Our Father in Heaven

Welcome

Well, good morning friends! Welcome to Lifepoint. If we haven’t met yet, my name is Dan and I serve here as the teaching pastor here at the Worthington Campus.

If this is your first time here...

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Introduction

If you have a bible with you, meet me in the New Testament book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 6. If you need help getting there - that’s the first book in the New Testament and as always, the table of contents is your friend!

One of the things I’ve loved about moving to Columbus is our new proximity to the Air Force museum down in Dayton. Has anyone been there?

I think it’s actually the largest aviation museum in the world, and it is honestly amazing. First of all, it’s enormous. You can walk through the entire history of human flight—from early hot air balloons and the very first planes designed by the Wright brothers, all the way through to modern experimental fighter jets and spacecraft. They have planes you’ve never heard of, designs most of us have never seen before, and it just goes on and on through multiple hangars.

And I’m kind of a museum guy, which drives Courtney and the kids crazy. Evelyn, Malachi, and David usually just want to look at the massive planes and keep moving, but I have to stop and read every single plaque. I want the history. Especially serving in the Air Force, I want to know the story behind the experimental jet, the pilot who flew it, and the engineering hurdles they had to overcome. It takes FOREVER.

But I love it, because a good museum preserves greatness. It takes things that shaped the world and protects them so we don't forget them.

But here’s the strange part about museums. We can walk through and learn a ton about whatever is in there. You can see what the planes look like, get the background, and understand the progression of how they were used.

The one thing you cannot do is use any of it.

Everything can be seen. Studied. Talked about. But none of it can be flown. And adding to the irony...in that museum, those planes actually exist to be used! The very point of a plane—as beautiful and sleek and impressive it may be to see—is not to sit in a climate-controlled hangar.

The point is to fly!

Why am I telling you any of this?

I think it’s because, in a lot of ways, we have a similar approach to the bible - especially the familiar parts, like what we’re looking at over the next six weeks.

We’ll be spending our time looking at what is often called, The Lord’s Prayer...or if you grew up in a different tradition, maybe you’ve called it the Our Father.

It is this simple - beautiful prayer that Jesus taught his first followers.

But for many of us, in some sense, it’s been locked away in a “museum.”

We treat it like a historical artifact.

We might take it out to recite the familiar words every now and then, and admire how beautiful it sounds. But then we put it right back behind the glass. It stays there. For most of us, these words feel pretty disconnected from the actual, everyday reality of a Tuesday morning commute or a difficult Thursday afternoon at home with the kids.

If we’re honest, the Lord’s Prayer probably just feels a bit out of place...and that’s if we give it much thought at all!

But...what if we’ve missed something?

LONG PAUSE

You see, I think the reason this prayer ends up feeling like a relic is because it’s like looking at a plane grounded in a hangar, or survival gear encased in a museum. We’re looking at something that was never meant to be locked away!

Think about it. If you look at a compass, a climbing rope, and a walking staff sitting on a velvet cushion behind glass, they are entirely useless to you. You don't need survival gear if you are standing inside a safe, predictable, climate-controlled building.

But here is the disruption: Jesus never invited us to stay inside the building.

He invited us out onto the trail. Throughout the New Testament, the writers use a very specific word to describe people who follow Jesus: pilgrims.

If we treat our faith like a museum exhibit—something we just visit once a week to admire—then the Lord's Prayer will always just be a nice artifact. But if you step out the front door and actually begin the difficult, exhausting work of following Jesus on the road, everything changes.

The glass breaks. You realize this prayer isn't a relic; it is the exact gear you need for the road.

Over the next six weeks, we are going to look at how Jesus provided us with this prayer to be the necessary signposts to keep us oriented when we get lost, and the practical tools to help us bear the weight along the way.

So if you’re not there yet, open with me to Matthew 6 - I will read the passage, pray, and then we’ll get started.

Matthew 6:7–13 ESV

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

PRAY

Our Father

Alright, let’s go ahead and get started. We’re going to spend most of our time looking at that first line of the prayer, “Our Father in Heaven.”

Now, for this to make sense, I want to talk a bit more about that imagery I used just a couple of minutes ago: the pilgrim and the pilgrimage.

Think about what a pilgrim is.

1. A pilgrim is a traveler. They are on the move. They’ve left their home - sometimes for only a short season - other times, never to return again.

2. A pilgrim is shaped by their destination.This is what separates a pilgrim from a wanderer. A wanderer is just moving aimlessly, but a pilgrim’s entire life—what they pack, how they spend their time, and who they walk with—is completely dictated by where they are going. They know they have not arrived yet, and that future destination changes every choice they make today.

And finally,

3. A pilgrim is not on a safe journey. This is the difference between a pilgrim and something more like a tourist. A tourist travels chasing an experience. A tourist generally expects comfort, and if the weather turns bad, the trip is ruined. But a pilgrim expects the terrain to be demanding.

The elements are harsh. There are actual hazards ahead. A hard day on the trail doesn't mean the journey is broken; it means they are walking through a “valley.”

And I know this will sound a bit dramatic—and as Courtney will happily tell you, I have a flair for the dramatic—but I believe one of the most urgent things we need to do in the modern, western church is recover the christian identity as pilgrims.

This is not just a nice sermon illustration. I’m serious.

And I say “recover” because this is something that, at one point, was firmly fixed in the Christian psyche.

In fact, for centuries, a pilgrimage wasn't just a helpful metaphor; it was a literal, physical practice that shaped the entire Christian imagination. If a Christian was seeking direction for their life, or repenting of a deep failure, or crying out for healing, they didn’t just read a book or attend a seminar. They packed a bag. They left the safety of their hometown and they walked—sometimes for months—to places like Jerusalem or the sites where the early church was born.

And the journey itself was the curriculum. The physical act of leaving their comfort zone, walking an unpredictable road, and having to literally depend on the charity of others taught them exactly what it meant to rely on God. They didn't just talk about needing "daily bread"—they had to actually pray for it on the road. They embraced the physical vulnerability of the trail because it perfectly mirrored their spiritual reality: they knew they were resident aliens. They knew they were not home yet.

Now, to be clear, we do not need to go home this afternoon, pack a bag, and start walking to Jerusalem.

We do not have to leave Columbus to be pilgrims.

But I do think we need a crucial reimagining of our everyday lives. We need to recover this ancient framework of the Christian life as a pilgrimage. And when I say "journey," I don't mean something abstract or purely spiritual. I mean your actual, everyday life right here.

The pilgrimage happens in your Tuesday morning staff meetings, in the way you parent your kids, and in the middle of a difficult stretch in your marriage. It covers the full spectrum of the human experience. There are days on this trail where you are walking through the absolute highs of life, and there are seasons where you are navigating a devastating health diagnosis, a painful betrayal, or what feels like the valley of death.

By recovering the pilgrim identity, we are actually deconstructing the idea that being a "Christian" is this static state of being (which, I think, is one of the most spiritually reckless ideas in the church today).

After all, a pilgrimage is what Jesus was inviting people to in the Gospels!

He was not inviting anyone to an ideology or just a new way of thinking. He was not inviting them into a voting bloc or a "demographic."

He invited people into a movement. That’s why the primary image in the New Testament for a Christian is a follower. A follower follows someone who is going somewhere.

It’s why the writers of the New Testament employed the language of followers as “strangers and aliens” in a “foreign” land because that has always been a fundamental aspect of being a disciple.

To follow Jesus is to be a pilgrim on a pilgrimage and it is in THIS context, that Jesus lays out the words we read just a few moments ago.

It’s a prayer. A pilgrim’s prayer.

And as we go through this series, I’m going to be drawing out at least two ways we engage this prayer on the pilgrimage. We are going to look at each line as both a signpost and a tool. A signpost that helps point out the right direction when we are feeling lost or disoriented, and a tool we use along the way.

“Father” as a Signpost

Alright, let’s look at the first line again.

Matthew 6:9 ESV

“Our Father in heaven...

These words represent the first, and maybe the most important signpost on the pilgrimage of following Jesus.

What do I mean by that?

Our family loves hiking—or at least going on long walks in the Metro Parks! And as you walk through the trail, from time to time, you’ll see these signposts with arrows pointing in different directions. One arrow points to the “Overlook” and another points to the “reflection pond” or whatever. They may even have one of those little, “You are here” maps.

The point is, when you see one of those signposts, it helps reorient where you’re going, right? There’s an immediate sense of relief when you spot one, especially if you've been walking for a while and started to wonder if you took a wrong turn. You look at the map, find the little "You are here" star, and immediately, your relationship to the entire trail is completely reoriented.

That is exactly what the word "Father" does for us on this journey. It is a signpost that reorients us back to the kind of relationship we actually have with Him.

But let's be honest about the journey we are actually on. We do not live in the abstract.

The author A.W. Tozer once wrote, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." Now, while I don't know if I take that as an absolute truth about who we are, I do think it says a lot. It actually forces us to stop and honestly answer the question: What does come to mind when I think about God?

Because when we hit actual hardship—and I am not talking about a metaphorical steep trail, I am talking about the sudden death of a spouse. I am talking about losing a job, or walking through a betrayal, or just waking up with a heavy, general sense that "my life is not going the way I wanted it to go." Maybe it is the realization that you are stuck in a dead-end marriage.

When the reality of life hits us like that, the image of God that pops into our heads is rarely a Father.

Some of us picture a being who is largely disengaged. We see Him as a cosmic manager who is entirely unconcerned with the actual, painful details of our lives, only occasionally checking in from a distance to make sure we are mostly staying in line.

Others picture a being more like a disappointed judge. In this view, God is sitting behind a massive, elevated bench with a ledger open, just waiting for us to mess up. We imagine His primary posture toward us is frustration. And if you view God as a disappointed judge, your relationship becomes purely legal and performance-based. You never approach a judge just to be in their presence, and you certainly don't run to a judge for comfort when your life is falling apart. You only approach a judge to apologize, to defend yourself, or to beg for a lighter sentence.

But there is something startlingly intimate about how Jesus talks about God. He shatters both the image of the disengaged manager and the disappointed judge. He invites us to call Him Father.

If we zoom out just a little bit from this specific verse and look at the rest of what Jesus teaches, the fuller picture of the kind of Father we have is breathtaking. Jesus describes a Father who sees us. A Father who actually delights in His children. A Father who actively provides for us, clothing the fields and feeding the birds, proving that we are of so much more value to Him. He is a Father who knows exactly what we need before we even open our mouths to ask!

Jesus gives us a picture of a Father who doesn’t sit behind a judicial bench with a ledger of our failures, but a Father who has thrown His arms wide open to embrace us.

Jesus gives us this beautiful signpost to reorient us. But here is the catch. A signpost only works if you actually trust it.

I’m trying to teach Malachi how to read a map when we go on these hikes. Not too long ago, we were out on a trail, and we came up to one of those markers. I pointed out the "You are here" star. But he looked around, looked at the map, and flat out refused to believe that’s where we were. He was convinced his internal compass was right and the sign was wrong. So, disregarding the sign, we took his route. And predictably, we took a wrong turn, got ourselves turned around, and had to backtrack.

I think Jesus is doing something very similar here. He isn’t just giving us a theological fact to memorize; He is inviting us to choose to trust the signpost.

When you are exhausted by a betrayal, grieving a loss, or realizing your life is not going the way you planned, you will be tempted to trust your own internal compass. Your feelings will tell you there is no way God is a loving Father to you right now.

But it isn't just the tragic moments that disorient us; it is the mundane ones, too. Hundreds of years ago, Teresa of Ávila said that "God walks among the pots and pans." He is right there in the completely normal, exhausting, repetitive chores of a Tuesday afternoon.

Even here, the invitation is to simply look up from the kitchen sink, with the words "Our Father."

It is about choosing to believe the signpost over your circumstances. It is taking a breath and saying, "Right. That is who You are. And that means I am Your child." Because if we disregard the sign, we wander right back into orphan-thinking, carrying the heavy burden of trying to secure our own lives all by ourselves.

“Father” as a Tool

We’ve talked about the signpost. But on a difficult pilgrimage, orientation is only half the battle. You don't just need to know where you are; you need practical gear to actually survive the terrain. Jesus doesn’t just give us signpost; He gives us a tool.

And the specific tool we find in the word "Father" is a tether.

If you have ever done any steep hiking or climbing, you know exactly what a tether is. A tether is a lifeline. It is a physical line that connects a vulnerable traveler to a secure anchor or to the lead guide. A tether does not give you directions. It doesn’t make the hike any shorter. Its entire purpose is to bear your weight when your legs give out, and to keep you from falling off the edge.

When Jesus tells us to begin our prayer with "Our Father," He is handing us a tether and telling us to “clip in.”

Let me show you what I mean.

The other night, I was taking my daughter Evelyn to an event - and it’s one of those “drop-off” kind of parties...so as soon as I drop her off, I’ve to some precious free time. My kindle was in my pocket - I had my coffee shop picked out.

We got there a bit early, and she didn’t know anyone who was already there. So I’m standing with her and we’re just talking between the two of us...and eventually I asked her, “Do you want me to stay.” And she kind of gave me this pre-teen half-smile that said “I don’t want you to leave, but I’m not going to ask you to stay.” So we just continued to talk about her day, her friends.

And the thing is: she didn’t ask me for anything.

She didn’t have a problem she needed me to solve, she didn't have a something she needed me to fix and she wasn't looking for an answer to a question.

She just wanted to be around me. She just wanted to know that I was there.

That was it. Just proximity. Just presence.

And as a parent, there is nothing quite like that. But it is also a perfect picture of how we are supposed to use this prayer as a tool.

When the trail gets incredibly steep—when you are walking through the grief, or the betrayal, or the exhaustion of just trying to hold your life together on a Tuesday afternoon—you don't always have the energy to figure out the right words to say.

Sometimes whatever’s going on is so heavy — you don't even know what to ask God to fix.

And the beauty of this prayer is that Jesus doesn't start by asking us to present a list of demands. He doesn't start with "fix this" or "give me that."

He starts with proximity.

When you pray "Our Father," you are doing exactly what Evelyn did. You are not asking God to immediately fix the trail; you are simply walking into the room and sitting down next to Him. You are actively tethering yourself to His presence. You are saying, "I don't even know what to ask for right now, I just need to know that You are here. I need to know that I am not walking this stretch of the road alone."

If the signpost is about remembering who God is, the tether is about actually leaning your heavy, exhausted weight on Him.

Knowing God as Father

When you look at this trail we are all walking, the hardest truth to admit is that, at our core, we naturally default to living like orphans. We ignore the signposts. We refuse to clip into the tether. We wander off into the wilderness, convinced we have to carry our own weight, secure our own future, and fight our own battles.

And living like an orphan is completely exhausting. If you are honest about your life right now—the anxiety you are carrying, the control you are trying to maintain, the sheer weight of trying to hold your life together—you know exactly how exhausting it is to walk this trail alone.

But this is where the Gospel completely changes the landscape.

Jesus didn’t just stand on a balcony in heaven and shout a prayer down to us, hoping we could figure out how to use it. He did something unimaginably better.

Jesus is the true and perfect Pilgrim.

He left the absolute safety, comfort, and perfect love of His Father's house. He willingly stepped into the harsh elements of our broken world. He ventured into the far country—the wilderness where we had wandered off and gotten lost.

And He didn't just come to give us directions; He came on a rescue mission. Jesus walked the most treacherous parts of this trail. He walked all the way into the ultimate valley of the shadow of death, facing the absolute isolation of the cross, so that He could find us in our wandering and bring us back home. He absorbed the cost of our rebellion so that He could offer us His exact status.

Through faith in what Jesus did on that cross and in His resurrection, the ultimate exchange happens. We stop being orphans. We are adopted. His Father literally becomes our Father.

When Jesus says, "Pray then like this: Our Father," He is essentially saying, "I am sharing my Dad with you. My security is now your security. My tether is now your tether."

So, as we close today, I just want to ask you: How heavy is the bag you are carrying right now? Are you tired of trying to navigate this trail all by yourself?

If you have never done so, today is the day to drop the exhausting burden of living like an orphan. You do not have to clean yourself up to get on the trail. You just have to look at the true Pilgrim who came into the far country to find you, and choose to trust Him. When you put your faith in Jesus, you are immediately adopted into the family. You can look up, read the signpost for the very first time, and say, "Right. You are my Father. And I am Your child."

And for those of us who have been on this pilgrimage for a long time, maybe this week you just need to stop trying to ask God to fix every obstacle on the trail. Maybe tomorrow morning, before you check your email, before you face the demands of your job or your family, you just need to do what Evelyn did. Walk in, sit down next to Him, clip into the tether, and just be in the presence of your Father.

Conclusion

As we close today, I want to leave you with a challenge. For this entire series, we are going to end each week by looking at an ancient practice from church history to help us actually use this prayer as a signpost and a tool.

The earliest Christian manual we have on record is a document called the Didache, written right around the end of the first century. And it gave the early church a very specific instruction: it told them to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. Morning, afternoon, and evening.

They didn't do this to check off a religious box. They did it because they knew how quickly we forget who is leading us.

So here is my challenge for you this week. I want you to take out your phone and set three daily reminders. Set one for the moment you wake up, one for your lunch break, and one for the evening. And when that alarm goes off, I want you to pause, clip into the tether, and just pray: Our Father in heaven. You don't even have to pray the whole thing yet. Just start there. Just remind yourself who is guiding you.

Because when you know who is guiding you, the difficult parts of the trail change.

During the absolute hardest, most broken season of my life, there was a song by Benjamin William Hastings called "So Help Me God" that became an anchor for me. The very first verse starts by embracing this exact pilgrim identity. It embraces the reality that we are all a work in progress, walking through very different terrain:

"I'm a pilgrim bound for Zion In the wild pursuit of God I'm not quite where I could be But I'm not where I was Should I fall into the valley Or scale the ups of life There's a shepherd in the lowlands And a shepherd in the heights"

That is the reality of the pilgrimage. There are heights, and there are severe lowlands. But the song ends with these beautiful lines. And I believe these lyrics capture the exact sentiment that praying "Our Father" is supposed to produce in our chests:

"You won't leave me in the shadows Won't forsake me in the hurt You might walk me through the valley But You won't leave me in the dirt Should I lose the road before me Or should the road just not seem fair When You're the God who got me this far You won't leave me half-way there"

When you pray "Our Father," you are tethering yourself to the God who will not leave you halfway there. He is the Father who walks with you through the valley, and He is the Father who will get you all the way home.

Let's pray.