Welcome To The Family Sermon Vii: Communicating With The Father Series

COMMUNICATING WITH THE FATHER OF OUR FAMILY – THE FAMILY OF GOD

Again I say, “Welcome to the Family – the Family of God”! What a fellowship! What a joy divine! What a privilege! How wonderful it is to be a child of God with the gift of discernment . . . distinction of sonship . . . dissemination of God’s grace to others - a unique ability given to us so that whosoever will may become part of the family of God!

There’s nothing like God’s gift of family . . . love . . . marriage . . . children - to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. How fortunate most of us were to be born into a family in which love abounded and values cherished at each stage of development, even during hard times when healthy functioning sometimes gave way to dysfunction. By God’s grace we managed to survive and become mature adults!

In all the ways by which we were challenged - as we grew “in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man” - communication was the key to understanding and acting in keeping with the rules of those in charge of the family – in most cases, the father, but oftentimes the mother, and in extreme situations an older brother or a sister.

“Me and My Experiences” is a title that would be fitting for any one of us to write a book or essay or letter about the uniqueness of our family life that began years ago and has followed us all the days of our lives until now – when we are at the point of remembering the good and putting behind us the not so good.

Think positive is my way of coping with negative experiences that occurred in the past. As one of eleven children of an earthly father whose memory (though faint) is cherished despite numerous shortcomings, this son of his has chosen to put it all in perspective and to dwell on the good that occurred in the lives of so many because the man we knew as our father dearly loved his children.

Think about your family of origin – who and what you cherish and want others to know about . . . Q: What role did communication play in your upbringing - or did you simply do as you were told!? In family systems counseling, we major on communication as the means by which healthy families reap the benefits of family life.

As with any worthwhile endeavor in the Christian life, Jesus is our model for how to go about communicating with the head of our family – the family of God.

Prayer the highest form of communication was, to Jesus, such a top priority that there were times when His apostles must have wondered if their Master could or would do anything without praying about it first. Obviously the answer is “No”!

So effective were His words and works after going aside to communicate with His Father, why wouldn’t His disciples want to know “how” to pray!

Those twelve apostles walked closely with Jesus during His earthly ministry - and, of all the things they saw Him do - teaching, preaching, performing miracles – they only asked this one thing: “Teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). A request, to this day, that we still ask of Him!

In keeping with His teaching style of briefly yet clearly answering questions, Jesus gave us a pattern to follow (principles to be guided by) for communicating with the head of our Family – God our Father! For the next six session:

We shall dissect the pattern one piece at a time so that there’s no doubt about the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of communicating with God.

So . . . please note that the first part of the pattern specifies the “who” we pray to – “Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9).

Jesus began His prayer instructions by changing the way His disciples think about God – not God the Father, God our Father.

As a child of God, by virtue of our repentance to God and faith in Christ, and therefore as heir yea joint heir with Christ, our distinction of sonship makes God, whom we thought of as the Father, our Father too. The Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is also our Father.

Furthermore, the fact that He is our Father in heaven makes a big difference in the way we not only think of Him but also approach Him.

Think about it: The heathen world has always clung to the notion that there are many gods, that it doesn’t matter which one or how many of these adopted gods humans worship, just so everybody has a god or several gods of some kind that they look to, or answer to . . .