This past week, I saw the movie "Jersey Boys" about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Like many musicians, Frankie traveled extensively and was rarely home for his family. As his wife descended into alcoholism, there was a poignant moment when his daughter Francine reached out to him and asked, "Daddy, do you love me?" After reassuring her that yes, he did, she asked, "But do you like me?" So Frankie wrote the song "My Eyes Adored You" just for her. The song begins with these lyrics...
My eyes adored you... Though I never laid a hand on you... My eyes adored you
Like a million miles away from me... you couldn't see... How I adored you
So close, so close... And yet so far.
These lyrics don't just capture the longings of a father to be known by his daughter. They also capture something of the human experience of walking with God.
How many times have you wondered, "Does God love me? Does he like me? Does he adore me? And how many times has God seemed absent? Have I not always felt his presence, or sensed his hand being upon me. How many times (especially during those "dark nights of the soul") have I felt as if God were a million miles away?
The paradox of walking w/God is that he's "so close, so close" and "yet so far." How do we navigate the distance we feel, this gap, between us and God? We're fleshly, he is spirit. We're finite creatures, he's infinite creator. We're weighed down with guilt, shame, and evil desires, but he's holy and good and pure. He's supremely wise, but we lack knowledge and insight, and do foolish things. He's the creator and sustainer of all life, but evidence of our mortality haunts us each and every day. He is love, but there is so much greed, selfishness, and violence corrupting our lives. He holds the future in his hands, but we're paralyzed by anxiety here and now.
We live in this gap between the now and not yet--that space between heaven and earth, between God's eternal kingdom and what some deem a hellish existence on earth. In this gap there is faith that God exists, that he intercedes on behalf of his people, and fulfills his promises. In this gap there is hope, that God will come and once and for all redeem all creation from the curse of sin and death. In the gap there is love--love makes life in the gap tolerable, it enables us to forgive and be forgiven, to receive mercy, to be comforted, encouraged, and restored.
But there is something more God gives us to navigate this gap--prayer. In prayer we wrestle with matters of faith, hope, and love. In prayer we seek the face of God, and wrestle with what we perceive to be his absence. In prayer we wrestle with who we are, and the way things are, and how we know God wants things to be.
Such prayer isn't a "technique" to be mastered... but a posture to be found, of longing, and seeking the Living God. When it comes to prayer, we're all lifelong students. We're not the first to wrestle with God in prayer, nor will we be the last. All the great ones throughout history wrestled with God in prayer. Fortunately for us, we have a great teacher, Jesus, the Son of God, to teach us how to pray.
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he first challenged their idea of God. In his book, Hearing God, Dallas Willard writes, "We truly live at the mercy of our ideas; this is never more true than with our ideas about God."
When you pray, what ideas do you have about God? Who is he? What is he like? Who are you to him? Why should you seek him? Does he even want to be sought? Can he be found? Why pray? Is God willing to act on our behalf?
In Matthew 6:9 Jesus taught his disciples to pray like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name..." This verse contains three powerful ideas about God that will help us more deeply, and effectively, engage him in prayer.
Approach God as Your Father
This past week, I ventured with Lara to the Michigan Speedway. If you ever get the urge to go to a Nascar race there are several "layers" of access. You can watch on TV or listen on the radio. You can drive your Nascar-themed partridge-family bus down into the infield, fly the flag of your favorite driver, maybe get your teeth knocked out in a beer-fueled brawl. You can get a ticket to sit in the stands. You can get a pit-pass, and walk down on pit road, and see the cars up close. You can get a pre-race pass, that allows you to actually stand on the track as the drivers get introduced. If you're well-connected, you can get garage passes or attend a corporate-sponsored meet-greet.
We've gotten to do everything but the garage pass! If you can get Lara a garage pass to a Nascar race she'll be your friend for life! But there is actually a whole other level of access people don't think about. I discovered it while snapping photos of Kevin Harvick's team... see that little boy on the wall? That is Kevin's son, and his dad is in the driver's seat. As a son he has full access to his father.
In his book, "Not a Fan" author Kyle Idleman contrasts the idea of being a "fan" verses a true follower of Jesus Christ. What about the difference between being a "son" and a "father." In our churches, I sometimes wonder if we relate to God more like fans in a stadium, and less like the "sons and daughters" we are. Worship venues keep getting bigger and bigger. The cult of celebrity pastor, the insatiable demand for higher performance worship, and programming, and ministry, bigger buildings, bigger budgets, bigger expenditures.
Fans raise a raucous when they don't get what they want. Their conditioned to settle for superficial moments. Their hope is to get small touch from God, or catch even a fleeting glimpse of his majesty. But God wants us to have full and unfettered family access, he wants us to relate to him as our very own father, he wants us to enjoy a deep, abiding relationship. Our God is a personal God, not an impersonal/transactional God.
I want you to think about the Parable of the Prodigal Son for a moment. A son rebels against his father, demands his inheritance, leaves for a distant country, squanders his inheritance, destroys his life in riotous living. This son had the mistaken idea that life would be better without the father. And then later on, after he came to his senses, he had the mistaken idea that because of his egregious sin he could never truly be a "son" again but at best maybe a "servant" in his father's household. The Elder brother, had the mistaken idea that he "deserved" and "had earned" and "was owed" the father's favor for all his hard work and compliance to the father's rules.
They were both surprised to discover they'd neither stopped being sons, that they had full and unfettered access to all that belonged to the father... that they were both loved and adored by the Father, and that it had everything to do with God's mercy and grace, and the price he was willing to pay to have them as sons.
Richard Foster writes, "Today the heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence. And he is inviting you--and me--to come home, to come home to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created. His arms are stretched out wide to receive us. His heart is enlarged to take us in. For too long we have been in a far country: a country of noise and hurry and crowds, a country of climb and push and shove, a country of frustration and fear and intimidation. And he welcomes us home: home to serenity and peace and joy, home to friendship and fellowship and openness, home to intimacy and acceptance and affirmation."
Embrace His Heavenly Throne
A second idea Jesus introduces is that our Father is in heaven. Now this detail alone has enormous ramifications for the way we pray. Heaven offers us a radically different vantage point through which to weigh things. When I pray, I find it helpful to zoom out and consider the wider angle of God's perspective. So what is that wider perspective?
In prayer we acknowledge that God sits on his throne in heaven, with all things in submission to himself. God is King. God is Sovereign. But in prayer, we're also inviting God's rule to extend into our hearts, into our families, into our church, into our world. We might have expectations of God, but he has expectations of us. There is an ethical component to being "sons and daughters" and praying, "Our Father in Heaven."
Throughout the gospel of Matthew we find Jesus proclaiming the coming of the "Kingdom of Heaven." In Matthew 6:10 Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, "God's kingdom come, his will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
In Colossians 3:1-4 Paul says, "If then you have been with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."
But we really need not look any further than Jesus' work in Matthew...
• Matthew 5:1, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
• Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."
• Matthew 5:16, when people see our good works, they give glory to our Father who is in heaven."
• Matthew 5:19, whoever does God's will and teaches his commandments will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
• Matthew 5:44, we are to love our enemies...why... so that we may be sons of our father who is in heaven.
• Matthew 5:48, we're to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.
• Matthew 6... as we give, as we fast, as we pray, we should do so in secret... why... because our father in heaven rewards what is done in secret.
• Matthew 6:14 if we forgive others our heavenly father will forgive us.
• Matthew 6:21, we store up treasures in heaven why? Because where our treasure is there our heart is also.
• Matthew 6:32-33 our heavenly father knows all our needs. if we seek first his kingdom and righteousness, then he provides for us abundantly.
In prayer, we're seeking for earth to become more like heaven, not less. We're asking our lives, our families, our workplaces to be reflections of God's kingdom. We're looking to enlarge God's reign, not ours; His Kingdom, not ours. In prayer, we begin to seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness... we begin to love what he loves, desire what he desires, want what he wants.
Revere His Marvelous Name
A third idea Jesus introduces is that of "Our Father in Heaven" being revered, worshipped, and treated with respect. I agree with R.C. Sproul, that "No worship, adoration, or obedience can flow from a heart that has no regard for the name of God."
Since Nascar is fresh on my brain, I've noticed how pastors pray quite differently before each race. Some address God with a sense of respect. But some try to be cute and entertaining. This past week a young pastor ended his prayer with an almost sarcastic tone, "In Jeeeeeesus' Name... Aaahhhya MEN!"
I'm not suggesting God doesn't have a sense of humor. But his name is serious business. In the Ten Commandments, were told not to use the Lord's name in "vain." (with emptiness, tritely) Throughout the Old Testament God is careful that his name be held in the highest regard, the highest esteem, that his name be glorified among the nations, that all men know of God's marvelous deeds, and what he accomplished with his outstretched hand. If we don't take it serious, will others?
In Acts 4:12 were told that "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." Romans 10:13 says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus commanded us to baptize into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Philippians 2:10 were told that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the father."
A lot of times we acknowledge God's name at the end of our prayers. What would happen if, as Jesus' suggests, we began our prayers with God's holy name? One of my favorite prayers in the OT is in Nehemiah 9. Nehemiah begins, "You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them, and the host of heaven worship you."
Then Nehemiah accounts for all God did by his marvelous name... "you chose Abraham, you heard our cries in Egypt, you performs signs and wonders against Pharoah... you led with a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night..." **Respect is a first order of business in prayer, not a fleeting after thought.
In conclusion let me just summarize... We don't just pray to God, we pray to a personal God, who is our "Father." We don't just pray to any father, we pray to our Father who reigns from "heaven", and seeks to reign supreme in our lives and in his church, and on this earth. He has the highest possible expectations... the highest possible good in mind for us. And we don't just pray to a God who is king in heaven, we pray to a God whose name is to be revered by all... in whose name alone, is salvation...