A question I sometimes ask people is, “How has your view of God changed?”  When I was young, I often thought of God as “out there, somewhere,” and not particularly interested in me, except when I messed up in some way.  I doubt I was alone.

The statements and phrases in the Lord’s Prayer are simple, but not simplistic.  There is a depth to them that we can easily miss, starting with just the first four words:  “Our Father in Heaven…”  As I start this series of posts on the Lord’s Prayer, I want to think specifically about just the first two words:  Our Father.

There’s been a lot of confusion over the years about Jesus’ use of “Father” in addressing God.  Some believe he was referring to God in that way was revolutionary.  True, the Old Testament never directly calls God by that title, but the idea is there–Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah all saw God as the “Father” of Israel.  What’s more, even in some of the Jewish synagogue prayers of Jesus’ day, God was called, “Father.”  So the term was not new.  What was unusual was the emphasis Jesus put on it.  There are only about 14 references to God as “Father” in the entire Old Testament, but no less than sixty places in the gospels where Jesus refers to God as “Father.”  So it wasn’t a new idea, but an idea whose time seems to have more fully come with Jesus.

There’s another way we sometimes get confused about this.  In the Lord’s Prayer, the word Jesus uses is the Greek word for Father, which is the basis for English words like patriarch and paternal.  But elsewhere, Jesus uses the Aramaic Abba.  Sometimes, people equate Abba with Daddy, but the two are not the same.  True, both suggest intimacy and affection.  But Daddy is a child’s term, and it misses some of the deeper implications of Abba.  Abba was not just a child’s term, it was also used by adults, and implies not only affection, but deep respect, and even reverence that often only comes with maturity.  It’s Daddy–and a lot more.

I’ll come back to that in the next post, but for now, just remember that, when you pray “Our Father…,” you are speaking with a God is not just “out there somewhere.”  You are speaking to a God who wants a close, intimate, trusting relationship with you–a relationship that goes far beyond just watching for you to mess up.  You’re speaking to a God who wants to be intimately involved with every part of your life, just like the best earthly father.  What’s more, you are speaking to the God who has a deep, indescribable affection for you that cannot be shaken–by anything.