Jesus Christ did everything to introduce God to us as Father. Over 95 percent of His reference to God, especially when not quoting from the Old Testament is as Father, referring to God as ‘Your Father’ or as ‘My Father’.
It’s not easy to take God as Father. It’s not normal. Everything begets its kind. To be able to accept God as Father, there has to be a radical renewal of the mind to know that the Creator of all things, the Source of all life and the very life Himself, who made beings to sire offsprings can also do the same if He so desires. To be able to comprehend God as Father, we have to come to a place of faith to accept what the Word of God says beyond what we see and feel.
The Fatherhood of God can also be complicated for us when we have experienced and endured abuse from an earthy father. What so many have experienced as being children of a father isn’t how they want to see a loving and responsible God. The aftertaste some have of their earthly fathers isn’t what God is to them, and they prefer not to go there. But God doesn’t learn fatherhood from our fathers here. That’s why, Jesus referred to our fatherhood as evil compared to God. The good thing we can do for our children comes out of the original father instinct we received from God at creation. We aren’t good enough in ourselves to be fathers like God. God is the original Father by whom fatherhood is defined and judged. So, if He wishes to father us beyond what any earthly parent can do for us, we should embrace it and enjoy it to give Him the pleasure He desires.
In some other quarters, some other people have taken over the position of Father in the lives of people, and though they call God father, the relationship they ought to have with him as a father has been taken over by others who impose themselves on them and playing God in their lives. When Jesus Christ said we should call no man on earth father, because we have only one father who is in heaven, He knew that people under different guises would want to take over that position in other people’s lives. He said we shouldn’t permit it. This is simply because they don’t have either the capacity or the integrity of heart to be fathers, they eventually disappoint. But God won’t. He is Father with all the love, all the resources and all the sense of responsibility to father us and make us enjoy all the goodness and the training a father gives his children.
Some others expect nothing from God as Father because the word itself has become so casual to them that it makes no meaning to them. We call many people fathers without us expecting them to be responsible for anything in our lives. Maybe because of certain cultures whereby every older person is called a father out of respect, but because they aren’t related are without any sense of responsibility towards us. In same way, people call God Father just because of His greatness and being in existence long before us. But that’s not how God wants us to take Him as Father. We have been adopted and recreated to have His DNA spiritually, He gave birth to us through our faith in His Word and through the workings of His Holy Spirit. We were made sons and heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus, adopted and recreated into the household of God. It isn’t just an appellation with which we are identified, but a reality that has consequences.
One place where it has consequences is at the place of prayer. When we ask, we aren’t asking like a human being going to a great but evasive God who doesn’t care but would use us to display power and authority, rather we are called to ask as a child asking from his or her father out of all he or she has been given as an inheritance. We seek not as seeking what we may not find, we seek as one looking for what has been kept for us. We knock not as a stranger seeking access into a place where he or she doesn’t have a right to. Rather, we knock as one knocking to enter into the house he or she has been given as an inheritance because we are sons, empowered and authorized by the love of the Father through faith.
Listen to the study here using the link, it will bless you.
Have a great week!
*Jesus Christ is Lord!*
Rev. Evans Adetokunbo Emmanuel is a prolific writer and ordained minister of the gospel. He is the president of Grace Missions International Ministries based in Lagos, Nigeria, an inter-denominational ministry that focuses on ministering to ministers. The ministry holds a bible class every Wednesday (The Bible Class) where topical issues relating to Christianity today are freely discussed in the light of the bible under the auspices of the Holy Spirit. You can access more of his materials at http://evansademanuel.blogspot.com
