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FATHERCARE (CLICK YOUR BROWSERS
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The Bible is God’s divine textbook on relationships. It teaches about the most important relationship of all, man’s relationship to God as Father. It was this Father/child relationship that made Adam’s connection with God so special and unusual. It was the loss of this relationship at the Fall that made man’s life so incomplete. What man lost at the Fall—the Father/child relationship—God promised to restore. The Bible teaches that all Jesus did and all that He said was so we could know God as our Father. Restoring the Father/child relationship was so important to God that He stepped out of heaven in the Person of Jesus Christ to make this happen. At the same time, Satan has made every effort to block and confuse the process of restoring the Father/child relationship (2 Corinthians 4:4). For a child of God to know God as Father brings that child into such intimacy (closeness) with God, producing such worship of God and service for God, that the whole power structure of the evil one is in danger. Because of Satan’s deception, most Christians have either a wrong or at the very least an incomplete idea of God as Father. Not knowing who God is as Father causes most of a Christian’s emotional and spiritual problems. Studying how Christ showed us the Father can change our life. It brings us into a close intimate relationship with God as our Father that we have not experienced before. Christ’s chief purpose in coming to this sin-ridden planet was to show us God as Father, so that we might enjoy that Father/child relationship that God and Adam once shared. It is important for the Christian to know God as Father for his emotional and spiritual well being. A person cannot and will not trust a stranger. If God as Father is a stranger to us, for whatever reason, we cannot and will not trust Him (Psalm 9:10). If we don’t trust Him, we will doubt Him. Our doubts about God will make it difficult for us to trust Him. We will have great emotional and spiritual stress (James 1:6). I have never counseled someone who was suffering from emotional stress and confusion who had a good, Biblical understanding of God as Father. What is a true father? William Barclay writes: “Fatherhood describes an intimate, loving, continuous [never ending] relationship in which father and child grow closer to each other every day.” This fatherhood describes God’s relationship to us. A true father, a perfect father, a caring father is one who has the ability and desire to meet his children’s deepest needs. However, we usually do not experience God as this kind of Father because we have developed our understanding of His fatherhood from our experiences with our earthly fathers (and other authority figures). Unfortunately, we developed incorrect ideas of a true father, because there is no wholly perfect human father who can provide a role model for us. What a refreshing and wonderful difference to realize that God is our Father and that He is never absent but always available to us every moment of every day! Our heavenly Father is a true father, a perfect father, a caring father who has the ability and desire to meet our deepest needs. What are our deepest needs? Let’s look at six of them: The Need to Worship Most people would probably not list worship as one of their deeply felt needs, but it is man’s most vital need because man was created for worship and to worship. Worship is giving worth to someone or something. Man was not designed to live independently from God but to depend totally upon God. In order to live life as it was meant to be lived, man must acknowledge to God His infinite, total worth: His “first-place-ness.” Man must worship. Without right worship, we do not have God in His rightful place and, therefore, everything else in life is totally out of place. Right worship is acknowledging to God His worth and worthiness. Worship and intimacy are related. Only through right worship can we come to know God and experience His love and care. When we are reborn, His Spirit lives in us and He gives us the ability to worship Him correctly. We can place Him in His rightful position and honor Him. We can return to our deep dependence upon Christ in every aspect of our lives and be in an intimate, right relationship with our Father. We need to understand that true worth -- a true understanding of who we really are -- can come only through worship that is based on a true understanding of who God really is, the One of supreme worth. The Need to Be Loved and to Belong To be loved is a very basic, deeply felt need in all of our lives. We crave love, but not a conditional love based on what we have or on what we are able to do. We crave an unconditional love based on who we are. Our ability to love and be loved is directly related to our knowledge of God as our Father. The Bible explains it best: “We love, because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 God’s love for us is always based on who He is -- His holy and unchanging character. God’s love always gives unselfishly what is needed. His love is not limited to an eternal decision to do us good. He also has chosen to emotionally delight in who we are as His children. Belonging to God allows us to fulfill the flip side of this need, that of belonging to others. In Genesis 2, God said that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. The word “alone” in the Hebrew means, “to be isolated.” If we are rightly related to God, enjoying the intimacy of right worship, then He brings other people into our lives to fulfill the need for belonging. How? He does this through the Church -- a family of like-minded people, born of His Spirit, enjoying oneness in His Spirit, and learning to care for one another. Here is where our need to belong can be and should be met. The Need for Well-Being Our Lord made it quite clear in Matthew 6 that a sense of well being does not come through what we have or what we can get, it comes from who our Father is! Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? . . . Do not be anxious, then, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “With what shall we clothe ourselves?” For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:25-26, 31-33). Our Father promises to meet all of our needs. As we relate to our Father, He opens our eyes to see His abundant provision, to see that our well-being is a need He eagerly desires to fulfill. The Need to Feel Secure A father is one who provides security. God our Father guarantees personal security. This personal sense of security is shown and strengthened by the term “Abba Father” in the Bible (Mark 14:36; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). The word “Abba” is an Aramaic word that is the first word a little baby calls its father. Our modern-day counterpart is “DA DA,” and the best translation of the word “Abba” is “daddy.” God is our “Daddy”!! When we know God as our Abba Father, then we have that deep sense of personal security and safety. No matter what we face, the barriers that lie in our paths, or the struggles in our lives, our Father is there! He will never leave us nor give up on us (Hebrews 13:5)! The Need for Approval and Worth Approval comes in many forms, and we all desire it. Everyone desperately seeks parental approval, and the lack of it creates real problems. The drive for approval is so strong that people will neglect their families, their health, and all they have to gain approval. Why is having worth so important to us? Because we want deeply to “be somebody,” to stand apart from the crowd, to leave a permanent mark on history, and to stand approved before men. What gives us worth? We tend to base our worth upon performance, on what we achieve, what we have and what other people think of us. Notice that this sense of worth is based only on outward factors, not on inward ones. How do we, as Christians, gain a sense of God’s approval and worth? Is it through performance or achievement? Is it doing, is it having, or is it through some other means? Obviously, it is through God’s means and not through man’s efforts. The Bible tells us that God gives His approval unconditionally in Christ (Colossians 1:22)! Our Father is far more concerned with who we are than with what we do. In other words, approval and worth is related to BEING, not doing. Real, lasting approval comes from a relationship with the Father that assures us we are His children. God created man to be loved, accepted, approved, and understood unconditionally. In each one of us there is a need to be received unconditionally. However, we are born into a world system that receives no one unconditionally, but only conditionally based on what a person is able to do, achieve, or have. Every person born into this world discovers that while they desire to be received unconditionally, the world denies us this need. This produces enormous stress, especially in light of the tremendous drive that we all have for approval. At the Fall, man’s concept of God was shattered and replaced with a distorted mindset. Man then had no absolute basis of worth, so his own identity was shattered. Because man had no basis of unconditional worth, he had to make up for it by adopting a system of self-imposed standards, which would allow him to gain conditionally what was denied him unconditionally. He tried to gain approval and worth through his performance rather than in what God says about him, which was God’s original plan before sin entered the picture. Therefore, when we don’t consider ourselves worthy enough to receive anything unconditionally we try harder to be better and do more to make ourselves worthy of approval. However, we can never do enough, achieve enough, or have enough to satisfy our longing for approval and acceptance. The good news is that our Father, who created us to be received unconditionally, does receive us unconditionally. His approval is given on the basis of who He has made us to be in Christ, not on the basis of what we do. He loves us, accepts us, and He approves of us as His children. The Need for Acceptance Approval and acceptance are very closely related. If we feel approved, we will feel accepted. Unfortunately, many Christians do not feel approved or accepted by God. We have mistakenly believed that God does not love us, but that He only loves Christ in us. We have reasoned that because of sin, there is no good thing in us. Therefore, God in His holiness, can only look at us through “rose-colored glasses” -- the rose-colored glasses being the blood of the Lord Jesus. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that God not only loves the Christ in us, but He loves us!!! He accepts us unconditionally because of what Christ did on the cross. Since we are acceptable to God, His Spirit lives in us and makes us righteous. God, our Father, accepts us with all our problems, with all our sins, with all our weaknesses, as a person, unconditionally. Relationship As we have already shown, a father has children and meets the needs of those children. Another crucial part of fatherhood is that of relationship, a relationship involving three factors: a constant relationship, a growing relationship and an intimate relationship. A true father/child relationship is always a continuing relationship. We see this in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). None of the son’s attitudes or actions affected the relationship of the father to the son. The parable teaches that nothing can affect the consistency of our Father’s relationship with us. This is important because every child needs a parent that remains unchangeable even though the child is changing. As a parent, we are not to respond in kind to our children’s bad or immature behavior. We are to be steadfast and unchanging in our love. Unfortunately, we fall short of this, but our Father in heaven does not! (It is important to remember that although nothing affects God’s relationship to us, sin in our lives can and will affect the way we relate to Him.) Although the love of our earthly parents falters at times, the love of our heavenly Father is constant. If we are faithless, He is faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). If we are impossible, He is kind. If we are angry with Him, He is patient. We desperately need the security of a Father whose love, kindness, acceptance, and approval are constant and not subject to the whims of changing emotions. We have that kind of Father! Not only is our relationship with our heavenly Father a constant one, it must be a growing one -- one that grows deeper every day. There is one relationship that we have with our children as babies and quite another as they enter into their teen years and then adulthood. Although our Father’s relationship with us depends completely on Him, the growth of that relationship depends a great deal on us. God our Father initiated our relationship with Him and now sustains it but this requires a faith response from us. We are each as close to God as we desire to be. If we seek to know Him, He will reveal Himself to us. Intimacy (emotional closeness) develops from a growing relationship with our Father. This intimacy with the Father is not a luxury but a necessity for our well being. The more we see our heavenly Father for who He really is, the more our love for Him deepens and the more we become like Him. This positive cycle transforms us into Christlikeness. The Bible calls God’s part of the relationship “grace” and our part “faith.” Faith is the human response to our Father’s love. As we grow in awareness of His grace, we grow in our experience of His love, care and peace as our Father. Who then is a father? One who begets children, who raises and cares for them, who meets their needs, and who desires a constant, growing, intimate relationship with them. A father is one who loves his children dearly and who tenderly watches over them, cares for them, understands them, talks with them, listens to them, and is very concerned for them. This is our heavenly Father. How are we to grow in relationship with the Father, who is Spirit (John 4:24), when we as flesh and blood, can’t identify with a Spirit? The Father revealed Himself as flesh and blood in His Son Jesus. Jesus said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” We can know God as Father through Jesus Christ who reveals Him. By looking at Jesus in the Gospels, we can see our Father’s caring response to sinners, the brokenhearted, the sick and the religious. We can know His sacrificial love as we witness Jesus’ agonizing death on the cross. His forgiving heart is wonderfully revealed by Jesus’ final words, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). There is nothing more satisfying than personally knowing God as Father. By studying the life of Christ, we can see in detail the Father at work here on earth. In Jesus we can see all the characteristics of our perfect Father. It is in Jesus’ loving that we see a loving Father. It is in Jesus’ caring that we see a caring Father. It is in Jesus’ approving that we experience a Father’s approval. It is in Jesus’ kindness that we see a kind Father. It is in Jesus’ gentleness that we see a gentle Father. It is in Jesus’ acceptance that we feel a Father’s acceptance. It is through a patient Jesus that we see a patient Father. It is in Jesus that our knowledge of our heavenly Father can be complete. The following exercises will help you determine where your understanding of God as Father needs strengthening. Answer honestly based on what you feel or have experienced in your relationship with God. Do not answer based on your knowledge of the truth. Take time to study the qualities of God as Father.
FATHERCARE EXERCISE Do you see your Heavenly Father as One who is:
2. Psalm 103 lists many character qualities of our Heavenly Father. With each quality, provide the corresponding verse. Next, rate yourself as to how real this character quality is to you in your relationship with God.
A rating of 1 to 6 probably indicates a wrong understanding of God as Father. Put a check beside the character qualities that you scored lower than 7. These are the character qualities that need to be strengthened in your understanding of God as Father. Now put a check mark next to these qualities on the next page. Begin renewing your mind about who your Father is by meditating on the verses provided. Write down any wrong thoughts you have had about God and begin replacing these thoughts with the true statements. Spend time talking to God and making a deliberate choice to put off the wrong thoughts whenever you are aware of them.
© 1999, Scope Ministries International, Inc.
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