The Lord's Prayer Part 3: Deeper into "Our Father" Kathryn Kuhlman

We have been having several good heart -to -heart talks regarding that prayer which Jesus taught you and taught me to pray. It's something so very personal. It's something that is so important. The Lord's Prayer is definitely the most important of all the Christian documents. And it will be one of the greatest experiences of your life when you can get to the place where you'll have that wonderful spiritual revelation where you can fully understand the meaning of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. It's so simple that sometimes I think that perhaps that's the reason that Thousands miss it. We've gotten to the day when we try to be so analytical. We try to analyze everything. And we just cannot accept the simple things of life. Accept them as they are. Sometimes I get so disgusted Disgusted with human nature. I wonder if God ever does. I just wonder. I know once he must have because the word of God says that he repented that he ever made man. And, you know, sometimes I look up and I wonder whether he gets disgusted with me for my... ignorance and my lack of intelligence and understanding. Parents sometimes, even the best of parents, get a little disgusted with their children and will probably shake them a little bit and love them at the same time. And sometimes I think the Heavenly Father takes you and takes me and he shakes us a little bit, you know, gets a little provoked with us, but he's... still keeps on loving us. And men and women are still trying to analyze the power of God, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. When it comes to this thing of divine healing, you know, they'll call it everything under the sun. Psychosomatic. They'll try to say it's... One thing, it's another. One group has their name for it. Another group over here has its name for it. When in a final analysis, it's just so simple. Call it what it really is. The power of God. That's all. When it comes to slaying by the Holy Spirit, I don't understand it. I don't have to understand it. God does not demand of me my understanding of his great power. Who can analyze God? Who can understand the person of God? Who has the mentality to analyze, to understand the great creator, the one who spoke the very world into existence? God never expected man to analyze him, to understand him. We are to accept the person of the great creator. We're to accept the person. The one who said that let there be light and there was light. In exactly the same way, we are to accept. the manifestations of his great power, is just enough for me to say it's gone. That's all. The slain power of the Holy Spirit, I don't understand. I accept it because I know its scripture. Now, when it comes to man's relationship, with the great creator, with man's relationship to God, with our relationship with the heavenly father. It is so simple that it's beyond the understanding of the intellectuals. And so there you are. Yeah. You have to dismiss a lot of man's thinking and analyzing to be able to come with a little child and say, bother. My, Bob. A child never tries to analyze. That relationship that he has between his mother and himself, his father and himself. He accepts it. There's Papa. Or you say, my father. My dad. And just because you can't analyze it, your mind cannot analyze it, you don't say. I won't accept him as my father. I won't accept her as my mother. But it's the strangest thing. A child always accepts that relationship and accepts his father. And the father accepts the child as his son. Oh! if only we could become more simple in our understanding. It would be so wonderful. Now let's begin where I left you in our last heart -to -heart talk, where the man says my religion is summed up in the first two words of the Lord's Prayer. Our Father. Let's go a little deeper to this. If you meditate upon this fact, Until you had some degree of understanding of what it really means, then most of your difficulties and a lot of your physical ailments would disappear. For they are rooted and grounded in fear. And fear is the greatest enemy that you can take into your life. There is no greater enemy. that any man, any woman can take into his life than fear. Right now while I'm speaking to you, pause just a moment. You think of your own life. Fear. Fear right now keeps you from God's best. Fear right now is keeping you from being what God wants you to be. Fear. Maybe you have never thought of fear as being an enemy. Maybe you've just closed your eyes to the fact that you're dominated by fear. I'm afraid you may not say it audibly, but inside of you. Fear is keeping you from being your best. Now, when you are completely immersed with this truth that God is your heavenly father, that he cares for you, he loves you, you're his child, you're the child of his care, you're the child of his keeping, it takes away the... Fear of what tomorrow holds. All this relationship, I just wish I could put it in little capsules and just send it out. Millions of capsules to every person in the world who's being governed by fear. Oh, I've seen men and women over and over and over again who are... being dominated by a great mental depression. If I could just get them to see that God is their Heavenly Father. They don't have to fear the great unknown. They don't have to fear tomorrow. They don't have to fear the future. You have one. In position of Father, our Heavenly Father. eternal, all -powerful, the all -present God, the loving Heavenly Father, and that you are a child of His care and His keeping. And perfect love casteth out all fear when you get to the place where you love your Heavenly Father. with all of your heart. That's that wonderful bond between the two of you. When you begin loving him as a heavenly father, not only acknowledging him as a great creator, or as just God, a mystical being. Living somewhere out there in the great unknown. Just spirit. Who ever heard of loving a spirit? I couldn't love a spirit. That's the reason I know that my Heavenly Father is more than spirit. When I say that I love my Heavenly Father, when I say that I love God, I don't mean that I am loving a spirit. We're never told to love a spirit. I cannot love some mystery, something that I know nothing about. God to me is my heavenly father. And as a heavenly father, I loved him with even a greater and a deeper love that I loved my papa and I loved him. But it was a natural love in relationship between a natural earthly parent and an earthly child. But there is something about my love for my heavenly father that is divine. He has imparted that love. And his love for me is a divine love. Oh, it's so wonderful. Paul saw it. Paul knew it. And that was the reason that Paul said, oh, the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. And who can fathom that mercy? And yet, where would any of this be without it? And he goes on to say, and the love of God. Who can fathom God's love? for his own, for his children, for you, for me. The love of one who is all -powerful, who is eternal, all -present God. Then why should I fear? Why should I be afraid? Thick love casteth out all fear. And so I go forth and do what I could not do of myself and in the natural. I'm no longer afraid. I'm no longer depressed. I have nothing to be depressed about. Millions are living in defeat. That great depression. That's the reason you run to a drugstore and you get a pill for this and a pill for that and a pill for something else. You try to overcome this fear and this great mental depression through pills. My friend, all on earth that you have to do to get rid of your mental depression, to get... rid of your anxiety, to get rid of the fear that's mastering your life, is to get to the place where you have the spiritual revelation that the one all -powerful is your Heavenly Father and He loves you. Yeah? It's amazing what fear can do. It can cause literally a physical breakdown. I believe that the main underlying cause of all trouble is fear. Analyze that. If only you could realize to some extent that omnipotent wisdom is your living, loving Father, then most of your fears would go. If you could realize it completely, then every negative thing in your life would vanish away. And you would demonstrate perfection in every phase. Now you're beginning to see the... object that Jesus had in mind when he placed this clause first. My father. Dear Jesus, right now, I'm doing the best that I can in these few words to let that precious one see that you're real. This relationship is real. Open their understanding of this truth. For Jesus' sake, we ask. Now, let's go a little deeper. Oh, it's so simple. And yet so profound. Did you ever dream that just two words could hold so much meaning? Oh, sure. We say, my father. A million times I've come into his presence and I've said, my father. It's personal. But Jesus taught us to say our father. Why? Remember the word? There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither bond nor free. There is neither chosen nor unchosen. Right here, Jesus is making his second point. It ends all of this idea about the spiritual. superiority of any one group of human beings over another group. No person is superior in the sight of the Heavenly Father over another. I think that's a good place to just pause and think of the truth, a truth that's profound. And if ever there was a day, if ever there was an hour when we needed this truth, it's now. Here it is. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither bond nor free. There is neither chosen nor unchosen. No man is superior to another in the sight of God. No group is superior over another. No race is superior over another. God knows no such thing as race, color, class, group. He has taught us to pray our. He teaches that the thing that places a man is the spiritual condition of his own individual soul. And that as long as he is upon the spiritual path, it makes no difference whatever to what group he belongs to. or does not belong to. It's an individual matter. It's a personal matter. It's still not a matter of whether one is Jew or Gentile. It's still not a matter of whether one is black or white. It is still not a matter of whether one is Catholic or Protestant. It is what one has as an individual on the inside. Know that he makes no exception whatsoever in the prayer that he taught you and taught me to pray. And if you have had that spiritual experience, that new birth experience, you cannot say, our Father, my Father, until first of all, you've had that experience in accepting the Father's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, absolute deity and absolute divinity. as your Redeemer, as your Savior, and then this relationship is made possible to you.