The New Year is a great time to get back to basics.
One of the most fundamental ways to connect with God is through the portal of prayer.
The most basic of all prayer-portals is “The Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father.”
It’s like the alphabet. You learn it early and use it for the rest of your life.
A portal must start somewhere. Jesus’ opening to the heavens was in the most fundamental concept: “Since I Am Your son,” he might have said silently to His Father, “I will teach them to relate to You the way I relate to You.”
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There was a period in my spiritual life when I enjoyed the discovery of God as my father. It invaded every part of my walk with God. I remember telling my children bedtime stories about Jesus’ Daddy. They understood it. I would let everyone know that they could trust God like they could a good father. If they had a father-wound, I would counsel that their heavenly Father could heal that.
I wrote a book entitled “Like Father, Like Son” which traced a son’s devotion for his dad and his dad’s love for his boy.
I completed a three-year intensive biblical-studies program that emphasized sonship and fatherhood. There was a wonderful renewal of the Father-heart-of-God going on throughout Christendom at the same time. Of course, I was a relatively new father myself.
Everywhere I looked and every word I read and every thought I had seemed to cause me to view God through this lens of fatherhood.
Jesus’ simplicity in this portal-prayer is so profound. To have a loving father leads to the most secure of sensations. It’s what everyone has always wanted.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: God shows himself through our fathers or He re-fathers us or sometimes sends father-figures our way. Allow Him this privilege and you will have plenty of prayer-portals for the rest of your life as you come to know Abba the way Jesus does.
This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name…For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name…
Matthew 6:9 (NIV), Ephesians 3:14 (NASB)