Getting To Know Your Father, Part 1

As we come before the Father in the place of prayer, we can know that we are welcomed into His presence with such joy and grace in His heart. The God of the universe is our Papa, and He is delighted to see us, to hear our voices in the secret place. He loves the times of communion with us, even as He loved His first-born Son Jesus, and delighted to commune alone with Him and show Him all that He is doing on the earth. As the Son of the Father’s love, Jesus also took great pleasure in His times with the Father, because those times were the source, the fountainhead of everything that flowed from Him to those around Him.

By inviting us to join Him in that intimate relationship, calling upon our Father, the One in heaven, Jesus has opened the way to us for the most amazing life of significance, power, hope, and destiny. We are the most privileged among all God’s creatures—to come before Him as our Papa, and daily receive from Him all that we need for the day ahead.

The next phrase that Jesus speaks concerns the character and identity of this Father to whom we come. Jesus declares that the Father’s name is Holy, a Name to be hallowed above all things, a Name which has incredible meaning for us as His children. In these next few articles we are going to examine this phrase, and grapple with the great implications that it has for us who call God our Father.

As a first step, let’s consider the word “Holy.” This word communicates vast and complex realities, but in this article I want to focus on just one of them for our consideration. This is the word that is sung in endless repetition by the seraphim and the host of heaven who gaze upon God in the beauty of holiness (see Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4). As they fix their eyes on Him, they are overwhelmed by the continuous and ever-new revelation of His transcendent beauty. He is wondrous, incomprehensible to the mind, overwhelming to the soul and body of any creature, and yet He makes Himself available to humans like you and me through the presence of His Spirit. The person who invests the time to come before Him and simply consider Him will not be disappointed, for it is the pleasure of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit to reveal the Father’s nature to us in prayer.

Even as I write this, I am in the afterglow of an encounter with the Holy Spirit in which I was gripped by the wonder of God’s plan to come to the earth and make His home here with us. Experiences like that are beyond words, but something happens to my soul. My heart is expanded, hope increases, and I find courage to continue in the path that is before me. His holiness—the beauty and unfathomable richness of His character—is set before the eyes of my spirit, and the longing that is in my heart to be amazed and delighted, to be captivated in wonder by the revelation of beauty is met at ever deeper levels. I wish I could explain it to you. Words simply are not enough.

I urge you today: come before your Father and consider the beauty of His Name—His character revealed in the Word of God, and especially as revealed in the life of Jesus. His Name is Holy, and we will do well to make the time to come to know Him in the beauty of His holiness.

Gary Wiens, 2/19/2008