The Papa Prayer | Larry Crabb

Larry Crabb. The Papa Prayer: The Prayer You’ve Never Prayed. Thomas Nelson, 2006. 224 pp.

My father always called his father Papa. He lost his papa when he was five years old. When he would tell me what he remembered of his papa in the five years he knew him, Dad’s eyes would turn away from me, and he would speak as one happily lost in a better world. It was the same look that came over him when he prayed. I didn’t understand that look until recently.

I never remember my dad referring to his father as “Father” or “Dad” or “Daddy.” It was always “Papa.”

At first, that embarrassed me. It seemed undignified, too sentimental. One of my great regrets that I shall carry to my grave is never getting past that proud silliness and drawing as close to my father, my papa, as I secretly wished I could.

Whatever your background, you and I have this in common: we all wanted, and still want, a papa. We dream of the perfect papa. We yearn for a strong man we can count on to be there for us, to want us, to look after us, to delight in us; someone we want to get close to, a lion of a man who invites us to draw near to him and rest in his powerful but gentle love.

Well, we have one. His name is God. And like the best Papa we can imagine, the sound of his footsteps, if we know who’s coming, inspires exuberant joy, not cowering fear. And when we hear His voice and feel His hug, all is well. We’re safe. Papa is here. What can go wrong?

When we mature enough to want from God what He’s ready to give us, incredible things happen – sometimes around us, always in us. He may use his power to change our circumstances to our liking. He will use his power to change our hearts to His liking.

Down deep, that’s what we want Him to do. He’s taught us that getting close to Him is better than any blessing this world can provide. But there are a few mountains in our hearts blocking the road. We can’t get around them to get to Him. The need to be moved, thrown into the sea.

That’s what He’s promised to do: to clear the road. He’ll remove all those mountains of self-obsession, those peaks of too-strong affections for things, those jagged cliffs of bitterness over the way we’ve been treated. He’ll throw them all into the sea. If we ask Him – if that’s what we want, that’s what He’ll do.

You’re beginning to recognize God as a bewildering yet strangely beckoning blend of intimidating might and compassionate warmth, of terrifying holiness and welcoming grace, of seemingly erratic sensitivity and actually unfailing love.

You’re not sure whether to fall at His feet or dance. But you’re certainly not bored or casual in your prayers, or frivolous in your worship.

You are attending to who Papa really is. You’re painfully humbled by a fresh awareness of how self-obsessed you really are.

But it’s not depressing you; it’s releasing you. Now that you see brokenness as more than woundedness and struggle, now that you’re broken over how far you have to go to become like Jesus, holy desires long buried are rising to the surface.

From deeper places than you knew existed, the desire to love more sacrificially is bubbling up. More than anything else, your new experience of brokenness is releasing a passionate desire to be closer to God. You’re abandoning yourself to holiness. You’re discovering that you want what God most wants to give.

You’re entering a new level of the purging process.

And now you’re talking to God, believing something wonderful is on the way; something is coming that you’ll enjoy receiving as much as He’ll enjoy giving.

You’re coming to Him not to get Him to enter your world and change things to make you happy and give your life meaning and provide you with the blessings you want. You’re not entering His world wanting to bring Him glory, to become a source of joy to your Papa, willing to endure whatever suffering is required to make that happen.

And it’s having surprising results. The more you long to bring Him joy, the more you’re experiencing joy yourself. But it’s a new kind of joy, a settled quietness that has nothing to prove, a solid sense of you self that you know is real only because your relationship with Papa, a different kind of joy that makes all other happiness seem shallow. It’s not there all the time, but its possibility is always there. And you sense it’s always around the corner. So you hang on.

You care more about others than you used to. Your grudges are thinner, your worries less consuming. You’re daring to hope that you’re on course toward your destiny, to becoming God-obsessed, to love Him above every other good, and to love others for His sake and theirs, not yours. Just like Jesus.

You’re approaching God.

There. That’s the Papa prayer so far. But there’s more….

Excerpted from The Papa Prayer by Dr. Larry Crabb, copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Integrity Publishers. Download for personal use only.

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