When my daughter Talitha was four, she was sitting by me on the couch as I scrolled through images on Google of outer space, marveling at the heavens declaring the glory of God, one sparkling nebula after another. As I kept scrolling, I couldn’t help but notice her little brow was furrowed. Something was obviously wrong. Finally, she asked, “Where is Jesus?”
We had been telling our children that after Jesus’s resurrection, he had ascended into heaven. Taking us at our word, she wondered why she couldn’t see him floating by the Eagle Nebula. I explained to her what we meant by heaven—not outer space, as if NASA could discover the temple of the Holy Trinity. Heaven tells us of God’s kingly rule and power—not the place of his confinement. God says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). When we pray to our Father in heaven, we’re not putting God’s address on our prayers. The words in heaven tell us that the God we pray to is all-powerful and transcendent. If Our Father speaks of God’s closeness and the intimacy we have with him through adoption, in heaven reminds us of his greatness. Our compassionate Father isn’t limited; he is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable!
Grasping this makes us think twice before flippantly approaching the throne of grace in prayer. Our manner of approaching someone often reveals what we believe about that person. I’ve heard it said that prayer is just “talking to God”—as if God were just one of us! Perhaps the reason we question his ability to answer our prayers is that we’ve come to believe this. Perhaps we’ve come to believe it because the manner of our prayers reinforces the lie.
We take God for granted when we address him as “the man upstairs” and border on replacing the intimacy we do have with an irreverence we shouldn’t have. You do have intimacy with God, and such a kind that the angels covet. But the God with whom you intimately converse is also a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). Pastor Eugene Peterson illustrated this tension well with the following scenario:
One of the indignities to which pastors are routinely subjected is to be approached, as a group of people are gathering for a meeting or a meal with the request, “Reverend, get things started for us with a little prayer, will ya?” It would be wonderful if we would counter by bellowing William McNamara’s fantasized response: “I will not! There are no little prayers! Prayer enters the lion’s den, brings us before the holy where it is uncertain whether we will come back alive or sane, for ‘it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’”1
There’s no such thing as small talk with God. Beware of approaching him with the kind of absent-minded chatter that is all too familiar in human interaction. Calvin said, “First, whoever engages in prayer should apply to it his faculties and efforts, and not, as commonly happens, be distracted by wandering thoughts. For nothing is more contrary to reverence for God than the levity that marks an excess of frivolity utterly devoid of awe.”2 The words in heaven provide a safeguard against the unholy indifference toward God that inspires aweless prayers.
Excerpted from Praying with Jesus: Getting to the Heart of the Lord’s Prayer © 2024 by Adriel Sanchez. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.
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