Saturday, September 24, 2016

Dial Daily Bread: Jesus, "The Friend of Sinners"

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Jesus Christ said that God is His Father; that's easy for us to believe. But He also said that God is our Father, too; and that's our problem to believe. Can everybody in the world, the bad as well as the good, call God their Father? Or does He bear that relationship only to the righteous?

When you think you've been very good it's easy to pray the Lord's prayer which begins, "Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name ..." and you go on through it, "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us ... , ... and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one ..." (Matt. 6:6ff.).

But when you have made a mess of your life, done wrong, and you know you are condemned as a selfish sinner, and as an "unprofitable servant," and you deserve to be "cast ... into the outer darkness" (25:30), can you pray the Lord's prayer? Can you say "My Father who is in heaven ..."?

That is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came from heaven to teach us to say: He came as the "friend of ... sinners" (11:19), and He invites "all" of us to "come to [Him]" and find the relief which is salvation from ourselves (11:28-30).

There is a cosmic Enemy who would deter us from coming and from praying the Lord's prayer. Perhaps you are sitting somewhere in prison, you know why; you even sense the condemnation of all humanity. You know "they" would "cast [you] into the outer darkness" and hope you stay there forever. Now you face the greatest battle of your life, your battle of eternity. Will you believe that the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is your Father, that "out of the depths [you] have cried to [Him], O Lord. ... If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You" (Psalm 130:1-4). Yes; and it's your job (and our job) to believe it!

Pray the Lord's prayer from your heart, and that will prove that you have been adopted as a child of God. Read Rom. 8:15!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 12, 2006.
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