Our Father - The Lord's Prayer

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Happy Father's Day to all the dads and grandpas and father-in-laws on this rather foggy Sunday morning here in Santa Cruz. And welcome to everybody joining us, not only here in Santa Cruz County, but all around the world.

In fact, we have a few visitors this morning joining us on the live stream from Switzerland. And you know, when I grew up, I spent many summers about every other year living for the entire summer, all three months with my grandparents in a city in Switzerland named Sancgallen. This city was named after a monk. His name was Gallus, or we would say today in English, Galen. He was actually a disciple of St. Patrick, who came down from Ireland into Switzerland to be a missionary to the pagan tribes who lived there at the time. He started this abbey in the 700s. That's how far back this goes.

Now, something very cool is that this abbey actually is a World Heritage site. It is one of the world's oldest continuously used libraries. It was started in the year 816. Not 1816, 816. It's got all kinds of cool stuff that they've accumulated over the years, ancient manuscripts and weird artifacts, mummies and old parchments. You can go in there and browse this stuff. One day I was walking in this room and I looked under this glass and I saw the very first sentence ever written in the German language. This is so cool. This was written in the year 9/11. As I peered at this parchment, I suddenly realized I could actually read it if I sounded it out phonetically. Because of course, growing up there in the summers, I grew up learning how to speak German and Swiss German.

It's not spelled the same in modern German, but if you sounded out phonetically, it says, "Fater unser, tu bist in himel." And suddenly I realized I was looking at the Lord's Prayer. The first sentence ever written down in the German language, which before this had just been a spoken language, is, "Our Father, who art in heaven, the Lord's Prayer." I looked at this and suddenly it struck me. The Lord's Prayer must have been the favorite part of the Bible for some anonymous monk 12 centuries ago, who journeyed all the way down from Ireland to reach my ancestors, who at the time were living in tribes that were drinking blood out of skulls and praying to oak trees.

He said, "Man, if I could translate just one part of the Bible to connect to these people, it's this. This will reveal to them the heart of Jesus Christ. This is going to connect to them because I love this prayer that Jesus taught us." And then it struck me further that the same Lord's Prayer that we love and say today has been cherished like that by people all over the world for 21 centuries now. Think of what this means. That same prayer was prayed by believers when Rome fell, when the Black Plague swept through Europe at the height of the Renaissance and at the low of the World Wars. It's been prayed in locker rooms and 12-step rooms and hospital rooms for 21 centuries. These words have seen people through their most difficult hours, both personally and nationally.

And so can you think of anything better to study right now in these unpredictable times than our Father in heaven hallowed be thy name? And you know, people are longing for prayer in general in their lives in this moment. According to a Brandeis University study, 90 percent of Americans already say that they prayed daily. And that number keeps going up in March. The number of Google searches for prayer skyrocketed, according to analysis from 95 countries. Just the other day, the Wall Street Journal had an article about this called The Science of Prayer. Why are people attracted to prayer? Well, the article quotes David Rosemarin, who's a professor at Harvard. He says research shows prayer can calm your nervous system. It can make you less negative and less angry.

But you know, for most of us, although we have felt these effects before when we have prayed, perhaps even when we prayed the Lord's Prayer, these effects can seem sometimes elusive somewhat. In fact, one of the questions I get asked most often as a pastor is, how do I learn to pray better? How can I experience those effects more consistently when I get less negative, when I get less angry? Because Lord knows we all need that right now. People come out to me, say, Pastor René, I long to pray, but my prayer life, if I'm honest, is unsatisfying. How can I pray in a way that's more vibrant, more life changing, more comforting, and somehow more transcendent?

Well, that's the whole point of the Lord's Prayer. Jesus was teaching his disciples how to pray. Over the years, I've loved studying this. I've taken notes on people like Tim Keller, Ray Prichard, Philip Yancey, many, many more whose names I put in your notes. Because I just want to say every word that I teach today is probably paraphrased or directly quoted from one of those amazing scholars and teachers. And I like this, to fully understand what Jesus was getting at in the Lord's Prayer. First, you have to go back four or five verses and look at the context for this. The first thing he does before he teaches his disciples how to pray is he teaches them how not to pray.

He actually talks about two mistakes that religious people make when they pray. First, Matthew 6:5. He says, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they've received their reward." What's he getting at? The word for hypocrite is derived from the same word as play actor in the Greek. He's saying, "Don't be an actor when you pray. Don't make your prayer into a performance." Now let me ask you this. Can this happen still today in your life? Of course, especially in public. Somebody asks you to pray like the family Thanksgiving meal or after a Bible study and you start immediately overthinking it. How are my words going to be? Are they beautiful? Are they meaningful? Are they biblical? Are they too long? Do I sound stupid? Do I sound like I'm showing off? Do I sound like I'm overthinking it because I don't want to sound like I am overthinking it even though I am overthinking it? I don't want to sound like I am. It just saps all the joy out of prayer.

Jesus says, "But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you." Okay, what word is repeated there twice? Father. Very appropriate for Father's Day, isn't it? Get back to that in a minute. Second, Jesus says, "Don't make it into a formula." Don't make prayer into a formula. Verse 7, "And when you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans for they think they will be heard because of their many words." You see, the Gentile religions at the time really treated prayer like a magical incantation. The idea was, if I do this, then I get that. If I know the right words to pray, the right technique for prayer, then prayer is going to work for me.

But in this verse, Jesus is saying, "Prayer is not transactional, it's relational." Do you know what I mean by transactional? A transaction is what happens every time you go to the store. Your relationship with the store is completely transactional. Like I go to Trader Joe's, I pay my money, I get my kale salad for lunch or whatever. And tons of people still to this day think of their relationship with God like that. It's essentially transactional. If I go to church, if I read the Bible enough, if I do enough good deeds, if I pray just right then I'm going to earn a blessing from God like good luck or something. That's transactional.

But our faith is not transactional. It's 100% relational based on the idea that God loves you unconditionally and infinitely already. There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there's nothing you can do to make God love you less because He already loves you unconditionally and infinitely as a father loves a beloved child. This is why Jesus says, "Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him." Again, the word "father." What Jesus is saying is this, don't miss this. If you want to learn how to pray, actually don't look at religious people who often make prayer into a performance or into a formula. If you really want to learn how to pray, look at kids who have a great relationship with their dad.

Watch how they interact with their dad. Look at how relaxed they are. Look at the trust. Look at the joy. Look at the security. That is how you and I can learn best how to pray with real vibrancy, with real effect in our lives. This is so great to be talking about on Father's Day weekend because Jesus is saying, "Don't approach prayer like you're going to the galactic CEO up in the sky somewhere. Approach God in prayer as a loving father who delights in you." Look let me explain it this way. I am a father. In fact, here are our three kids and their spouses and their kids. I got to tell you as a father, I am always so eager to hear from any one of them.

Every single time my phone dings and I realize that I'm getting a text message from one of my three kids, I drop everything. It's Jonathan. It's Elizabeth. It's David. Now listen to this. They may not even be telling me anything new. They may not even be telling me something that I haven't heard before. I don't care. It's them. I just love to hear from them because it's one of my children and that is how God is with you. This is why Jesus says here, "He already knows what you need. He already knows what you're up to. He already knows everything that's going on with you, but he loves to hear from you anyway because it's you. He loves you that much."

So with this as an intro, Jesus then goes into what we're going to be studying in this series, what's come to be known as the Lord's Prayer. He says, "This then is how you should pray." Now notice he doesn't say this is what you should pray. He says this is how you should pray. In other words, he's not as concerned about the exact wording as sometimes we tend to be. He says, "They pray in this spirit, the spirit of a beloved child." And then he starts, "Our Father in heaven." Now in this series, we're going to be taking one line at a time and really breaking it open because I think this will make this prayer that all of us, many of us at least, know by heart so much more vibrant and rich and exciting for you to pray.

So let's talk about just these first few words this morning. First the word "our." Plural. Did you know the words "I," "me," "mine" are nowhere to be found in the Lord's Prayer? It's give us our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. It's always plural. It's always "our." Now don't miss the impact of this. You're in a family of God's children and that includes Asian, Latino, African, European. It includes all the Spanish-speaking people that are joining us right now on our live simultaneous Spanish translation YouTube channel. It includes all our black American brothers and sisters in this cultural moment. It includes all the original Americans like the Navajo Nation that we're helping out as a family right now. He is our father.

And the Bible confirms this so many times. Look at Galatians 3:26. Man, I love these verses. So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. So there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Man, that is powerful. I want you to look at what Eric Mason, he's the pastor of a large multi-ethnic and multi-site church in Philadelphia, says about these verses in light of the racial reckoning that's happening right now in our country. I love what he says. He says, "As Christians, ultimately, we were all runaways, prodigals, who through Jesus Christ God brought into relationship with him and made us family." God is our father. We're brothers and sisters. We're family. We have to start off with that.

When we talk about racial reconciliation, this is the context for his remarks. We have to start off with who God is and who we are. What we do flows out of who we are in him. If we don't start with who we are in the living God, we're no more than social activists without any power for long-term systemic change. As broken as we are and as separate and splintered and filled with schisms, we are siblings. Family loves on one another. Family takes care of one another. Family is patient with one another. We need to sit at the table together and remember that we are family and then we can talk honestly about our family history.

Man, don't you love that? You see, what's happening right now in our country is basically a family meeting. Think about your own biological family. Sometimes one of the brothers, sisters, maybe a spouse has some issues that they need to bring up. They've been mistreated. They feel like people aren't unaware of the difficulties they're going through, so they call a family meeting. Sometimes those truths can be difficult for the rest of the family to hear, but that's how the family stays together. That's how the family grows together.

In light of that, we have come up with a new webpage on the TLC.org site called TLC.org/reconcil. I really want to encourage you to go there. We've gathered some resources for racial reconciliation, including conversations with black Christian leaders. Think of it as a family talk honestly around the table. I really want to encourage you to go there and continue this big giant family meeting because there's things that we need to learn so that we can truly live together as siblings. Another thing Eric Mason said that I just read this morning, he says, "Too often, we've been fighting each other like the Hatfields and McCoys." He says, "No, that's not who we are. We are one blood." We put these resources together. We're going to be adding to this page throughout the summer, throughout the years, so that we can listen to what our family is telling us because it is our, not just mine, I have brothers and sisters.

God is also their, next word, father. Now just think about this word for a minute. This is amazing. Jesus doesn't start with our king, though God is a king. He doesn't start with our power, though God has all power, he starts with our father. And again, we're so familiar with the words of the Lord's Prayer that it's easy to miss that when Jesus Christ said to approach God by calling Him father, people were shocked. Scholars say that the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, referred to God as father of the nation about 14 times. But then in the four gospels, Jesus speaks of and prays to God as a personal father 60 times. 60 times. In fact, this is the word that Jesus used most often when approaching God. He called him Abba, which is the Hebrew and Aramaic word for Papa or Dad in modern English.

Jesus is saying, so when you pray, pray like this, Dad. Wow. The point of this is God is not impersonal. He's personal. He's not just a force. He has a name. He's not just far away. He's close to you right now. Why? Well, you know, John 1:12 says, "To all who believed Him and accepted Him, He gave the right to become children of God." You don't earn it. You just accept it. It's a gift. Listen, this is the secret. This is the thing that I hope you get from this message today. This is the key to revitalizing your prayer life, saying, Father means I pray as a beloved child. And the more you get this, the more you internalize this, it'll rock your world.

Some of you know the story of Diane Disney, Walt Disney's daughter who lived here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In fact, I actually looked this up to see if it's really true. It's about time I've been telling this story for years. And it is true. She wrote the cover story for the Saturday Evening Post. The article she wrote was called, "My Dad Walt Disney." And let me quote you a couple lines from her story. She says, "Until I was six years old, I had no idea what it was that my father did for a living. The news was broken to me by a playmate at school." Imagine that. She's six. "That night when Dad came home from work and flopped into his easy chair, I approached him with awe. But then doubt crept in. He didn't look famous to me. He just looked tired. And so I asked a crucial question. 'Daddy,' I said, 'are you Walt Disney?' 'Yes, honey,' he replied. 'No, I mean, are you THE Walt Disney?' He nodded. 'So it was true. 'Wow, Daddy,' I said. 'Please give me your autograph.'

And here she is very, very little with her mom and her very famous dad, who she didn't realize was famous, of course, when this picture was taken. But she says, 'When she learned this at six, she walked around just in awe for weeks. My dad is Walt Disney. Can you imagine?' Well, I hope after realizing this truth again about God, you can walk around in awe because you realize who your dad is. Now, a couple of things I want to say about this idea of God as father. First, God is not gendered as we are. Obviously, the Bible says God is not a man, right? God is spirit. Jesus Christ himself taught that. And yet when Jesus chose to reveal what his relationship to God was like, he almost always refers to him as father. He's not describing a gender. He's describing a relationship. It's very important.

But second, this whole idea can lead to some turbulent feelings. My suspicion is many of you struggle with this idea of God as father because of your dad. And maybe this is just a little bit awkward to bring up on Father's Day weekend, but a lot of people tell me, "René, I have a hard time understanding God as father because my dad left us. He abused. He abandoned. He walked out on us. He won't return any of my phone calls to this day." What do you do? Well, there's so much to say I strongly suggest talking it over with a wise friend or a counselor. And also, we are starting a class in about a week and a half led by Adam Miller called God My Father, specifically about replacing toxic images of God as father with the biblical image. And so if you're interested in this, I encourage you to email our small groups pastor, Jim Joslyn, jim@tlc.org.

But just in brief, what I would say is this, do not judge God by your earthly father. Judge your earthly father by your heavenly father. Do you get that? Rather than saying, "Well, my dad was a jerk. I guess God's a jerk," say, "God is the template for what a loving father is supposed to look like." In fact, here's a verse that meant a lot to me growing up without a dad. In the Psalms, God says, "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling." Maybe like me when I grew up, you don't even have a dad. A stat I read that's hard to believe, but it's apparently true. Tonight 40% of the children in America will go to sleep without their biological father in their homes. So this can lead to some real issues with this concept. But you still have God as your father.

Many of you know that this week I was honored to preside over the memorial service for slain officer Damon Gutzwiller. Please keep his family in prayer and everyone in the sheriff's office and the whole family of peace officers, especially Damon's wife who has a toddler and another one on the way in early July. And also keep the family of David Lutz in prayer, a regular, a tender here, a man of faith. He just learned that he also died this week and his wife also is expecting their next child in July. Those little ones will grow up not knowing their father. When I was a toddler and my little sister was just a baby, our father died in his 30s as well. So my memories of him are just like shadows and my sister, of course, has no memories of him at all like the babies that will be born to David and to Damon's wives will also have no memories of their father. I talked about this at the memorial service.

But as I said at the memorial, my sister and I still say that overall we had a delightful childhood. We had a blessed childhood. Why? Well, partly because my security came from this idea that God is a father to the fatherless. I will never forget. One day at school I was about in the third grade and they had a bring your father to school day. I don't know if they do that anymore. But I came home from that day so embarrassed and angry and sad because I didn't have a dad to bring your dad to school day. I remember I was going down the hallway to my bedroom and suddenly I just kind of put my back against the wall and just slid down into the hallway. I couldn't take one more step. I put my head in my hands and just started sobbing.

My mom heard about this. And I remember this like it was yesterday. She got down on the floor next to me and just put her arm around me as I cried. When I told her through my sobs why I was crying because I didn't have a father back to bring your father to school day, she went and got her Bible. She was a brand new Christian herself. And perhaps she knew this verse because she clung to what it said about widows. But she opened her Bible to this verse and she showed me this verse and had me read it out loud. And then she said words I'll never forget. She said, "René, your earthly father couldn't come with you to school today in her Swiss accent. But your heavenly father will be with you every day. Every day you walk to school, every time you take a test, every time you play at recess, every time you do sport." And then she added, "Every time the other children make fun of you." And I'm like, how did she know? She said, "Every day you have a father who is this you." That revolutionized my life. That revolutionized my identity right then and there.

And do you understand that prayer is talking to your loving dad? As I said, if you understand this, it'll revolutionize your prayer life because you won't feel like you're going to somebody in middle management with a clipboard who's keeping score hoping to fire you, you know? And you won't feel like you're going to an impersonal distant force. You don't know if they hear you. You won't feel like you're coming before an angry judge because God is not like that to his children. God is like this. Prayer is going to a loving dad. And if you get that this is how God sees you, this tenderly, this lovingly, then you'll never ask, "Well, how do I need to pray? What words do I need to say? And what if I do it wrong?" All that goes away if the picture is this. If God is fathered, just go talk to dad. Anytime, anywhere, any way, about anyone, about anything.

In fact, maybe you need to just pray one prayer today. Thanks for being a dad. I've always needed a dad. And then one more line I just briefly want to look at today. Jesus says, "Our Father in heaven." In heaven! Now usually we think this is about distance and this can lead us astray. Our Father way up there in heaven, a million miles from us. But it's not about distance, it's about authority. As Ray Pritchard says, "The phrase in heaven refers to heaven as the center of the universe in the sense of the seed of all authority and power and dominion and greatness." You see what it means? It means I pray to the one who has all power.

It means the one I can go to as personally as a child goes to their dad is king. How cool is that? Diane, her dad was Walt Disney. Well, my dad's the king over everything. As one pastor puts it, "He rules over all nations and all kings and all kingdoms and all races and all genders and all religions and all political affiliations. He rules over all times and places and peoples. There is no one and no thing that is not under the control of your father." Man, if you really get this, what are you going to be afraid of? What are you ever going to be worried about? Like the song says, "I'm no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God."

Look at this verse, Romans 8:16–17. He adopted you as his own children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Do you know what being adopted as co-heirs means? Well, it's like the rest of that Diane Disney story. Walt and his wife Lillian adopted a little girl after they gave birth to Diane and they named her Sharon. They always said to everyone, "You know, we love both of our girls exactly the same it doesn't matter that one's adopted and one's not." Now apply that principle to you. You have been adopted by God and what this verse means, co-heirs with Christ. God loves you and loves me with the same love as he loves Jesus Christ, his only begotten son. We are heirs together with Jesus. Do you see how rich this is?

Now, you don't believe that. And you want to know how I know that you don't believe that? Because I don't believe that. Apparently not, not down deep. Because if you and I really believed all of this and all that we've been talking about this morning, we would never feel sorry for ourselves. We wouldn't be full of anxiety. Anxiety is normal but we wouldn't allow it to control our lives. We wouldn't ever lack for confidence, would we? And that is one reason that your prayer life and my prayer life can get to the point where they're so drab because we rush through, heavenly Father. We rush through our Father in heaven and we don't really get it. We don't really get that our most profound prayer we will ever pray is our Father in heaven.

You know, if you really understand what this means, that's the prayer and everything else that flows from it is just the PS. Because this means I pray with family. I'm not alone. I pray as a beloved child of God. God delights in me. And I pray to the one who has all power to conquer anything that is making me anxious in my life. So let's all soak in this truth. Let's celebrate it. Let's revel in it. Because if this is true, then your prayer life becomes dynamic almost without trying. This is the bottom line. The foundation for vibrant prayer is simply adoring your heavenly Father. You just adore Dad. Because then inevitably your prayer is going to go from rote to real.

And you want to know what the key is to adoring your Father, realizing how much he loves you. You've probably seen the Pixar film Finding Nemo and if you haven't or if you have, I'll remind you, there's this little fish, Nemo, and he becomes trapped in an aquarium. And he's lost and he's doomed and he's absolutely hopeless. He's lost all hope in life. But he doesn't know that his dad is searching for him. In fact, his dad's search for him becomes such a great story that all the sea creatures tell it to one another. The turtles tell the dolphins and the dolphins tell the birds. And one day a pelican tells Nemo, who is trapped in a fish tank in a dentist's office, "Your dad loves you and your dad is searching for you." And at first Nemo says, "No, not me, not my dad." But then the pelican describes him to Nemo. He says, "Yeah, he's a clown fish. His name is Marlin." And Nemo's eyes get wide and he realizes, "That's my dad. My dad is searching the world for me." And suddenly he has hope. Suddenly his whole perspective on life changes. Now he has a future. Now he knows he's loved. And at the end of the movie, his dad finds him.

Well, listen. You may feel right now like you're about trapped in an aquarium. And maybe you look at the world situation and lately you've been feeling so hopeless and alone. But one of the main things that Jesus came to tell us is this. Your Abba father loves you and he is searching for you. His reckless love is chasing you down. And he longs for nothing more than for you to run into his open arms. So let's do that right now as we go to him in prayer and we pray our Father in heaven. Lord help us to think about our adoption by you, to imagine it, to rejoice in it so that the fire starts to burn in us again, so that our prayers have power again, so we can pray with boundless confidence.

And God, I just want to pray that if there's anybody here whose prayer is nothing but a grocery list who doesn't know you as Father, may they right now come to you through Jesus, may they run into your arms and say, "Father, that's how I want to think of you as my Father. I come to you. I believe your search for me even involved the cross." That's the lengths you went to to reach me so that I now have the right and the power to become a beloved child of God. Thank you, Father. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.