we pray these words, the Holy Spirit will teach us how to pray to our heavenly Father with words of our own.

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Pastor Goetzinger has created beautiful prints and photos of everyday objects and sights as well as artwork for various sermon series. The Our Father in Heaven series is available for purchase.