Heavenly Patriarchy

In short, the unwillingness to acknowledge God as "Father" is an affront to God's gracious and perfect self-disclosure.

Kevin DeYoung's The Good News We Almost Forgot

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.

Heidelberg Catechism Lord's Day 46

For the Bible Tells Me So... 

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! 

Matthew 6:25 

• 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? 

Romans 8:32 

• He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, 

• will he not give us all things with Him? 

Galatians 5:6 

• And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father!"

As the young theologians sometimes sing, "My God is so big!  So strong and so mighty!  There's nothing my God cannot do!"

Kevin DeYoung's The Good News We Almost Forgot