Praying to "Our Father"

1. 0:00- Lord’s Day 46, it says this, question answer 120.
2. 0:14Why has Christ commanded us to address God as our Father?
3. 0:20And the answer is this: to awaken in us at the very beginning of our prayer, what should be basic to our prayer? A childlike reverence and trust that through
4. 0:33Christ God has become our Father and will much less refuse to give us what we ask in faith, then will our parents refuse us the things of this life.
5. 0:46And then we have 121.
6. 0:48Why the words, "Who is in heaven?"
7. 0:51These words teach us not to think of God's heavenly majesty in an earthly way, and to expect from his almighty power.
8. 1:00everything needed for body and soul.
9. 1:03So in Lord’s Day 46, basically what is being done now is it's taking the whole of the Lord's Prayer and it's just pulling it apart so that you can have a greater appreciation for the whole of it
10. 1:20by looking at the component parts of it.
11. 1:24Sometimes you have maybe a machine, right?
12. 1:26And you're like, ooh, this machine.
13. 1:28For example, I have a watch.
14. 1:29It's a mechanical watch.
15. 1:32And you can look at the watch and it's like, yeah, that's pretty impressive, right?
16. 1:36It's a mechanical watch.
17. 1:37But a watch is a watch, right?
18. 1:39But you open it up.
19. 1:39and you start looking at the hairspring, you start looking at the gears that are inside of it, you start looking at the weight and you see how all these parts come together to make a whole.
20. 1:51And it's the appreciation of the parts that lets you kind of pull back and go, wow.
21. 1:59And that's now what the cat is doing by just looking at, as it were, the hairspring, the gear, the different jewels that make up the whole of this prayer.
22. 2:11And it begins in the most wonderful way, because it begins with the privilege of sonship.
23. 2:18And it's the invitation of Jesus saying to us as brothers, you get to call our father, father.
24. 2:30When you think that from all eternity past, the second person of the Trinity was calling the first person of the Trinity Father, and now Jesus says to you and me, use the same word that I use from all eternity past.
25. 2:52And that's mind blowing when you think of, we get to call God, it's not a different word, it's not a word with an asterisk, it's not a word that's reserved for sinner saved by grace, but the
26. 3:06word that the only begotten Son uses, the privilege that the only begotten Son has, is the privilege that we have.
27. 3:19This communicates the nearness of God.
28. 3:23So previously we said that prayer is communion.
29. 3:26It's talking with God, but it's communion.
30. 3:29It's saying, "I love you."
31. 3:31And now we see how that pays off because now we're talking about communing with the Father.
32. 3:39And it goes back to the Lord’s Day 1, the comfort that we have.
33. 3:43Because when I remember in my prayer language and in my praying to God, that I'm speaking to no less than my Heavenly Father, all of a sudden, all of these
34. 3:59doubts and fears and anxieties really need to be shelved because I belong to my father.
35. 4:09There's an interesting quote, I think it's by Tim Keller.
36. 4:14Who can wake up a king in the middle of the night to ask for a glass of water. I mean, think about that. You're going to wake up a king in the middle
37. 4:23of the night and say, "Hey, king, will you please go get me a glass of water?" Who can do that? A child can. And that's the comfort that this Lord’s Day communicates. That's the comfort that is ours.
38. 4:39Now it's interesting, right, because it says our Father who is in heaven.
39. 4:44So it says these words teach us not to think of God's heavenly majesty in an earthly way.
40. 4:52So there's this play between transcendency and imminency.
41. 4:55I know those are big words, right, transcendency, imminency, but the other thing is, you know, otherness of God and the nearness of God and sometimes we play those off against
42. 5:04each other and go well he's so other than me he's divine he's holy he's separate like who am I to come to him but it actually plays the other way this one who is so other than me
43. 5:19nevertheless welcomes me in his son to call him father.
44. 5:28So that's just a sampling of what you discover in these Lord's days.
45. 5:32That's the whole point.
46. 5:33The point is to dig deeper and to go further.
47. 5:36So hopefully this not only gives you that encouragement and to do exactly that, but to live and pray from that comfort.

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