The Lord’s Prayer may be the greatest distillation in all of Scripture of who God is, why Jesus came, and what our role is here on earth. It’s a blueprint for daily life as a disciple of Jesus.
In fact, the Didache (a late first-century or early second-century discipleship manual) reveals that at least one community of early Jesus followers prayed the Lord’s Prayer three times a day.
So when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, it matters that he didn’t begin with lofty divine titles or elaborate requests, but with relationship. We see it in two simple words: Our Father.
According to Dr. Jonathan Pennington, “The older notion that Jesus was unique in referring to God as Father has since been shown to be overstated. But it is true that understanding God as Father and addressing him in this way was more frequent and characteristic of Jesus and Christianity from its earliest days.”1 In other words, it’s significant that when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he began by helping them understand who they were praying to.
Deciphering the Cry
One of the first challenges every new parent faces is learning how to decipher the cries of their child. There’s the I’m hungry cry. The I need a diaper change cry. The I’m tired and need to sleep cry. And worst of all, the I’m in pain cry, a sound that sets every parent’s teeth on edge and sends them running.
After all, loving parents are attuned to the cries of their children.
Author and psychiatrist Curt Thompson writes, “We’re all born into the world looking for someone who’s looking for us, and we remain in this mode for the rest of our lives.”2 There’s never a time when we stop searching for a wise and loving presence, someone who can see into our pain and confusion, know us better than we know ourselves, and lead us into the life we’re longing for but can’t seem to find on our own. Human beings have a deep-seated longing for a loving, attuned parent.
The Father Wounds We Carry
But for many people, the words “Our Father” don’t evoke comfort. They conjure painful memories of absence, neglect, emotional distance, or even violence. These are real and lasting wounds, the kind that should never be glossed over with religious clichés or pious-sounding platitudes.
But here’s the good news: God is not a reflection of your earthly father. He is the perfection of everything a father was meant to be. Jesus invites his followers into a new experience of fatherly love, one that heals rather than wounds.
A Scripture-Soaked Memory
The Bible isn’t just a collection of ancient, inspired texts. It’s a unified story, stitched together by divine threads that all converge in Jesus. So when a word or theme appears for the first time in the story, it’s never accidental. It sets the stage for everything that follows. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to where a theme first appears in Scripture.
This is sometimes called the “principle of first use,” and it isn’t a fancy modern method for interpreting the Bible. It’s simply how Jesus’ audience listened to the Scriptures.
So when Jesus said the words “Our Father,” many of his listeners wouldn’t have thought first of their own dads. Their Scripture-soaked memories would have raced back to the Exodus story — when their ancestors were enslaved in Egypt.
The First Time God Reveals Himself as Father
Brickmaking was backbreaking work. It required mixing dirt, manure, straw, and water into a foul, muddy mess. Then the mixture was pressed into a mold, removed, and left in the sun to bake for about fifteen days. As the mud dried and the straw slowly decomposed, the bricks would harden. This was their work, day after day after mind-numbing day.
What’s more, in Egypt a slave’s value was directly tied to productivity. In Pharaoh’s economy, if you produced you had purpose; if you didn’t, you were disposable. Exodus 1:14 paints a vivid picture: “They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly” (NIV).
Not surprisingly, the Hebrew name for Egypt (Mitzrayim) is connected to the idea of being hemmed in — “narrow,” “constricted,” or “that which oppresses.” And although we may not know what it’s like to have Pharaoh looking over our shoulder, anyone who has ever been stuck in a bind — caught between a rock and a hard place, backed into a corner — knows Egypt.
It was in the midst of this nightmare that God summoned Moses to deliver a message to Pharaoh: “This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son … Let my son go, so he may worship me” (Exodus 4:22–23, NIV).
The first time God reveals himself as Father isn’t in a sentimental moment. It’s in profound suffering.
And the Israelites cried out.
The God Who Hears the Cry
Notice God’s response to the Israelites: “The LORD said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…’” (Exodus 3:7–8).
God sees.
God hears.
God is concerned.
God comes down.
And it’s important to understand: in the Bible, this is not a one-off. It’s a pattern:
- In Genesis 4, God hears Abel’s blood crying out from the ground.
- In Genesis 18, God hears the outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah.
- In Genesis 21, God hears the cries of Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness.
- In Exodus 2–3, God hears the cries of his children in Egypt.
- In the time of the Judges, when the people cried out, God raised up a deliverer.
- The psalmist says it simply: “The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry” (Psalm 34:15).
Again and again, the Scriptures reveal God as a loving Father who rescues and redeems his children in their time of need. This is the pattern of God’s fatherly love: We cry out → God hears → God enters our story. But it’s important to note the pattern is not: We cry out → God hears → everything is immediately fixed.
The God Who Joins Us in the Mess
Sometimes God’s rescue looks like supernatural deliverance. But very often, God rescues us not by changing our circumstances, but by joining us in the mess, and giving us feet to walk the difficult road ahead.
That’s who we’re praying to when we pray, “Our Father.”
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Bringing Heaven Here: How The Lord’s Prayer Can Change Your Life and Our World will unveil the hidden truths and untapped power of the world’s most famous prayer — and show how it applies to your life today. Discover how to stay rooted in Him, embrace the purpose He has for you, and let the Lord’s Prayer guide you into a life of true transformation.
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Footnotes
- Jonathan Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing (Baker Academic, 2017), 97. ↩︎
- Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves (InterVarsity Press, 2015), 138. ↩︎
Brad Nelson is the content director at Walking The Text, a non-profit organization that creates digital media resources and study trips to Bible lands to help people understand the Bible in its original context. He curates The Teaching Series, a bi-weekly podcast and video series, and is a co-creator and writer for The Sacred Thread. He is a national speaker, writer, and served in the local church as a pastor for seventeen years. He and his wife Trisha live with their three daughters in Greensboro, Georgia.
Brad Gray is the President and CEO of Walking The Text, a non-profit organization that creates digital media resources and study trips to Bible Lands to help people understand the Bible in its original context. He is the cocreator and host of The Sacred Thread, and the author of Make Your Mark. Brad is also a national speaker, ordained minister, and former teaching pastor. Brad and his wife, Shallon, live with their four children in the Greater Nashville Area.
