Skip to main content

Our Father in heaven.


This is the second blog in a series on The Lord’s Prayer. In the first blog -- Rediscovering the Power of The Lord’s Prayer – the focus was on understanding prayer in Yeshua’s (the Jewish Jesus) culture. A key point we learned about the way Jesus and his disciples prayed is that the ultimate purpose of prayer is to “bring people closer to God so they may more faithfully perform his will.”1 Now let’s consider the first line of The Lord’s Prayer:

“Our Father in heaven.”

Comments & Cultural Insights

1. We all pray to “Our Father.”

2. In the Jewish culture the father’s role in the family included providing for the needs of and protecting the family – and teaching his children.

3. “Our Father” is the “Creator of the Heavens and Earth.” In the First Creation Account in Genesis He provided for the needs of all the creatures He created, created barriers to protect those creatures, revealed basic instructions for all humans to follow in their lives and teach their children, and created a specific mystical period of time for all humans on earth to hear His wisdom – the Shabbat.

4. Our relationships with each other are defined by our relationship with “Our Father.” We are all members of “Our Father’s family.” You and I have the same “Father in heaven.”

Making the words of The Lord’s Prayer Realities in Our Lives

In my religion and culture, when we said “Amen!” at the end of a prayer – that was it! We had done our part. We had made God aware of something we wanted or needed – now it’s up to Him! In Jesus’s religion and culture, the “Amen!” signaled the beginning of the next phase of prayerbecoming actively involved in making the words they had just prayed a reality! As soon as the disciples said “Amen!” their focus shifted to doing what the words they had just prayed in order to make them realities on the earth. Below are some suggestions.

1. In interactions with people that have different views from yours, take a moment to remember that those people have the same “Father in heaven” as you.

2. Recognize the things that “Our Father” provides for all of us – air, water, earth, rain, food, plants, trees, seasons, sunlight, etc.

3. Learn the instructions “Our Father” gave to all humans.

4. Remember “Our Father’s wisdom” on the Shabbat.

5. Build relationships on the connection we all have to “Our Father.”

Things You Can Do that Will Make a Big Difference & Help

If you found this information informative, useful and valuable, here are some things you can do to help share it and help us provide more.
______________________________________________

Raise Awareness

Make others aware of this information by
& getting together with a friend or two and discussing this blog.  
______________________________________________

Donate it forward!

If you have never donated, 
our “Helping Friends” made this blog available for you!
Become a “Helping Friend” by donating now -- Click Here for options.
Donate it forward so blogs, publications & other services 
will be here in the future!
______________________________________________

Let Your Amazon Purchases Help Fund this work too!
Click on the link below when you login to Amazon --
Amazon will donate a percentage of what you pay to BHC.
______________________________________________

1 The Prayer Book: Weekday, Sabbath and Festival; translated and arranged by Ben Zion Bokser © 1983; Behrman House Publishers, Inc., New York, NY; pp. viii, ix.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It’s a Yod -- NOT a Jot and Tittle!

Not only did Yeshua read and speak Hebrew, so did his followers and disciples! Two very well known, but not accurately understood words in the Gospel of Matthew prove it – jot and tittle . For some reason jot and tittle stick in the minds of Christian Bible readers. But when you ask them what jot or tittle mean, you get a lot of conflicting and some really weird answers. Today, you are going to get the facts about what Yeshua originally said and how they ended up in English translations of the Bible as jot and tittle . Let’s begin by reading Matthew 5:18 from the King James translation: For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. If you have not read the article “ From Yeshua to Jesus ” in Yeshua’s Kingdom Handbook please take a moment to read it online by clicking here before you continue. In it you will see how we began with the name “ Jesus ” and traced it through Lati

Do Not Say RAQA! - Yeshua on Anger (Part 2)

In the last blog, we covered the first part of Yeshua’s lesson on Anger -- An Angry Person Should be Tried in Court like a Murderer – keep in mind that “anger” is the focus of Yeshua’s lesson. “Whoever says to a brother, ‘ RAKA ,’ shall be answerable to the Sanhedrin.” [i] Yeshua reveals that the seriousness of the offense has become greater by elevating the crime to the next highest court – the Sanhedrin . It is the highest court in the nation and would be the equivalent of our Supreme Court. What makes this offense more serious than murder, to keep things in the context established by Yeshua? It is because of what the angry person said out of anger – “ RAKA !” RAKA is the English transliteration of the Greek word found in the ancient manuscripts of Matthew. Interestingly, the Greek word is also a transliteration of a Hebrew word into Greek. Keep in mind that when a translator working on a translation of a Greek manuscript transliterates a Greek word, he only finds the

The Prayer Yeshua Prayed Twice Every Day

One of Jesus’s earliest memories was no doubt watching and listening to his family when they gathered to pray the Shema at sunrise before the day’s work began and after the working work day was over at sunset . He also heard and participated in praying the Shema at their synagogue. He was surrounded by neighbors who also prayed the same prayer in their homes every day. The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah . It is derived from the root Pe-Lamed-Lamed and the word l'hitpalel, meaning “ to judge oneself .” This surprising word origin provides insight into the purpose of Jewish prayer. The most important part of any Jewish prayer, whether it be a prayer of petition, of thanksgiving, of praise of God, or of confession, is the introspection it provides, the moment that we spend looking inside ourselves, seeing our role in the universe and our relationship to God. [1] Most of Jewish prayers are expressed in the first person plural, "us" instead of "me," an