This week my family and I are at Word Alive 2015, a week break with Bible teaching and worship accessible across all ages. Where time (and Wi-Fi) allows, I’ll be posting my notes from whatever sessions I get to go to.

Here are my notes from Day 1…

 

8.30pm Celebration

Matthew 6:5-13
Our Heavenly Father

In terms of our daily struggles and conflicts: does anyone care, can anyone help?

The start of the Lord’s Prayer offers us a resounding ‘yes’. But we mustn’t burden ourselves with the mechanics of how we pray. We need to start with who we pray to.

Because of Jesus, the God we pray to is our Father.

Come and pray to the Father who cares

To call God ‘our’ Father, is a most precious privilege. The God who is behind all the wonder, power and majesty of the universe and who is in his essence love… He can be our Father.

In one sense God is the Father of all people. But we can only be fully and truly (as He is to Jesus) by adoption. This adoption is secured and made possible only by Jesus. ‘Adoption is the highest privilege of the Gospel’ (J I Packer).

As adopted children, we share in Jesus’ unparalleled intimacy and access to the Father. This should give us great confidence and assurance. God can no more reject us and our prayers as he can Jesus’ himself.

Come and pray to the King who can help

God cares for us, he is also powerful to help. God is no more Father than he is King, and vice versa. This means that as we pray to him, we are praying to the one – the only one – who is both willing and able to act for our good and his glory; and even this he does without lessening or overruling his loving character as Father.

Nothing can hold pack his power.

Nothing can hold up his plan.

Published by Alan Witchalls

Alan Witchalls is a vocational Gospel worker who currently lives in his home county of Essex, UK. He currently serves as the Director and Producer of Video Bible Talks, a video-based Bible teaching ministry. Alan is passionate about equipping and encouraging young people and families to live for Jesus in every area of life, particularly in helping teenagers to grow deep roots into the Bible and sound Christian theology that shows itself in how they live with and show love to other people.