Starting on the pathway to connect with God, the Father.
Prayer series #3
If you are jumping into this series, you might want to start here to catch up!
This week, we’re exploring this question: How can we create a sustainable rhythm of prayer, as secure attachment , based on the way that we see Jesus model prayer for us?
Jesus said, “This is how you should pray: “Father, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. Give us each day the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation. (Luke 11: 2-4 NLT)
Whether you grew up in church or not, most of us can recite the Lord’s prayer. If you grew up in a liturgical church, like I did, you learned it as a ritualistic prayer that you said every Sunday. Unfortunately, that kind of prayer didn’t really mean anything to me until I had a relationship with Jesus. A pre-written prayer, like the Lord’s prayer, can be a helpful way to pray when you can’t seem to find the words for prayer.
Pre-written prayers
A few other examples of pre-written prayers that can be helpful resources:
The book of Psalms. The Psalms were intended to be spoken instead of read. I’ve found them to be a beautiful launching point to start praying. A previous mentor of mine had taught me to underline phrases about God’s character in one color to give words for worship and passages that leaned more towards prayer in another. When I find myself at a loss for words, this way of interacting with scripture helps me to get started.
Common Prayer. I love this liturgical text that was created by Shane Claiborne and friends. It’s a collection of prayers for morning, midday and evening. Sprinkled throughout are tools for prayer if you want to learn more about liturgical style prayer.
Every Moment Holy. I picked up this beautiful, modern prayer book several years ago after my friend Karen utilized it prayer during a visit to her home in Bellingham, Washington. This three volume set includes written prayers for the mundane, for occupations, for grief and loss, and more. I will forever remember praying with my family through the one titled, For the Loss of a Living thing, on the day we were saying goodbye to our beloved family dog, Tiger. We wept as these prayers gave words to our hearts cry.
Praying through scripture. The amount of books that offer ways to pray through scripture are more than I can recommend here. There’s such a benefit to praying through God’s word as way to know Him more and to surrender to His will over our own.
A Way to Pray
Over the years, through some wise guides, I came to learn the Lord’s prayer as a form, a WAY to pray. More like a roadmap to follow than a chemistry equation, which is sometimes how we think of prayer. What I’m sharing in this series is a slight modification from what I originally learned through 3DMovements, a missional movement equipping Christians for making disciples.
One interesting thing about learning a route, whether you are walking, running, or driving, is that once you’ve traveled it enough, you can get from Point A to Point B without thinking. You simply just get started on the journey. When I leave my house to drive to my job, I make the turn onto highway 69 South from 87th street and I don’t think anymore. Somehow, I just arrive in the parking lot of my workplace. When I run my usual 3 mile loop through the neighborhood, my feet just kind of take me through the route. Doesn’t this happen to you?
My hope is that we can learn the Lord’s prayer as a pathway for connecting to the Father. It can be a “route” of prayer for us. Routine, or repeated practices of prayer, help us lay down new neural pathways. So, when we find ourselves faced with fear, suffering, disappointment, relationship tensions, sickness, brokenness in our world, we can simply start on the pathway and find ourselves welcome in the presence of our heavenly Father.
Start with Father
So then, how do we start?
At the beginning of the Lord’s prayer, Jesus gave us the starting point: “This is how you should pray. Start with Father.”
Jesus is telling the disciples, God is not just my Father but He’s OUR father. He’s YOUR Father. He is instructing the disciples in the posture that they can take in prayer. He’s giving them a new identity to relate to God, as sons and daughters. This becomes true for us today!
We are also disciples and we have been given a new position, a new identity. We are invited into a relationship with God, as a son or daughter and God is our Father! Jesus tell us to start prayer with looking at the face of the one who made you, knows you and loves you. He cares for you and can meet your needs. This is secure attachment.
Because God is unchanging, meaning His character remains the same, there’s nothing you can DO to sever that attachment. Romans 8:38-39 encourages us in this truth: “For I am SURE that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor ANYTHING ELSE in ALL creation, will be able to separate us from the LOVE OF GOD in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Crossing wires
But, because we relate the way we relate, we can unconsciously shift into insecure attachment patterns when we interact with God in prayer:
We feel disconnected.
We fear abandonment.
We avoid the intimacy that God offers us.
Or, possibly our earthly Father wasn’t a safe and trustworthy person so we didn’t experience secure attachment. Wires get crossed in our brain when we try to connect with God, the Father and we can only picture our interactions with our earthly father.
Fatherhood
My own story is that I had a dad who was incredibly compassionate, kind, gentle and loving. He was a safe space for me throughout childhood. Although imperfect, he modeled the love of God, the Father for me. I know that I’m able to more easily relate to God as my Father, because of my relationship with my dad.
I also want to acknowledge that may not be true for you. Your relationship with your dad could be incredibly complicated, distant, broken, painful, or non-existent. The wounds of fathers can run deep and are painful. My own distorted truth around “fatherhood” came from the idea that I thought I could make my dad love me more. If I got better grades or earned an award or said yes to all the things he asked of me, he would love me more.
That belief translated over into my relationship with God where I believed I needed to perform for Him too. I didn’t struggle with wondering if God would love me less if I messed up. Instead, I lived into the lie of “doing for God.” I worked harder and served more, longing for His approval and recognition, in hopes that He would love me MORE. The truth is, He already loves me perfectly. He will never love me any MORE, or any less. I have to resist my insecure attachment style to lean into secure attachment with God, my Father.
No matter what insecure attachment pattern you have learned, Jesus’ invitation to you is still the same: Start with Father. You have an original Father who has brought you into His family. He desires an intimate relationship with you, His daughters and sons. He loves you perfectly and has promised He will never leave you!