Putting Prayer in Perspective: Our Father’s Vast Universe

Stuart shared the following exhortation prior to a morning prayer meeting at the 2024 Fellowship Conference. The thoughts shared really helped put prayer in perspective: in view of our Father’s vast universe, He yet looks down and hears us!

Matthew 6:7 “But when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.”

God isn’t actually interested in lots of long prayers you know? “Therefore, do not be like them,” that couldn’t be plain I could it?

“For your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in Heaven.”

I want you to pretend that this Bible here is 740,000,000 miles wide. That is the width of the solar systems, and that little dots at the end of the sentence, I think you call it a period, is that right? We call it a full stop, and that little dot there, can you see it there on your Bible? That’s the sun in this solar system. Just that little dot there, and the Earth, can you see the Earth on there? Of course, you can’t because it’s a million times smaller than that little dot.

Now then, let’s take this solar system and that little dot, which is the Sun, and that tiny, tiny little thing, which is 1,300 million times smaller than that little dot, and let’s put it into the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean, of course, runs from the Americas to Africa and all of us from the North Pole to the South, and this little page, these two pages floating around in the Pacific Ocean, and that little dot, and that tiny little dot times smaller than that, is the size of the sun in our galaxy.

Now think of a million Pacific Oceans. Now think of a million million Pacific Oceans. Of course, you can’t, can you?

And now think of 2 million million Pacific Oceans, and think about that little dot and the other one you can’t see, which is so much smaller, and remember that that’s just the corner of the universe that we know about.

And the God Who inhabits Heaven and Earth, who is our father in Heaven, there’s a God who is three and yet one. He became incarnate, he became a man, he took on a human nature only in that little tiny dot, which you can’t see, in 2 million million Pacific Oceans, and you’re very small, and so am I, on that little tiny unseen dot, but that’s where God in his grace became incarnate.

And that’s where he said, when you pray to this God of this universe, this God in heaven, say “our father”. And the immensity of it baffles us and escapes our attention. Prayer is enormous, vast, immense, incomprehensible. I’m the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, tiniest little thing in this vast universe, and he says call me Father, come to me like a child comes to a father, worship me because I’m God in heaven, but come comfortably to me, you Christians, because I am your Father. Trust me, love me, open your hearts to me, but remember, don’t pray to my father, pray our father, because I expect you to pray with and for others. That’s what he said, that’s what we must do.