Great Biblical fathers

 

With Christ in the school of prayer, by Andrew Murray, excerpt 117

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post in this series is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color. In this excerpt, Murray continues a discussion about prayer and the Trinity. His book is based on Mark 11:22-24.

Everlasting God! the Three-One and Thrice Holy! in deep reverence would I with veiled face worship before the holy mystery of Thy Divine Being. And if it please Thee, O most glorious God, to unveil aught of that mystery, I would bow with fear and trembling, lest I sin against Thee, as I meditate on Thy glory. Father! I thank Thee that Thou bearest this name not only as the Father of Thy children here on earth, but as having from eternity subsisted as the Father with Thine only-begotten Son. I thank Thee that as Father Thou canst hear our prayer, because Thou hast from eternity given a place in Thy counsels to the asking of Thy Son. I thank Thee that we have seen in Him on earth, what the blessed intercourse was He had with Thee in heaven; and how from eternity in all Thy counsels and decrees there had been room left for His prayer and their answers. And I thank Thee above all that through His true human nature on Thy throne above, and through Thy Holy Spirit in our human nature here below, a way has been opened up by which every human cry of need can be taken up into and touch the Life and the Love of God, and receive in answer whatsoever it shall ask.

Blessed Jesus! in whom as the Son the path of prayer has been opened up, and who givest us assurance of the answer, we beseech Thee, teach Thy people to pray. O let this each day be the sign of our sonship, that, like Thee, we know that the Father heareth us always. Amen.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 33

This post continues a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color.

‘Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?’—Matt. vii. 9-11

IN these words our Lord proceeds further to confirm what He had said of the certainty of an answer to prayer.  To remove all doubt, and show us on what sure ground His promise rests, He appeals to what every one has seen and experienced here on earth.  We are all children, and know what we expected of our fathers.  We are fathers, or continually see them; and everywhere we look upon it as the most natural thing there can be, for a father to hear his child.  And the Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are but evil, and to calculate HOW MUCH MORE the heavenly Father will give good gifts to them that ask Him.  Jesus would lead us up to see, that as much greater as God is than sinful man, so much greater our assurance ought to be that He will more surely than any earthly father grant our childlike petitions.  As much greater as God is than man, so much surer is it that prayer will be heard with the Father in heaven than with a father on earth. As simple and intelligible as this parable is, so deep and spiritual is the teaching it contains.  The Lord would remind us that the prayer of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he stands to the parent.  The prayer can exert that influence only when the child is really living in that relationship, in the home, in the love, in the service of the Father.  The power of the promise, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you,’ lies in the loving relationship between us as children and the Father in heaven; when we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural result.  And so the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is this:  Live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child you will most assuredly be heard.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 20

We now come to a discussion of the Lord's Prayer. God willing, there will be more excerpts from this discussion later.

The Model Prayer.
‘After this manner therefore pray ye:  Our Father which art in heaven.’—Matt. vi. 9.

EVERY teacher knows the power of example.  He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done.  In condescension to our weakness, our heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father.  We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fulness of the Eternal Life.  So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give.  A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our God.

‘Our Father which art in heaven!’  To appreciate this word of adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father.  The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too.  It comprehends the mystery of redemption—Christ delivering us from the curse that we might become the children of God.  The mystery of regeneration—the Spirit in the new birth giving us the new life.  And the mystery of faith—ere yet the redemption is accomplished or understood, the word is given on the lips of the disciples to prepare them for the blessed experience still to come.  The words are the key to the whole prayer, to all prayer.  It takes time, it takes life to study them; it will take eternity to understand them fully.  The knowledge of God’s Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in the school of prayer.  It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins.  It is in the knowledge of God’s Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy Spirit, that the power of prayer will be found to root and grow.  In the infinite tenderness and pity and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy.  O let us take time, until the Spirit has made these words to us spirit and truth, filling heart and life:  ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’  Then we are indeed within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always prevails.

This post continues what is intended to be a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color.

"Father" differs in frequency in the gospels

I recently did a search for occurrences of the word, "father," in the Bible. I wasn't looking for it, but was struck by the number of times it was used in each of the four gospels.

Here's a link to the results of that search, using the English Standard Version.

The frequencies in the four gospels are these:

in Matthew: 70. 15 of these are in the genealogies at the beginning of Matthew. 15 are in the Sermon on the Mount, where something like "your Father which is in heaven" occurs frequently. There are 40 more references. It seems clear that Matthew wanted his readers to think of Christ (and themselves) in relationship to God the Father.

in Mark: 17. Most of these refer to an earthly father, not to God the Father.

in Luke: 41. 9 of these are from the parable of the Prodigal Son. Roughly half of the rest relate to God the Father.

in John: 108! I found that number to be astounding, especially considering that John doesn't have genealogies, or the parable of the Prodigal Son. Most of the statements are about God the Father. I suppose that the most significant is John 10:10, where Jesus said that He and the Father were one.

The frequent use, especially in John, indicates that Jesus, and the gospel writers, believed that the idea of a relationship with God the Father, through the Son, was important.

Thanks for reading. Read the gospels.