Father

 (by Lorie Codispoti)

Prayer has always been an important part of my life. (I can’t imagine a day without it.)

I can still recall my earliest prayer, and all the emotions involved in crying out to God for help. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was the heart-cry of a little girl who took her deepest desire to the only one who could answer her request. Every night I asked God to bring my daddy home safe from fighting in Vietnam. Somehow I knew that God was my daddy’s only hope of escaping that horrible war.

“OUR FATHER”

When people prayed to God before Jesus came they addressed Him as “Yahweh,” “my Lord,” “my God,” or “God of my father.” For Jesus to address God as Father was revolutionary. And for Him to instruct His disciples to also address God as their Father, was a seismic shift for the religious community of the day. With his instruction, Jesus Christ was affirming that He embodied this exclusive right because He was the Son of God.

Due to the finished work of Christ, every believer has been grafted into the privilege of addressing the God of all creation as “Father.”

THE CHALLENGE

Jesus said, “But you, when you pray, go into your room, & when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; & your Father, who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Mtt.6:6)

The other day I read something that has challenged an area of my prayer life that needed challenging. The writer asked a pondering question: What if, when you get to Heaven, your reward is directly tied to all the prayers you prayed for those who never knew you were praying?

Wow, what if the time I spend on my knees, crying “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven” is connected somehow to the measure of glory I will experience in the presence of Christ? Talk about "fullness of joy!"

Give me Jesus

Give me Jesus

You can have all this world

But give me Jesus

As a child, I addressed the Creator as “God,” because that’s how I knew Him. But, when I surrendered my life to Christ, an intimate relationship began and I was given the right to call Him my Father. 

My daddy came home from the war, but what I’ve learned is that there are many links left in the chains that bind others to the suffering of this world. If my heavenly Father wants to use my prayers to transfer those links to the chain that will forever bind Satan and his forces, then I’ll gladly reenlist for another tour of duty.

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