Grab our RSS feedThe Heart of The Father
Yesterday was a top seven day in my life. Or, to use the golf scoring system, it was a top-three day! The order goes like this:
- Conversion, March 1996.
- Marriage to the love of my life, July 1999.
- A five-way tie: The birth of each of my children, March '01, October '02, September '04, May '06, and yesterday.
- A trillion other undeserved blessings (Church, Christian growth, family, friends, Providentially ordered pain, Mountain Dew, good books, snowboarding, good conversations, shoes, breathing, et cetera).
The reason I'm publicly gloating over our daughter's birth :) is mainly because of the rumbling emotion of fatherly love I feel in my heart, and the realization that two of my top-three "all timers" are inextricably connected.
Number's one and three on my "all-time greatest" list conspire together for heightened joy in obvious and glorious ways.
- I'm a father (#3) and I love my children.
- God is The Ultimate Father (#1) and He loves His children.
Fatherly love is a good thing, and it began with The Everlasting Father. A dad's love for his children should be a mirror of God's love for His children.
The prayer of the believing parent is something in the vein of, "Please help me to so love my children that they will be able to relate easily to the love of God."
The longer I live, and the more I feel the love of a father's heart, the more I begin to begin to get a grasp of the great love of God for His people. On that discovery, even the most acquainted are just getting started, really.
This much I know. I've never not felt love for my children (And even the double-negative can't hit the heart of what a true father feels). Even in my moments of serious anger toward my children in times of sin (mine, or theirs, or both), even that anger is laced with unaltered, and undiluted, love (Although I'm not so sure they'd always describe it that way :).
The Bible says for us what we all want to have said over us. "You are loved!" Nothing "in all creation" can separate from the love of God The Father, those who are "in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
For those who are fathers, or those who have been fathered (that's all of us!), consider the amazing descriptions of God's love for His children in the Scriptures. More, give yourself to Him without reservation by believing in His Son, Jesus Christ the risen Lord, and confessing His Lordship over your life to the church.
Through faith in Jesus Who died for us, and rose to forgive and save us, we become children of God!
- 1 John 3:1 - "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God."
Jesus presses the theme of God's "Fatherhood" to all who are Christians in His most extensive sermon in Scripture!
- Matthew 6:4 - "...then, your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
- Matthew 6:6 - "...then, your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
- Matthew 6:9 - "Pray then in this way, 'Our Father..."
- Matthew 6:18 - "...then, your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
- Matthew 6:26 - "...and your Heavenly Father feeds them."
- Matthew 6:32 - "For these things the pagans seek, and your Father knows that you need all these things."
- Matthew 7:11 - "...how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?"
In the same sermon, Jesus emphasizes that the Father of Christians is none other than His own Father, a theme Paul picks up on in Ephesians chapter one
- Matthew 7:21 - "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven."
- Ephesians 1:2 - "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
- Ephesians 1:3 - "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ..."
- Ephesians 1:17 - "That the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory..."
Paul builds a large portion of "The Great Eight" on the foundation that Christians are "children of God"
- Romans 8:15 - "...for you have received the spirit of adoption, as sons, by Whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father!'"
- Romans 8:16 - "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."
- Romans 8:21 - "...the creation itself will be set free from its corruption to slavery into the freedom of the glory of the children of God."
- Romans 8:23 - "...even we ourselves, groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons..."
- Romans 8:29 - "...He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.
Since God is not only Jesus' Father, but also The Father of all Christians, and has nothing in His heart but love for us, how shall we respond?
- Ephesians 5:1 - "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children."
Filed under Jesus