Heavenly Patriarchy
As a child of God I am to address my heavenly Father with reverence and trust.
- Jesus commands me to address God as my Father.
- God has adopted me as His child in Christ.
- He created me, cares for me, teaches me, and disciplines me as my Father.
- He is the Holy God whom I revere.
- I must respect God with Holy reverence and not speak to Him with a rude familiarity.
From the Heidelberg:
Why did Christ command us to call God "Our Father"?
- At the very beginning of our prayer Christ wants us to kindle in us what is basic to our prayer -
- the childlike awe and trust that God through Christ has become our Father.
- Our fathers do not refuse us the things of this life;
- God our Father will even less refuse to give us what we ask in faith.
Why are we to add the words "in Heaven"?
- Those words teach us not to think of God's heavenly majesty as something earthly
- and to expect everything for body and soul from His almighty power.
From the Scriptures:
Luke 11:13
- If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
- how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
- Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on.
- Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
- Look at the birds of the air: They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
- Are you not of more value than they?
- He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,
- will he not give us all things with Him?
- And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father!"
Adapted Heidelberg Catechism Lord's Day 46
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