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Learning to Confess and Understand Our Father Even in Crisis

Learning to Confess and Understand Our Father Even in Crisis

Last updated on: September 9, 2026 at 1:59 pm by Jeff McLain

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Learning to Confess and Understand Our Father Even in Crisis 2026-09-09T13:59:20-04:00 Jeff McLain

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Understanding and Confessing Our Father Even in Crisis.

This is a singular line that I’ve focused on a lot in my prayers over the past few years. I’ve practiced it at the start of every prayer. Our Father. It continues to captivate me.

Our prayer begins with confessing and understanding God’s character. It’s been a big part of my marriage this week. If I can deconstruct every area of my prayers, then this, I think, would be enough.

My doctoral work has centered on the Lord’s Prayer—reading it in context, reading it for myself, practicing it, living it, and studying its influences. Rediscovering the radical and revolutionary pathway of confession, theological frameworks, priority realignments, and communal connections that make up this inexhaustible prayer. The more I have lived with this prayer, the more I have become convinced that Jesus was giving them a way to see God, themselves, one another, and the world. When Jesus tells us to pray this way, it is not merely an example or a suggestion, but a pattern for all our prayers.

This pattern for prayer starts on the foundations of God’s character that we need to confess and understand as “Our Father.”

That means our prayer begins with confessing and understanding God’s character before it reaches our needs.

Praying Our Father

In this line, we acknowledge the God Jesus called Father, and he teaches us to call him our Father. It is both Jesus’ Father and our Father. Jesus taught this prayer to his disciples, and like all good prayers with a communal nature, it should never be separated from its plural, communal language. We go to the Father through Jesus (Our), and we never pray simply for ourselves but for the plight of all others as we pray “Our Father.”

Learning to pray “Our Father” is more than learning words to recite. It is learning to trust God’s deeply personal, relational, and good nature. It is learning that we approach God not merely as an abstract force, a distant deity, or an impersonal power moving the universe, but rather it is about coming to understand and confess him as Father.

And yet, this line can be hard. Maybe it is the hardest, not the easiest. I think confessing and understanding God’s character in prayer is harder than we think.

For some of us, the word Father carries wounds, disappointments, absence, distance, or distorted images of what fatherhood is supposed to be. To pray this prayer well, we have to remove God as Father from any tainted and distorted images of fatherhood. We have to embrace the unfamiliarity of such a confession. We have to release our need to address God only with language that speaks to reverence without relationship, and allow the teachings of Jesus to show us what our good Father is like.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus makes it clear that Father is ultimately the best way to describe God. God has made himself known. God is not hiding from us. God invites us to call upon him. Count the 17 times Father is mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, and you will begin to grasp what it means to confess and understand God’s character as Father.

This confession of God as Father becomes the foundation for every line and petition that follows. We ask for his kingdom because we trust our Father. We ask for daily bread because we trust our Father. We ask for forgiveness because we trust our Father. We ask for deliverance because we trust our Father. The prayer begins with God’s character before it reaches our needs.

A Labor Day Reflection

I reflected on this line a lot when my wife was in the hospital recently. I had to keep confessing “Our Father” as we faced many unknowns. I have to trust that our Father has her best interests at heart, just as my wife’s father does. I especially wrestled with and reflected on this understanding and confession on Labor Day.

Culture tells me to work for the weekend, and after a busy season, I finally had a three-day weekend to recharge and experience recreation. Instead, I found myself sitting at home, wrestling with a strange mixture of emotions. Part of me feels like I should be doing something else. I should be enjoying the holiday. I should be outside with my family. I should be making plans. I should be working on something. I should be doing anything other than sitting around thinking about hospitals, CT scans, injuries, recovery, and what happens next. Instead, I spend the day next to my wife as she rests in recovery at home.

And then there is another part of me that feels guilty for even thinking that way. Katie is the one who fell. Katie is the one recovering from a traumatic brain injury. Katie is the one whose ordinary life was interrupted in seconds. So who am I to feel frustrated, restless, tired, disappointed, or even a little angry about any of this? Emotions emerge before we can confess them or understand them, and they don’t always wait for us to decide whether they are fair.

A little over a week ago, our lives changed in seconds.

On Thursday, August 27, Katie was at work at Wawa when she had a seizure and fell. Katie has lived with epilepsy since 2011, but this seizure was different. The fall resulted in a traumatic brain injury, a skull and temporal-bone fracture, damage around her ear, and several other injuries.

And then began a week none of us expected.

The first days were frightening. Katie spent four days in the hospital. There were CT scans, neurological checks, an EEG, blood work, consultations, and a lot of waiting for answers.

For much of those first 24 hours, Katie was exhausted and confused. Communicating was difficult. Then, gradually, she began coming back to herself.

After a few days, we got to go home, and we hoped that meant things were finally settling down. It didn’t quite work that way. However, on Monday, Katie had to return to the ER because of problems with her injured ear and a headache. She spent another night in the hospital. Another CT showed worsening swelling.

Then, back home for a day, Katie began noticing something different with the right side of her face. Her smile looked different. She was having difficulty keeping liquids from escaping the right side of her mouth. Her eyelid was acting strangely and swelling slightly.

After discussing her symptoms, they told us to bring her back to the ER because they wanted to rule out a stroke.

After CT Scans and MRIs, we learned she had facial nerve weakness—a Bell’s palsy-like problem potentially related to the injury. The facial nerve runs through the temporal bone, right in the neighborhood of the fracture.

And that pretty much summarizes this entire week: one step forward, another question; another test, another waiting room; another answer, then another question.

Katie has been exhausted. Really exhausted. She has spent much of the week sleeping or resting. She’s frustrated because she doesn’t feel like herself. Her independence has been interrupted. Her work has been interrupted. Her plans have been interrupted. And none of us knows exactly how long this recovery will take.

There have been moments this week when I’ve been scared. There have also been moments when I’ve been incredibly grateful. Grateful that Katie survived the fall. Grateful that the bleeding has remained stable. Grateful that she hasn’t needed brain surgery. Grateful that she keeps getting a little more of herself back. Grateful for the doctors and nurses who have cared for her. Grateful for our kids, who have been watching and helping. Especially grateful for friends who have brought meals, given gift cards, prayed, checked in, and helped carry some of the weight. And grateful for the people who have quietly stepped in financially because they know Katie won’t be able to work for a while, and we don’t yet know what that will mean for our family. There were times when I saw our Father at work! We’ve received gifts, cards, flowers, Meal Trains, and a GoFundMe. God has been providing for his children through his children. His presence felt close.

At the same time, I’ve spent a lot of time this week wanting answers. Fast decisions on FMLA. Clearer answers from doctors. Disability answers. I don’t have answers to most of those questions.

On Holidays, we are used to making plans, but I was reminded of how quickly plans can disappear.

In confessing our Father, I am learning to trust that his character is good and that he has this in his hands. We’re trying to take this one day at a time. Trusting that God has it in a fatherly way. Not because we have everything figured out. We’re simply learning again what it means to trust God as Father, especially when the road ahead isn’t clear.

Praying Our Father in Difficulty

To pray our Father in these difficult moments is hard. However, it is foundational. It can never be far from our understanding and confession of who God is. That is one reason Jesus begins the prayer where he does. Our Father.

The God we are invited to trust is not unknown. This God is Father. This God is fatherly good. He is near like a dad. Like a dad, he invites us to come to him. But this God is also in the heavens.

Jesus uses plural language: “the heavens.” There is something important in that. God is not merely another presence alongside us, another person caught up in the same circumstances we are. He is Father, but he is also the God of the heavens. God is near to us without being limited by what limits us. God sees what I cannot see. God knows what I do not know. God is not trapped inside the circumstances that currently feel so consuming to me. This is all that it means to confess and understand that God is fatherly and in the heavens.

Our Father is near, but he is not small. He is personal, but he is not manageable. He is intimate, but he is not confined to my understanding.

The ER is not the whole story. What I can see right now is not all there is. Who can? Our Father, who is in the heavens. I can trust our Father because he sees from heaven.

That also means that as a heavenly Father, I can bring him the questions I cannot answer. I can bring him the uncertainty. I can bring him, Katie. I can bring him our girls. I can bring him our family, our church, our work, our future, and all the things I keep trying to hold together myself.

I can do this, because I am learning he is a good Father. Our prayers start with “Our Father,” so that we can confess and understand exactly who has us. For this reason, our prayers must begin with relationship, including transparency, trust, and tension. It begins by remembering who God is before we begin telling him what we need.

It also reminds us where he is and how different God is from us.

God is Father; this is something I must confess and understand, even here and now.

Prayer is Not Wants and Needs

I am learning again that prayer is not primarily about getting God to give me answers. Jesus tells us God already knows what we need. Prayer is not then all about needs and wants. Prayer certainly involves our wants and needs, but it does not revolve around them. Prayer is about becoming the kind of person who can trust God even when I don’t have what I want. Prayer changes the one who prays.

Every day is a classroom of learning to understand, confess, and trust “Our Father.”

Sometimes the classroom is a hospital room. Sometimes the lesson is learned in an ER. Sometimes spiritual formation looks like sitting in a waiting room for hours without knowing what the next scan will show. Sometimes following Jesus means praying the same simple words again and again because you have nothing else to say.

The Invitation of Our Father

The invitation of “Our Father” is not an invitation to pretend. It invites us to bring our whole selves to God. Fear, frustration, gratitude, questions, disappointment, and hope all have a place in prayer.

Maybe that is part of what makes the prayer so formative. Jesus doesn’t teach us to wait until we have ourselves together before we come to the Father. He teaches us to come as we are and to begin by remembering who God is.

Our Father. Who is in the heavens. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know how long Katie’s recovery will take. I don’t know what the next appointment will tell us. I don’t know what this will mean for our family in the weeks and months ahead.

But I know where to begin. Our Father. And for now, that is enough. Life is a classroom that teaches us that our prayer begins with confessing and understanding God’s character before it reaches our needs.

I encourage you to spend extra time this week with this line. Our Father. There is no better way to confess and understand the one who holds the universe and all within it.

Closing Thoughts

Katie is still here, still recovering, and still very much in need of prayer. Please keep praying for her healing, especially for her ear and facial nerve. Pray for wisdom for the doctors as they continue to help us understand what comes next. Pray for her epilepsy as well—the epilepsy that started this whole chain of events remains uncontrolled, and we still don’t have all the answers.

Please pray for our girls as they navigate all of this, and pray for me, too, as I try to care for Katie, our family, and everything else in the middle of an uncertain season.

We have already been cared for so generously. Friends have brought meals through a Meal Train, checked in, prayed, encouraged us, and helped carry some of the practical and financial weight through our GoFundMe. If you are in a place to help, we welcome your help. We are deeply grateful. As hospital bills and Katie’s inability to work right now face us, we know the road ahead will not be easy.

And if you’ve already helped, thank you.

For now, pray Our Father. Over and over again, until it sticks. Then pray it some more.

Taken a week or so before Katie's accident.

Taken a week or so before Katie’s accident.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

What are you trusting God with right now that you can’t control?
When life gets uncertain, what Scripture, prayer, or practice helps you remember who God is?
Why is “Our Father” hard for you to pray?

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About Jeff McLain

Jeff McLain is a Doctor of Ministry Student on the Lord’s Prayer at Kairos University, Director of Pastoral Ministries at Water Street Mission, and a pastor at River Corner Church. Mobilized by 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, Jeff blogs about recovering a rooted Christian way of life through the Lord’s Prayer, ancient habits, leading a quiet life, and simple Jesus communities. You can read more about the author here.

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