Jesus taught his disciples to pray by giving the words

“Our Father….”

What does it mean to you that God is your Father? Perhaps when we pray we say “Father God…” but do we stop to think what it means that we get to call God, Father?

At Women to Women we have been studying the Sermon on the Mount and have reached chapter 6 where Jesus teaches the disciples what our spirituality should and should not look like. This sounds like it should be a list of rules but in actual fact the context is a relationship! Yes in the first 18 verses, he uses the word “Father” ten times!!!

We can’t begin to imagine how revolutionary this would have been for the Jewish disciples who knew of the God who had fathered their nation, to be told that Jesus was inviting them to know God personally as their father.

But how do you react to the idea of God being your Father?

Often this can be affected by the relationship we have had with our earthy fathers. For some it can bring strong positive emotions as you think of ways your own dad loved and cared for you, but for others the relationship has been a painful one as you remember neglect or abuse or impossibly high standards. But our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt 5v48) and so when we become his children, when we are adopted into his family, we enter into a relationship that is far greater and better than any imperfect human relationship we may think of.

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!  –1 John 3:1

Stop today and praise God for all that it means to be able to call God your Father!!

Do come and join us on Wednesday night at W2W if you can as we look at Matthew 6:1-18.