[Darris McNeely] When I was a kid and my father would come home from work every evening I would run and jump into his arms. He was my dad. I loved him. I got away from that over the years as I grew up and stopped jumping into my dad's arms. I got a little bit too big for that. But when we pray to our Father in heaven, Christ said He knows the things that we already need before we ask. And the prayer in Matthew chapter 6, He said to go your Father and basically address Him as "our Father."
[Steve Myers] Yeah, I think that's an amazing thing. What does He want? He wants a relationship…He wants us to jump into His arms I think in that regard that we come to Him as a Father. And that indicates it's a family relationship and it should be a close relationship, you know, someone that's near and dear to us because in fact, we're near and dear to Him.
[Darris McNeely] In Matthew chapter 6 and verse 9, the beginning of this prayer, as Christ told His disciples—taught them how to pray—He said, "In this manner, therefore, pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name" (Matthew 6:9). And so there at the very beginning Jesus, the Son of God, pointed everyone—you and I today—to the fact that the revelation of the Father. He came to basically show us how the Father was, to reveal the Father to us and He did nothing without the express permission and consent of the Father. That was His whole mission. And in this very intimate and important aspect of spiritual discipline of prayer, He points us initially to the fact that God is our Father.
[Steve Myers] He is our Father and, you know, Christ revealed that. That was part of His mission and the fact that it illustrates God's plan. God has a family plan. He wants to create a spiritual family. And so this is something that you just can't take lightly. This is a powerful thing that God wants a strong family relationship with us. And there's an amazing passage over in 1 Peter chapter 5 that harkens back to the Sermon on the Mount and how Christ told us we are to pray. And in 1 Peter 5 and verse 7 it says that we can "cast all your cares upon Him for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7). You know, God the Father cares about us and Christ is telling us we need to go to our Father because He really does care for us.
[Darris McNeely] That's the essence of prayer and the reason for us to even engage in prayer. That's what Christ, in a sense, frontloaded the whole instruction about prayer with His disciples was to approach God as our Father. When we take that approach—no matter what type of relationship we may have ever had with a physical father, even if we had no physical father—this is where we begin to establish a relationship in a spiritual way with the One Who is our Father and in Whom the whole family of heaven and earth is named.
[Steve Myers] That's BT Daily. We'll see you tomorrow.
