Trusting Our Heavenly Father

In a sermon in church, we heard that it was normal practice for rabbis to teach their disciples a prayer which encapsulated their teaching. So, it is not surprising that the disciples of our Lord Jesus asked Him to give them a prayer teaching them how to pray. The prayer He gave them started with the words ‘Our Father’, and we know for certain that our Lord continually taught about His heavenly Father and the Kingdom of God.

The prayer teaches us to bring honour to the name of our heavenly Father and to ask for His Kingdom to come, for our daily needs to be provided, for our sins to be forgiven, for guidance and leading during times of temptation and to be protected and kept safe from the devil. This prayer requires that we place our trust in our Father in heaven.

Jesus clearly placed His trust fully in His Father throughout His whole life and not just during the three years of public ministry. At the baptism in the River Jordan, God the Father declared that Jesus was His beloved Son and that He was well pleased with Him. This was before Jesus had even started His earthly ministry. We could surmise that Joseph probably died, leaving a large family to be supported by the oldest son in the family in those hidden years. We know that Jesus was a carpenter by trade. He must have trusted God for daily provision for Himself and the family.

The Bible tells us how there were many attempts on the life of Jesus, but He was kept safe. In the Garden of Gethsemane, however, He prayed to be spared the suffering of death by crucifixion, but finally submitted to the will of God the Father. He knew that legions of angels could have been sent to deliver Him from the soldiers who came to arrest Him, but He chose to lay down His life for the sake of the world. All the time He put His trust in God the Father.

On the cross He prayed for those who were crucifying Him and finally committed His spirit into the hands of God the Father. This was the ultimate act of trust.

We are meant to imitate the close relationship Jesus had with His heavenly Father. We are meant to fully trust in Him, as Jesus did, for provision and protection, as we seek to honour His name and do His will. The prayer He gave us also contains guidelines which are uniquely for us. We are to daily keep resisting temptation, confessing, and asking for forgiveness when we do wrong, and forgiving those who sin against us.

It is amazing how people with little knowledge of the Christian faith use this prayer when suddenly faced with a life threatening crisis. It might just be the only prayer they know. It contains the essence of the Christian faith and describes what the true and living God is like as opposed to the many other competing religions. It is recorded for us in God’s word (Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4).