“For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father. Our Redeemer from of old is your name.”
– Isaiah 63:16
Oh, I love this verse. I love what it means, what it represents and even how rare this is, relatively, in the Old Testament. So there aren’t a lot of places in the Old Testament, certainly not near as many as we see in the New Testament where God is referred to as our Father. That’s what makes Jesus teaching us about prayer in Matthew 6 so extraordinary, that he begins to teach us by praying, “Our Father in heaven.”
Isaiah 63:16 Helps Us Answer the Question, “What is a Christian?”
So let’s just pause and realize what a wonder it is that you and I, through faith in Jesus, have the privilege of knowing and loving and experiencing God as Father. I just want to include one of my favorite quotes from J.I. Packer, from a book, Knowing God, one of my favorite books outside of the Bible. And he wrote, it’s an incredible chapter on adoption in that book, and he wrote, “What is a Christian?”
He answered, “The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father. If you want to know how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.”
Do You View God as Father?
So I ask you, is that true of your life? Is it the thought of being God’s child and having God as your Father, is that the thought that prompts and controls your worship and your prayers and your whole outlook on life?
Oh God, our Father in heaven, we pray that it would be so, that we would realize maybe even in a fresh way at this moment, the wonder of what it means to be your child, to be your son, to be your daughter. God, I pray that over every single person listening right now, who has placed their faith in Jesus. And if they’ve not placed their faith in Jesus, truly, they’ve never come to know you as Father, that this might be the moment where you adopt them into your family, as they place their faith in you, as they see, their eyes are opened for the first time to you as Father or in a fresh way.
Isaiah 63:16 Leads Us to Pray for Our Worship to God
God, we pray that this reality of what it means to be your child would prompt and control our worship, that when we sing, we wouldn’t just sing meaninglessly or monotonously. We would sing to you, oh God, our Father, that when we pray, we would pray, “our Father in heaven,” that we would experience a relationship with you in prayer, like a child with a dad who loves them.
God, may this prompt our whole outlook on life. That we would walk today as children of the heavenly Father. Isaiah 63:16 tells us, you are our Father. You, O Lord, are our Father and we praise you as such. We love you as our Father. We worship you as our Father and we delight in you. Oh God, we delight in you as our Father. And we pray that you would draw us as your children closer and closer to you. We pray this in Jesus’ name before you, our Father, according to Isaiah 63:16. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
