Short articles of the "Yes Jesus" book on prayer # 9

---

 

Jesus said: “This, then is how you should pray”

“Our Father who art in Heaven” # 9

 

The opening word of how we should pray is carefully chosen by Jesus to teach us that prayer is directed to God on the basis of the relationship of the believer, as son, and of God as father.

 

It is no secret that from the beginning of time, Satan has pursued to make us doubt the fatherhood of God over us. 

 

In the Garden of Eden, Satan speaks of God to Eve on untruthful and unfair terms.  He speaks of God as a Joy Killer who prohibits pleasure by keeping his creatures in ignorance and under restrictions. But the real temptation that Satan offers Eve was the same temptation in which he himself collapsed. The desire to be like God.

 

If Eve had just remembered that God was of “Our Father in Heaven,” she would have not suffered the identity crises that visit those who forget that we have the highest honor possible in the Universe: To be a child of God, and that is what we are in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

In the desert Satan speaks to Jesus about God as an uncaring God for not providing bread for a hungry man. Notice that just forty days before, God had spoken about Jesus in His baptism the following words: “This is my Son whom I love, with Him I am well pleased” But Satan who loves to contradict God by aiming to control our wills seeks to make Jesus doubt and said: “If you are the Son of God tell these stones to become bread.”

 

There is nothing wrong in converting a cow into and hamburger or a stone into bread if that is the will of God. The temptation is in choosing to do Satan’s will instead of God’s will. One will never fall into that kind of temptation if he remembers God as: 

 “Our Father who art in Heaven”

 

#9  GGS