BE PRAYERFUL: Sept 3

I tend to get a little territorial about God. I pray to Him for my needs; for mine and my friends’ and my families’ needs, too. I can get a little possessive, as if He’s my God, and caters just to me and to what I need.

And yet I forget that the very first word in the prayer Jesus taught us to pray is OUR.

OUR Father. 

He’s not just mine. He doesn’t just belong to one person or one family, to one country or one political party. He doesn’t belong to just one race, one way of thinking, one ideology. 

He’s Father to not just the Bible Belt but the whole country. Not just the east coast, but the west coast and heartland, too. Not just our country, but every country. Not just the right, but the left and the entire vast middle of that whole thing, too. Not just my race, but every single other race, too. Not just the Baptist, or the reformed, or the Calvinist, or the Pentecostal, but whosoever. Whosoever believes in Him. 

Whosoever.

In our broken humanity, we create all these barriers to God; if you vote differently or live in a different area or attend a different church, then He becomes MY Father, and doesn’t belong to you whatsoever. Never mind whosoever.

But Jesus broke off every single one of those barriers with the very first breath of a new way of praying, when He uttered an incredibly simple, yet unifying word: OUR.

He’s ours. I can’t claim a right on Him for just me, or my circle, or my area, or my people. So if we’re going to Be Prayerful, we need to start by going back to the very basics of who God is before we built barriers to get to Him. 

He’s the Father of whosoever believes in him. Full stop.

“Our Father in heaven, let your name be kept holy.”
(Matthew 6:9, GWT)

– Monica