Many of us want to know God. We are very intrigued by this mysterious Deity. The universe is so big, there are billions and billions of planets that we are still discovering. The details of life are so mind-boggling. Through sex, a tiny sperm enters a female egg and somehow, we arrive here on planet earth, full of snot and smiles. Who is the One who put all this together? Who is the God who holds the universe in His hand?

The disciples once asked Jesus how to pray. What they were really asking was how to know God the way Jesus did. They saw a joy in Jesus, a spiritual energy that was contagious. They knew it had something to do with His relationship to God. And so, they asked Him how to pray. This is how we received the infamous “Lord’s Prayer.”

The way the Lord’s Prayer starts is a jaw-dropper. Jesus told His disciples to start off their prayers, “Our Father who art in heaven.” Now, this prayer has been said so many times that it might have lost its punch. But Jesus commanded his disciples to call the creator of the universe: Dad.

Father, Dad, Daddy, Papa. He used the regular term for father to describe God. Jesus taught us that we have a heavenly Father who causes the sun to shine on us. A Father who provides for us and does not want us to be anxious about life. A Father who knows us each personally, even the number of hairs on our heads!

Jesus reveals to us a Father who loves us with a perfect love. A Dad who delights in us and takes pleasure in us! The Apostle John wrote by the Spirit that Jesus came from the “bosom” or “heart” of the Father. The good news is that through the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we have been carried to the bosom of the Father too. We are at the right hand of the Father, right with Jesus, where there are eternal pleasures and fullness of joy in Papa’s love. (see Ephesians 2:6; Psalm 16:11)

There is no work that we need to do in order to get to the Father’s heart. Jesus’ work was enough. We are already seated in the highest place of heaven in Christ. We can’t get any closer to the Father than we already are. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30) That statement was pretty offensive to the first century Jews. Just as offensive, since we are one with Christ, we are also one with the Father.

Our oneness with the Father and the Son is exactly what Jesus prayed and died for. “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe you have sent me.” (John 17:21) Since Jesus clarified the purpose of this oneness was so that the world would believe, we know He’s not talking about some future date after He returns. He’s talking about now, because He wants the world to believe now.

Paul made the same point about our oneness with the Father and Son in Colossians 2. He said that the fullness of the Father is in the Son. And since we are in the Son, we too have the fullness of the Father. (Colossians 2:9-10) Jesus is alive, resurrected from the dead. And He told His disciple Mary to tell us, “I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.” (John 20:17) Jesus has brought us into the same relationship that He has with the Father: full of joy, pleasure, delight, perfect love, and creativity. This is a revelation of our Father, our Dad, our Papa.