"Our father...

       So begins the Lord's Prayer. Hundreds of millions can recite it in many different languages. But what does it mean to all those people? What does it mean to you?

        The title naturally conveys a familiar relationship. We are told to address the God to Whom Jesus referred as His "Father" as our Father. Why? Why not "mother?" (as some may prefer), or "God," or "Great One in the sky"? Why did Jesus tell us to use a family title, the name connoting fatherhood?

        First, because God is the Author of all life. He is the ultimate Creator, even though Jesus Christ was the Divine Spokesman, or the Executive Member of the Godhead who did the creating—the Logos (Greek for "Spokesman") who issued the command, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:14; John 1:3). Therefore, God is the Father of all humankind. He is not "Big Brother," or some anonymous "First Cause," but the actual Progenitor of the human race. As we have seen, God is the Lifegiver of us all.

        To most of us, our own fathers come immediately to mind when using the name "father." Probably, in a subliminal way, our own fathers—the kind of persons they are, or were—subtly color our impressions of just Who, or What we are addressing in heaven.

        Unfortunately, only about fifteen percent of American families are a true family unit, with parents and children in traditional roles. Millions of ill-prepared single parents strive to rear children (fifty percent of which are illegitimate) without a father figure in the home. As our society drifts further from the God ordained family unit—the building block of any normal society—millions of new citizens have no true father role model; have no prior knowledge of their father. Millions do not know who he was.

        But for those who do, and they still represent the vast majority, it is quite possible that he shaped their concepts about God. What kind of a father is (or was) he? Was he mild-mannered, easy-going, tender; brusque, harsh, remote; a stern disciplinarian or a kind, loving provider? Unfortunately, there are no schools for training fathers; no "licenses" issued to those qualifying, nor certificates of merit, nor degrees. Today, children beget children; fathers are too often teenagers.

        Since the impact of the title "father" is largely shaped by our own experiences, it is quite logical that most of us tend to grope for concepts which will help us understand this Divine Being, this hidden, unseen God who wishes to be called "Father," in terms of our own human experiences. Either our own father, or some older role model; a father in the neighborhood, an uncle, a grandfather, may have shaped our concepts of what "father" is all about.

        A father, of course, is merely any male who has procreated (produced children), whether a boy of sixteen, or a successful businessman of forty.

        Has there ever lived a son or daughter who has not found, in at least some corner of his heart, a place for love of father? To be sure, there are far fewer "good" fathers than there should be, but because he is life-giver, the one who engendered us, gave us our being, we carry to our graves some of his hereditary traits; his genes, some of his physical characteristics like our height, weight, color and texture of skin, color of hair and eyes, perhaps even marked talents and abilities. We are a mixed copy of our fathers and mothers. No matter what, we are here because of them.

        When we refer to God as our Father, we are not only addressing Him as our spiritual Life-giver; we are also ascribing to Him the title of Beginner, or Author of all life—ours included. "Father" is a common title.

        Francis Asbury is known as the "Father of American Methodism, while Aeschylus is called the "Father of Greek Tragedy. " Americans know George Washington as the "Father of his country," and doctors refer to Hippocrates as the "Father of medicine. " The father of the constitution? James Madison.

        Your father was somebody. Once, when Margaret had apparently been voicing some negative feelings, her father wrote to her, "Your dad will never be reckoned among the great. But you can be sure he did his level best and gave all he had to his country. There is an epitaph in Boothill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona, which reads, 'Here lies Jack Williams; he done his damndest. What more can a person do?' " (Harry Truman).

        Fathers can be anybody. At least, to other people. They can be alcoholics, drug-abusers, rapists, arsonists, murderers; they can be doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, truck drivers, busboys, senators, farmers, aeronautical engineers, pilots, assembly-line workers, clerks, technicians, deliverymen, scientists, morticians, astronauts, or generals.

        Fathers can be kind, generous, humorous; or bitter, pecuniary, selfish. They can be gifted with a sense of humor, or possessed of a violent, uncontrollable temper. They can be good husbands, providers, protectors, breadwinners—or lazy, indolent, selfish failures. They can be ebullient, positive, happy, fulfilled; or selfpitying, despairing, resentful. They can be an amazingly complex mixture of many of the above.

        Did your father beat you, molest you, abuse you? Did he love you, comfort you, encourage you? Did he never speak a single word against your mother in your hearing—or did he beat your mother, spitting epithets at her in the hearing of the children?

        Theodore Hesburgh wrote, "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." How true. Any person fortunate enough to have been brought up by loving, traditional parents in proper roles will have a fairly easy time understanding God's words about the Heavenly Father of us all; understanding God as a kind, loving, merciful Father who wants only the best for us.

        The ancient Latin proverb, "Like father, like son," acknowledges the powerful influences of heredity and environment on each of us, the significant influence of our human fathers in our lives . Like many old adages and sayings (where there's smoke, there's fire), it is not necessarily true, but it has a measure of truth. One quotation that is especially poignant for me is that of Samuel Johnson in his book Boswell's Life, (July 14th, 1763), who said, "There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence. "

        Often, famous men have had famous fathers. A well-known case in point is that of General Douglas MacArthur whose father, military governor of the Philippines, was a role model for him. Douglas was to write, "By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder—infinitely prouder—to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.......

        Harry S. Truman said, "My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of the President of the United States!"

        Other famous people have observed and commented on the relationship each had to his sire. Mozart, as a boy, was quoted as saying, "Directly after God in heaven comes Papa, " and Margaret Trumbell wrote, "No man is responsible for his father. That is entirely his mother's affair. "

        With his usual acid wit, the well-known pessimist and satyrist, Sir Bertrand Russell, in Why I am not a Christian, wrote, "The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does. "

        In a lighter vein, fathers are said to be "men who don't practice birth control," and "a man who has just missed being a bachelor by an heir. " Perhaps it was a disillusioned father who said of Father's Day, "It's the day to remember the forgotten man," or "a holiday when your son lets you wear your new necktie first."

        My father was 38 years of age when I was born. A generation apart, we had virtually no father-son relationship such as those commonly enjoyed by most youngsters growing up. We never went camping, hunting, fishing together. By the time I was old enough to do such things, my father was middle-aged, and totally involved in the demanding, time-consuming work of his ministry. He was in the home only for eating and sleeping; then, off to the office, or another trip somewhere.

        Strongly authoritarian, he ruled his family with an iron hand. How well my two sisters and I remember the state of impending doom when our mother would say, "I'm going to tell your father about this when he gets home." The result was two very badly frightened little boys, my brother Dick and I, sweating out the hours until the punishment our mother was unwilling to dish out was systematically administered by our father.

        I really don't remember the first time I ever heard the Lord's Prayer, or read it, for I was very young. However, the name "father" never failed to convey to my mind impressions of what "father" meant from my own childhood experiences. Not that all dad did was punish. Far from it.

        There was also the Dad who would give us a quarter now and then, or who, sometimes grumpily, would heat the water to a boil, pour it over and into the radiator on our old Graham, manage to start the balky, cold engine during one of Oregon's typical winter mornings, and take us to school after Mom had allowed us to oversleep.

        I can remember the rough wool of his jacket, the faint smell of his after-shave when we climbed into his lap on a rare occasion to enjoy a session of his reading the Sunday funnies to us. How well I remember the night I awoke, screaming, after a neighbor boy had told me a gruesome story about a haunted hospital; an ancient, deserted old building with bloody knives, rusty needles, syringes, operating tables, and ghosts in the elevators. I was probably about five. My screams brought my parents, who promptly told me to come and get into the bed with them. There, I was safe—and if my father's faint snoring kept me awake, it was not because it bothered me. Quite the contrary, it reassured me. Dad could deal with the knives and ghosts even if he had to haul out the ping pong paddle. Frightened little boys and girls always know everything will be all right if they are near their mother and father.

        My human father was a man of great vision, passion, emotion; driving energy to succeed. He was generous to a fault—giving more of material things than of himself, but anxious to see the glow of enjoyment on the faces of his family or friends when he bestowed some gift or favor. Perhaps one of his worst faults was that of instantly leaping to wrong conclusions, failing to give his children (or anyone else) the benefit of the doubt. He was easily convinced by first impressions.

        How many of us, whose fathers and mothers are no longer living, have so earnestly wished we could have expressed more love, more concern, more honor to them while they were alive? By the same token, what parent, if he loses a child, has not wished he could have expressed himself more deeply while the child was alive? Since we are seemingly so shy, so embarrassed, so remote in our feelings toward our human parents or children, can we learn the all-important lesson, before it is everlastingly too late, that God does not hear those who ignore Him in their daily lives? Do you thrive on love? Believe it or not, so does God! God wants our love! He wants our worship, our deep appreciation, our adoration! He does not respond to aloofness, to inattention!

        Obviously, if you pray at all, you want God's undivided attention! Fine. When does He have YOURS? The Bible shows us that once-in-a-while prayers—prayers only in times of emergency, prayers only a few times a year—are simply not heard.

        Think of the following analogy: As a transmitter of prayer, you are a spiritual dynamo or a power source. However, like the incandescent lights in your home, you can only give out power as you receive it. As you know, electricity flows in a current. See the socket in the wall? Notice it has two holes in it, to establish both a positive and a negative contact so the current will flow in a continuous circuit. God is our Power source. When we are in constant touch with Him, we are imbued with spiritual power. Prayer is like a circuit. God gives us the spiritual power, and we communicate with Him on His "wave length," called prayer.

        Today, we enjoy a marvelous array of battery-operated mechanical devices, from portable telephones to tiny vacuum cleaners for our cars and boats. When we're not using them, they are plugged in to a power source, or they finally run down and will not function. As a child of God, we need continual contact with Him, or we lose our spiritual energy, our spiritual power.

        A desperate prayer every year or so has little chance of reception because the spiritual "batteries" that are operating the spiritual transmitter are too weak. Of course, we have to start someplace, so, even though terribly weak (from lack of prayer, lack of personal Bible study, lack of staying in communication with God), we can begin to pray again, and God will hear us. Naturally, analogies break down at some point, and the one above is not to suggest God will not hear us, even after years of lack of communication with Him, for He will! God will hear the most desperate sinner, if the sinner calls out to Him broken-heartedly, in deep contrition, and seeks contact with God. But "tired Christians" cannot expect dramatic answers to prayer if they seldom pray.

        When you set yourself to really spend time with God in prayer, then you are "charging your spiritual batteries," as surely as you are plugging in a portable electrical utensil of some kind to its power source. Those who pray only casually, perhaps once a year or so, should not really expect very dramatic results. Those who pray daily will probably tell you they get results—often!

        Jesus said we are to address our Eternal Creator as if a personal Father, our Spiritual Progenitor. Is He listening? Is it difficult to talk to God? Is He so far away we can never hope to reach Him? Is prayer, after all, merely a spiritual placebo, a talisman we clutch in times of extremes? Or is God near enough that we can be heard?

        Paul put it this way, "...for in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). The Bible insists that God is not far from us, that His ears are always open to our cries, that His eyes are upon us. We are told He is but a prayer away—as instantly available, nay, more so, than our closest friend over the telephone.

        Jesus Christ instructed us to pray that we and our loved ones be accounted worthy to receive special, divine protection during calamitous wars, droughts, famines, natural disasters.

        Speaking of frightening world conditions, the times in which we live, He said, "Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke 21:36).

        Of course it is a temptation to pray only selfishly. I remember the story about a man who, receiving counseling about prayer from his minister, was told he had a bad case of the " gimmes. " It seems his prayers largely consisted of "Please gimme this, gimme that, gimme the other thing. " He was praying to receive more than he was praying for others.

        Paul said many of our prayers should be directed away from self; should be concerned with others around us, those who affect our lives. He said, "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty ... I will that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting" (I Timothy 2:1-8).

        When we address God in heaven above as "Our Father," we are coming to Him as His begotten child. Peter said we are to "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). When we receive God's Holy Spirit, after repentance and baptism, we are begotten as His child! Read I Corinthians 12:13, together with Romans 8:9-15.

        Christ was Son of God, called the "First-begotten" and the "Firstborn from the dead" (Romans 8:29). John, the disciple closest to Jesus in a personal sense, wrote of Him, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made ... He was in the world ... and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name ... and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-14).

        The genealogies or Matthew's first and Luke's fourth chapter clearly establish Christ as the Son of God. His life's work, His preaching, His miracles, and especially the fact of His resurrection, add positive proof that He was who He said He was—the only begotten, the first begotten of God—the very Son of God.

        Because Christ was God's own Son, He referred to Him as "The Father. " As we shall see in the chapter concerning God's names, He has many, many other titles, several names. Yet, when we pray, Christ says we must address Him as our spiritual Father.

        Some doubt that Jesus was a real person. Many scoff at the miracles of Christ, say He could not have been the Son of God, and thus set aside the origins of the Christian religion. But men don't willingly die for what they know to be an hoax, the perpetration of a myth. Yet, hundreds went to their deaths, refusing to disavow the miraculous things they had seen, refusing to impugn their personal experiences with Christ, choosing torture and death rather than defilement of Christian conscience.

        That Jesus Christ lived, that He was an authentic historical figure, is one of the most substantiated facts in all history. His life, death, burial and resurrection are central to the entire concept of Christianity, and therefore to Western Civilization.

        Jesus Christ was the First-begotten from the Father; the first time in all history a human being had been injected into the human race who was not merely human, but also of divine origins.

        Christ wants us to pray to our Father in heaven in a child-like, innocent, humble, supplicatory manner; trusting, hopeful, anticipatory; devoid of pride or vanity. On one occasion, when the crowds surrounding Him attempted to present their little children to Him so that He might bless them, His disciples tried to discourage them, thinking Christ had no time for children. But He said, "Suffer [permit, be tolerant of little children, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 19:13-14).

        On another occasion, His disciples were arguing about who should be the greatest in His Kingdom, and "...Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, 'Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me' " (Matthew 18:1-5).

        Notice well those words! Christ said we must become converted, changed, begotten of God as His children before we may enter His Kingdom. It is only those who approach God as converted, meek, humble little children—In child-like trust and innocent wonder, who are truly communicating with God.

        Vanity, selfishness, pride, evil motives, these cancel communication with God as surely as if one dialed the wrong frequency on a radio transmitter. God simply does not listen unless we approach Him as an humble, trusting little child.

        This is a vitally important key to answered prayer. Are you converted? Have you truly repented of your sins? Have you asked God for forgiveness? As we shall see, this continual seeking for daily forgiveness for our shortcomings is the quintessential element in successful prayer.

        Is it only a coincidence that the name for "father" is the first word in the Hebrew language and the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet? "Father" in Hebrew is Awb. In English, we must progress to the sixth letter and through hundreds of words, until we come to "father" in a dictionary. Not so in Hebrew. It is first. Number one.       

        The Bible stresses the absolute primacy of God the Father. Jesus reveals that He and His Father, though One in spirit, purpose and mind, are nevertheless in a Father-Son relationship. Christ said repeatedly He spoke not of and for Himself, but insisted the Father gave Him the messages He delivered; that the Father was the Supreme authority. How can one expect an answer to prayer unless one acknowledges the absolute supremacy of God in one's life? Can you go to God with urgent requests unless you trust in Him absolutely? Can you trust Him without knowing Him, knowing His purpose in your life? If you are truly converted, the most natural way to address God is to simply call out to Him as an heavenly Father.

        Paul put it this way: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption [Greek, "sonship"], whereby we cry, 'Abba, Father!' " (Romans 8:14-15).

        No human being can enter into the Kingdom of God without prayer. None of us can fulfill his personal destiny, the purpose for our existence, without discovering, and communicating with, the true God. Prayer is as essential to us spiritually as eating and drinking is essential physically. It is our spiritual sustenance, our life's blood. Without prayer—answered prayer, two-way communication with God—we will shrivel and die spiritually as surely as flowers and shrubs will die without water.

        Jesus instructed us to pray. He intended that we voice our innermost feelings; our guilt, our hopes, dreams, desires; our most personal frustrations and anxieties—that we come clean with God, baring our souls in the deepest, most private communication.

        He also intended that our opening words of prayer establish contact with God. As a jet pilot, I am very familiar with the Air Traffic Controller system. Without it, flight operations in the United States at altitudes above 18,000 feet are impossible. See those wispy contrails of moisture in the sky from a passing jet? Each one of them is in constant communication with a ground controller in some nearby sector who sits before a radar screen upon which is a blip of light which represents that airplane.

        Beside that light is a computer-generated readout obtained from the flight plan and the transponder code from the airplane, identifying the aircraft by number, giving its altitude, its ground speed, and other information.

        When the jet has progressed to the point that another radar sector can better receive its electronic image, the controller issues a command, "United heavy 456, contact Albuquerque Center on 134.45. " The pilot (or, usually, the co-pilot) acknowledges the command, switches radio frequencies, and says into the microphone, "Albuquerque Center, this is United 456, level three seven zero." The center acknowledges, and the crew knows the controller on the ground has identified the blip on his screen, sees it in clear relationship to all the other electronic blips, has heard audible confirmation that the transponder readout of the jet's altitude is accurate, and can keep all the aircraft in his sector at their assigned altitudes, at appropriate distances from each other, avoiding disastrous collisions and loss of life. Ham radio operators use the same thing—certain frequencies—to contact other ham operators half a world away.

        Opening a prayer with the humble words "Our Father," is like establishing positive communication with a controller. We must be on the right "wave length" to communicate with God. Actually, our own spiritual state; whether or not we are willing to obey God, whether we are asking according to His will; our personal life's current condition—our attitude—these are as highly significant in communicating to God as having the right frequency on a VHF radio transmitter.

        Isn't it more than mildly curious that Jesus did not say we should immediately state our own names, addresses, and social security numbers when we pray? But He didn't. God's great mind is vastly superior to the minds of all humans and all computers combined. When we establish contact with God, He instantly knows exactly who we are, where we are, what we are doing. So the expression "Our Father" is far more than a mere "religious" title of some sort; it establishes a contact with God; it acknowledges that we are His offspring. It is the way He wants to be addressed.

        Jesus Christ intends we learn all there is to know about our Heavenly Father; get to really KNOW Him, through the scriptures, and through Christ's own examples. Jesus Christ was the "stamped impress," or the exact similitude, the "carbon copy" of the Father.

        The apostle Paul wrote to the scattered Jews of the Diaspora, "Cirod, who at different times and in various manners spoke unto the patriarchs by the prophets, has in these later times spoken unto us by His Son, who He has appointed Heir of all things, by Whom He made the Universe. Who, being the very brightness of His glory, and the express image [exact replica] of the Father's Person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had, by Himself, purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:1-3 paraphrased).

        The Greek word for the word "image" is karakter, from which we take our English word of similar spelling, with all it conveys. Paul was inspired to say that Jesus Christ was an exact replica of the Father; that His personality, His character, were as if a mirror image. The more you learn about Christ, His teachings, examples; His lifestyle, His miracles, His tenderness, compassion; His anger at posturing religionists; His feelings toward the sinsick and afflicted, the more you learn about the Father in Heaven.

        His own disciples were curious about this "Father" of whom He so frequently spoke. Once, overcome with curiosity about Jesus' frequent references to His Father, one of His disciples asked, "Lord, show us the Father, and that will be sufficient for us." But Jesus answered, "Have I been with you for so long a time, and yet you have not known me, Phillip? He that has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:8-9, paraphrased). Thus, we learn that God has "human" form, or, more to the point, that we human beings are made in the image of God.

        The Bible says His eyes are upon those that seek after Him, speaks of His arm not being shortened that it cannot help in time of need, speaks of His face shining upon the just.

        The Bible gives us many examples of men's encounters with angels. They appear as human beings, as in the case of Christ's appearance to Abraham, and the two angels who rescued Lot. So man-like did they appear that the citizens of perverted Sodom lusted after them (Genesis 19:1-5).

        Moses, overcome by curiosity, asked God to show Himself. God declined, but, after insistent appeal, allowed Moses to see His hind parts as He passed by—saying, "No man can look on the face of God and live. " In the first chapter of Revelation, Christ is pictured in His resurrected glory as having head, torso, arms, legs, feet. God's Word says He made man in the image of God, that God has the same shape and form as do we humans.

        Unfortunately, the average person who recites the "Lord's Prayer" may know little or nothing of Jesus' examples, His teachings and instructions, His personality, His life's record. He may not know, for example, that Christ was an ordinary-looking person, impossible to pick out of a crowd; that the Bible says He had "no form or comeliness, that when we see Him, we should desire Him" (Isaiah 53:2).

        If we expect answers to prayer, we must come to know to Whom we are praying—really communicate with Him. How can we expect an answer to prayer if we are praying "vaguely," as if in bluffed images? Can the jet pilot contact the ground controller by simply dialing any frequency out of the hundreds that are available? Can you call a friend by dialing random numbers on your telephone? Can you write to a relative by addressing your letter, "Dear Someone, somewhere"?

        The key to answered prayer is to establish contact. Prayer is not empty ceremony, it is powerful, personal, private communication. it must be a two-way communication, or it is meaningless!

        And remember, Jesus Christ didn't say, "IF" you pray, He said, "WHEN" you pray! Jesus Christ set an example of prayer. He prayed for literally hours at a time, rising early in the morning to go to a private place, climbing a steep mountain to escape His disciples and the crowds, finding a place to be alone with His Heavenly Father in earnest prayer.

        Christ prayed until He perspired with the effort, prayed with groans and cries, prayed aloud, or prayed within Himself, in His mind. The Gospels are replete with examples of His life of closeness to God—His life of prayer.

        Christ made His prayers personal. On many an occasion, it was as if He interrupted a human conversation to speak to His Father in heaven.

        At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus had listened to the frantic weeping of Mary, and all of Lazarus' family and friends. Because of their anguish, and because of His own pain upon seeing their lack of faith (not because of a sense of "loss" or pain on his own part for He knew what was to happen), Jesus simply "...lifted up His eyes, and said, 'Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always; but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.' And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, 'LAZARUS, COME FORTH and he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, 'Loose him, and let him go' " (John 11:41-44).

        In this inspiring account, Jesus had been engaging in conversation with those surrounding Him; then, by merely shifting His gaze upward, began communicating with His heavenly Father. A great miracle resulted.

        Christ was in constant contact with God. He didn't need to "work up" faith, or force Himself into a certain "mood" before talking with His Father. He merely addressed Him; began talking to HIM, instead of other humans nearby. He immediately established contact with God, because He thought of the specific Being with whom He had shared eternity; His mind was clear about what He meant when He addressed the "Father" in heaven; He was constantly in communication with Him through prayer, and not only prayer, but fasting with prayer. Christ met all the criteria for answered prayer; He was deeply imbued with the Spirit of God, He knew the Father, He was utterly selfless, and He was wholly trusting, faithful. Therefore, He was answered in dramatic, miraculous fashion. Christ understood how to pray.

        God intends that we come to that same understanding; that we follow Christ's example. God is not remote, aloof, impossible to know. On the contrary, He says He reveals Himself to us through His Son, through the pages of His written Word, so that we need not create a fantasy-figure, a vague, unreal "Someone" of our prayers, but pray to Him, personally!

        To many of us, God has been like a "divinized" father-figure. Many speak of "The Man upstairs," or "Somebody up there who likes me," or the "Great Someone in the great somewhere. " Millions, of course, speak of God in slang and profane terms, cursing with His name, and that of Christ, as if in smug self-assurance there really is no God who stands behind His command, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Eternal thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain." Is there one out of a thousand who thinks of the true God, the Father of Jesus Christ, in an informed, intelligent manner, as he prays?

        Prayer, after all, is the most private conversation possible. It is time for confidentiality’s, secrets, confessions, admissions, requests, urgent, heartfelt appeals. It is more intimate than writing in a diary, more personal than sharing secrets with a dear friend. Therefore, it is necessary to know Who we are addressing—really KNOW.

        The next time you pray, go through a mental check list. Have you repented of your sins? Are you approaching God as a little child? Do you envision Him as the perfect kind of Father; the absolutely ideal, kind, generous, loving, forgiving, father you may never have had? Do you see Him, at the same time, as of awesome power and ability, able to punish and exact the consequences for sin, as well as able to be generous with His gifts? Do you hold Him in wondrous AWE, having that Godly fear (not terror) that a small child might have for a father who not only loves, but disciplines?

        God expects you to claim His promises, to come to Him as His loving, humble child. If you truly believe that He is your Spiritual Father; if you are as eager to confide in Him as you were to crawl into your father's arms as a little child—then go to Him—let Him know how you feel—call Him "Father" each time you pray, for that way, you'll always know He is listening!

        After all, He says, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him?" (Matthew 7:7-11).

        What father is it who has been able to refuse a trusting, sweet, obedient, loving child who comes with a petition? Are you a parent; a grandparent? Can you refuse your own flesh reasonable requests? Nonsense. No, we're pretty much pushovers when our beloved children come to us in a moment of need. How many skinned knees, cut fingers, bruised lips have we tenderly dressed? How many times have we "kissed away the pain" of a crying child? How deeply have we hurt when our children are hurt, or sick? You cannot feel as deeply as your Heavenly Father feels toward you; human emotions simply fall short. So go ahead, claim God's love, claim His promises. After all, God listens to His own kids first, doesn't He?