Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Makes God a Good Father | New Testament | Luke 11

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Why do Christians pray to God as father? The idea of God as a father is controversial. But why is it still important? In today's episode, Keith looks at Jesus's prayer in Luke 11as an example of how to talk with God. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Luke 11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Prayer is not unique to Christianity. Every religion encourage its participants to pray in one way or another. I don't know of any religion that doesn't. Even atheists find themselves praying. So when it comes to prayer, if Jesus just taught us to pray or pray more, he wouldn't be saying anything unique.

In Luke 11, Jesus is teaching us how to pray prayers that aren't just religious prayers, but are truly Christian prayers. See, the great divide in the world is not the divide between the religious and the irreligious. The great divide is between religious people and Christians. The reason that I say that is that I don't think, at least biblically speaking, that there are any truly irreligious people in the world. To one degree or another, all people are religious. So the divide isn't between the religious and the irreligious. The divide of the world is between religious people and Christians. When Matthew is setting up the Lord's Prayer, he records Jesus as saying,

When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Jesus teaches us there are two different ways to approach God when we pray. The first way to approach God is what you might call the pagan way or the religious way or the non-Christian way. However you refer to these people that don't know Jesus, we know that they have a great intensity of prayer. They pray for a long time. They say a lot of words.

So it's possible to be very busy praying, very intense in our prayers, and still have a pagan view of God and a pagan view of prayer. What distinguishes a pagan's religious prayer and a Christian's prayer is why they think God hears and answers their prayer. See, it is pagan to think that your prayers will be heard because of your many words. It's pagan to think that there's something you can do to make God hear and respond to your prayers. A religious person might say, if I pray enough, if I pray hard enough, if I pray every morning, if I pray before every meal, if I believe enough, then God will will answer my prayers or because of that God will answer my prayers. But when Jesus teaches us to pray, he lays out a completely different way of approaching God. Jesus says that when Christians pray, they should come to God as their father. So the pagan way of praying says that God will hear your

prayers because of something you do. The Christian way of praying says that God will hear your prayers because of who he is. God will hear your prayers because he is your father. Religious, people approach God as if they are entering into a business transaction. They approach him like an employee. The Christian way to approach God is as his child, as a member of his family. In business, you develop relationships based on getting something from each other. In a family, the basis is relationship, who I am to you. In business, the key issue is performance. Are you measuring up? Are you keeping your end of the deal. In a family, the key issue is commitment. I am committed to you because of who you are. So you can approach God on a business basis or a family basis. But how you

approach him is a test to whether you are praying like a pagan or like a Christian. It's of massive, massive significance that when Jesus teaches us to pray, he teaches us to call God our father. There are so many ways Jesus could have told us to address God. He could have said that when you pray, call on God as your king, our king who art in heaven, or your creator, or your friend. Instead, he says, when you pray, call on God as your father. That God declares himself to be our father, controls everything in our relationship with him. Jesus is trying to get across the point that at the very heart of the gospel is being a child of God. That's what it means to be a child. Christian. Now look, I know some have said that in our culture, it isn't wise to stress that

God is our father. They reasoned that in a world of absent fathers or deadbeat dads or abusive fathers or workaholic fathers, people might not understand the great spiritual truth that God is our father. But to be frank, I think that's a bit silly. And not because I deny that there are a lot of poor fathers in the world. I think it's a bit silly because even if we have a poor relationship with our father. We all know what a good father is like. The truth is we learn from both positive and negative examples. I know that I have. When I was a small child, my father left me and my mom. In fact, I don't remember him at all. I've never seen his picture. I've never talked to him on the phone. I've never received anything from him. I'm sure that if he were here, he would have a reason

why he made the choices he did. And I'm equally sure that as a father myself, I would have a hard time understanding his choices. My dad didn't appear at all in my life until somehow he heard that my mom was going to remarry when I was about five years old. Then he surfaced long enough to tell her that he didn't want her to change my name.

Contrast my biological father with God as my father. God, my father wants to do good for me. but my dad didn't want to do anything at all. Our Heavenly Father is committed to our good. Listen to what it means to say that God is our father, Luke chapter 11. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who are evil? ask him. God loves to give you good gifts because you're his child. Some of us grew up with fathers that were harsh or uncaring, but God, our true father is full of compassion. Psalm 103 says, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him, for he knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust. Some of you have fathers that failed to give the family any kind of loving spiritual leadership. But God, our Father, gives us salvation. Jesus said to Peter,

Blessed are you, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. In other words, our Heavenly Father is the one who draws us into a relationship with Jesus. Some of you have fathers that are emotionally distant. But God, our Father, loves us dearly. 1. John 3.1. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. Luke chapter 11 verse 1. One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray.

This verse makes it clear that prayer is something we learned to do. No one is natural at praying. praying does it come easy for anyone but when you go to jesus and ask him to teach you to pray it's like going to tiger woods and asking him to teach you golf i mean you're going to the expert the disciples had been watching jesus for some time now and they knew that he often prayed they saw how he would rise well before the sun came up and get alone and pray they knew he would spend whole nights in prayer and I'm sure they were looking at each other saying, what is he doing out there? What does he say in his prayers? They were probably like us and that they struggled to pray

for more than a few minutes at a time. And they were probably like us and struggled to know what to pray for. And so they came to Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray. And in response to that question, Jesus taught them what is known as the Lord's Prayer. And it's like he starts by saying,

look, before you say anything at all, I just want you to remind yourself who you are praying to. Remind yourself that you're coming into the presence of God. We should always be saying to ourselves, look, I am praying. I am entering in the dwelling of God, the great God, the powerful, the mighty, the majestic God, the God who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all. But more than that, this great God is my father and I am his child. that means he knows all about me he knows our every need before we tell him just as a good human father cares for his child and is concerned about his child and anticipates the needs of his child so our perfect heavenly father cares about us god desires to bless us more than we desire to be blessed he has a plan for us he has a goal for us that is far greater than we can imagine so maybe the greatest blessing the greatest privilege of believing that

gospel is that the great holy almighty god is your father he brings all of his eternal wisdom all of his power all of his great love that led him to sacrifice his own son for our sins he brings all that to bear in our lives for our good your father he is in heaven he is sovereign the father that loves you and wants the best for you is the father who created all things and controls all things that father your father wants to spend time with you in prayer. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week.

It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.