should I pray to God the father or Jesus?
Or the trinity?
I know some prayers end “in Jesus name, amen” and orthers en “in the name of the father, son, and Holy Ghost/spirit”.
Or does it matter, because the prayer Jesus taught “our father” ends in just amen.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
What is the Trinity?
It is the doctrinal truth that God is revealed and subsists in three distinct persons. This means that the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same God, without dividing the essence. When you pray to the Father, you are also praying to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, because they share the same essence of divinity in perfect unity.
For an example, we read in John 1:1-3 that the Word (Jesus) was with God and was at the same time God, and that all things were made through him, and that nothing that has been made was made without him. But didn't the Father and the Holy Spirit create the world too? This is because they all do the work as one God, rather than three separates. When we speak of the Father creating, we say all things were made by him; of the Son, all things were made through him; of the Spirit. all things were made in him. Their work of creating is indivisible, since they all do it as the same God. They are distinct in their personal properties (beget, begotten, proceeding), but they remain the same divine being in each person.
"God" is a term we frequently use for the Father to distinguish him from the Son, thus why we often call him the "Son of God" than just "God." But at other times, the word "God" is used generically to refer to the whole Godhead. The Father is no less God, the Son is no less God, and the Spirit is no less God. They are one and the same, but distinguished by their personal properties. The Father begets, but himself is not begotten; the Son is begotten, but does not beget; and the Spirit proceeds from them both (let's not debate this one).
So when I use "God," I am referring more to the essence of being rather than a person. The doctrine of the Trinity is that there are three persons of one and the same divine nature. One cannot do something without the other, they are inseparable, yet are personally distinct. When we speak of the Father's will, we also mean the Son's will, and the Spirit's will. They are indivisible. Who spoke in the ears of the prophets? They all did in the unity of their essence, but at the same time through the one person, the Holy Spirit. This is why Jesus said that the Father was in him and he was in the Father, whatever he does as God - the Father is doing as God. They are indivisible. Jesus said that the Father will raise him from the dead, but he says in another place that he will raise himself from the dead, and at another place we read that it was the Holy Spirit that raised him. At first sight this looks like an apparent contradiction, but it isn't. All three persons were active in the work of resurrecting the humanity of Jesus, because they all do it in the same divine essence. They all three have the same divine essence, which we call God. When I pray to the Father, I am equally praying to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. If my prayers are answered, it was answered by all three persons in the unity of essence.
"The Son can do nothing but what he sees the Father doing," remember that saying? He said this about the miracles he was doing. When did the Father do miracles? It is human language to express that the Son is of the Father's essence, sharing the same power and authority with the Father in the works he did in the Spirit. There wasn't really a time Jesus actually sat down and the Father showed him how to perform miracles, this was an analogy of the indivisible essence.
