WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT PRAYER !

WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT PRAYER (PART 2) !: God loves us and wants us to have good things, just as we love our children and want them to have good things. The model prayer Jesus gave to His disciples, commonly referred to as the Lord's prayer (Matthew number 6:9-13), begins with the words, "Our Father which art in heaven. . ." In the next chapter of Matthew, when Jesus was again teaching on prayer, He used another illustration of how the earthly relationship between father and son is like the Believer's relationship with the heavenly Father. (Matthew 7:7-11). "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be open. Or what man is there of you, who if his son as bread, will give him a stone ? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent ? If you the, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? KNOWING GOD AS FATHER: Here we can see one reason the Jewish Israelites could not understand Jesus. If Jesus had come a long as the prophets of old, proclaiming judgment against them and presenting a distant, unapproachable God to them, they might have understood Him better. That was the picture of God they were accustomed to. When God came down and talk to Moses on the mountain, there was fire, thunder, and lightning. Anyone who touched that mountain died instantly. When the presence of God moved into the Holy of Holies, no one dared intruded there for fear of instant death. The Jewish Israelites knew about a God who was high and holy -- a God who dealt and all for judgment -- and they feared Him. Jesus, however, came with a message of love. He introduced God as a Father. He suggested they could approach God as a Father. But the Jewish Israelites just couldn't comprehend that kind of a God. We see the same kind of thinking today. Too many, Believers And Nonbelievers is just a religion about a faraway God. They really don't know Him, and Many Believers and Nonbelievers treat and talk to God only when they are in a situation or circumstance. They never have come to Him through Jesus Christ in order to know Him personally as there Father, so they tried to approach Him in the wrong manner. But thank God, He is our Father if you are born a begin with His nature: and we can come to Him because we are His children !