Tag Archives: the Father

A FATHERLESS GENERATION

Christian Life, , ,

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him (Psa. 103:13)

I wonder how true this metaphor is in today’s world. Not only do we live in a fatherless world where many men beget children but take no responsibility for them, but where many children suffer at the hands of fatherless fathers who don’t know how to be good fathers to their sons and daughters.

God made fathers to represent Him to their children until they are old enough to understand who God is. The sad thing is that people often reject God because their dads put them off Him. Instead of believing in Him as a compassionate Father, they only see Him through the lens of their own fathers’ failures. They turn away from Him and try to fill the void with people and things that can never take His place.

Louie Giglio said that God is a not a “blown up” version of our earthly fathers. He is not like us as all – at least not like us after Adam sinned and became independent from Him. He created us to be like Him but we chose to go our own way and messed up His plan.

To get past our dads’ failures to know God as a compassionate Father, we must first acknowledge that our fathers are or were as imperfect as we are. How do we deal with their human frailties? We forgive. We don’t have to make excuses for them or for what they did or failed to do. We cancel their debt because God has cancelled ours.

We must let it all go for two reasons. Firstly, we forgive because Jesus paid their debt as well as ours and forgives all sin – theirs and ours. Secondly, God wants us to be merciful to others because He has been merciful to us. How can we hold unforgiveness in our hearts when He has been kind to us? The debt our fathers owe us is small compared with the unpayable debt we owed God.

When we have dealt with the baggage of our father’s debt that we have carried around in our hearts, we will recognise the Father’s love and compassion for us first of all in Jesus, His Son and then in the many “kisses” He gives us every day.

Just imagine how wonderful it will be when you are no longer angry with your father. You’ll be able to enjoy your heavenly Father’s love and favour to the full because He is the perfect Abba and He loves you with perfect love.

Stumped

Christian Life, , , ,

STUMPED

“One time, when Jesus went for a Sabbath meal with one of the top leaders of the Pharisees, all the guests had their eyes on Him, watching His every move. Right before Him there was a man hugely swollen in his joints. So Jesus asked the religion scholars, ‘Is it permitted to heal on the Sabbath? Yes or no?’

They were silent . So He took the man, healed him, and sent him on his way. Then He said, ‘Is there anyone here who, if a child or animal fell down a well, wouldn’t rush to pull him out immediately, not asking whether or not it was the Sabbath.’ They were stumped. There was nothing they could say to that.” Luke 14:1-5 (The Message).

How often did this scene not repeat itself and how often did Jesus not have to say the same thing and yet the same criticism was levelled against Him time after time. ‘Sabbath-breaker!’ What was wrong with the people that it was so difficult for them to understand the simple message of Jesus? He spoke it and lived it for three years and they still didn’t get it.

So what is this message that we have failed to grasp for the past two thousand years and are still not getting in spite of Jesus’ glaring example? It’s about mercy and compassion, not religion! Every time I encounter the ritualistic mumbo-jumbo that is done in the name of Jesus, I ask myself the question, “Is this why Jesus came?”

We have even managed to turn the work of the gentle Holy Spirit into a ritual. We lay hands on people and they have to babble or fall down, otherwise the Holy Spirit has not touched them! Is that really what we glean from God’s Word? How it must grieve the heart of Jesus that His church has wandered so far from His example and mandate.

The Pharisees were so stuck in their notion of God that not even the Son of God Himself could shift them from the beliefs and traditions that overruled their own Scriptures. They were so blinded by their arrogant pride and self-centred performance that they were unmoved in the presence of God Himself.

Strange that the ones who claimed to know God, never experienced Him right there and yet, people like Matthew and Zaccheus, greedy and wicked men, were transformed after one encounter with Him. And what of adulteresses, prostitutes, thieves, irreligious and thoroughly bad people? They melted in the presence of His holiness and were drawn to Him like moths to a candle.

When we meet in His name, what is the purpose of our gathering together? Is it to perpetuate our beliefs, traditions and practices or is it to have an encounter with Him that heals our ‘swollen joints’ and releases us from our pain and imprisonment? Jesus did not come to start another useless religion. There are enough of those already. He came to show us the compassionate heart of the Father and to release us from the bondage of Satan’s deception into the freedom of the sons of God.

Jesus is about taking us to the Father and introducing us to Him as “gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). He is about reconnecting us to the Father and to one another so that we can experience our true humanity in unity with our Creator and His creation.

How does our futile religious gobbledegook contribute to His purpose? What does eating this and not eating that, or doing this and not doing that, do to help us do life together with one another and with God? Does keeping laws do anything to rescue a child or an animal that has fallen down the well on the Sabbath?

You decide…