Our confidence in God as Our Father

Look at 1 Thessalonians 3:11: Now may our God direct our way to you. That is the way a Christian talks. You know, in both Old Testament and the New Testament times, you will see nonbelievers who are interacting with Christians, and they will say, Will you pray to your God for us? No Christian ever prays that way. A Christian says, Our Father in heaven, my God, and you hear my cry. By the way, if you can not say that, God invites you—through faith in Jesus, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit—to be able to say that. The Christian God is Father in his nature. He is God the Father, First Person of the Godhead. He is Father, but not everybody is in a personal relationship with him. Do not believe the lie of the universal fatherhood of God over all people. No, no. God’s wrath is rightly upon us. Because of our sins, we are estranged from God. It is by the blood of Jesus, by being adopted into the Sonship of Jesus Christ, that you, through faith in Jesus, may become, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 5:2, a dearly beloved child of God, with these very rights of access into the presence of the Father. You may call him our God.¹

Richard D. Phillips