In the Sermon in the Mount Jesus gave his listeners an example of how to pray, and today this prayer is probably the most known one in the world: The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4). However, in his time, this prayer was unusual, and that has to do with the very first words: “Our father in Heaven.”

Jesus addressed God more than 200 times in the New Testament as his father, in Aramaic, the spoken language back then, the word is abba, like our daddy. It is the way a little child looks up to his father in love and adoration.

As Christians we believe that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God and thus, why would he not call God his father. However, in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus tells us to do the same.

One quality of the father that Christ refers to is His compassion. In the Parable of the Lost Son (or Prodigal Son) in Luke 15:11—32, the father just has compassion with the son. He welcomes him back without any requirements, while the son had doubts whether he was even worthy to be his father’s hired hand.

After all he had himself cut off. However, while the son may have left the father, the father never left the son but kept the relationship alive from his side.

It is a special relationship we have with the Father in Heaven. He actually adopted us into childhood. In Ephesians 1:5 (RSV) we read: “He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.”

Natural fatherhood can come in many forms. Some of us may have had ambivalent experiences with our earthly father. Not every father is a great father, or perhaps even wanted to become a father. While often it is the result of a deep love with the partner and with a plan to have children, at times children may come unplanned.

Adoption is different. Adoption is a planned action, not by accident or coincidence. Adoptive parents are actively looking for a child. It is important to them while they are well aware what responsibility and commitment this will be.

So when God adopts us to become his children, he does not expect us to pay anything, but he is “paying”. In our baptism we receive his name: we become Christians, part of the family. This happens not because we deserved it, or did anything for it. It happens just because of God’s grace. His invitation is like open arms that receive us.

In the Parable of the Lost Son the lost son had broken with his family, had left home and thought he could take care of himself. He was full of rebellion.

He used the inheritance that he had requested when he left to have a great life. However, when a famine came and things became expensive, he ran out of money, and soon ran out of friends.

In his misery, he took a job of herding pigs, an animal that for Jews was dirty. At the lowest point in his life he remembered his father’s house, where even the servants were treated better than he was in this foreign place.

He thought about going back, however, he did not even consider to be a son again. He had spoilt this relationship in his eyes. All he could hope for was to work for his father, after all he had cut off himself from the family.

The father though welcomed him back. The father gave him new cloth, a ring and a feast in his honour. When I feel down and unworthy of God’s love, I remember this story.

I try to imagine that I have a father in Heaven who is waiting for me daily to come back to him, to let him embrace me. I imagine his wide open arms, the smile on his face and the tears in his eyes.

Abba, dear Father, here I come. In God I find my salvation, but not only that, I also find a new relationship. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) states: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

Max Lucado, author and pastor, puts it in his book, The Great House of God, this way: “When we come to Christ, God not only forgives us, he also adopts us. Through a dramatic series of events, we go from condemned orphans with no hope to adopted children with no fear.

“Here is how it happens. You come before the judgment seat of God full of rebellion and mistakes. Because of his justice he cannot dismiss your sin, but because of his love he cannot dismiss you.

“So, in an act which stunned the heavens, he punished himself on the Cross for your sins.” Just as Romans 8:15-16 (NIV) says: “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

And a few verses on in Romans 8:38-39 Paul writes: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That is the hope we have: “Our Father in Heaven” will never turn us away. No matter what we do, no matter what happens to us, no matter whether we fail or succeed, no matter what others may think or say about us, we have this loving relationship with the father.

His door is wide open. Nothing can separate us from that love. That is his promise to you. What a gift. It frees us not only from our past, but frees us to change our future, to pass this love on.

• Karsten Decker was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary United Methodist Church in Smith’s