Tag Archives: Father

The Father’s Face

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THE FATHER’S FACE 

“‘Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.'” John 16:25-28 NIV.

Slowly, gradually, little by little, Jesus was acclimatising His disciples to the truth that, just as He had an intimate relationship with the Father, so they were moving towards the same close fellowship with God as His beloved sons. This was a foreign idea to them because they were nurtured in the misguided religious notion of a strict God who gave them rules to keep and who came down hard on them when they stepped out of line.

Jesus was passing on the legacy of sonship to them; exactly the same status and relationship that He had with the Father was theirs because they loved and believed in Him and acknowledged that He had been sent from and by the Father. His primary mission was to show them the heart of the Father so that they could enjoy the same bond with the Father as He had.

This is a truth that many so-called believers have not grasped. The world is an orphanage and not even the church, to a large extent, has realised and embraced the truth that we are God’s beloved sons and daughters. We are not only a fatherless world and an orphan generation but also a fatherless church which, like the elder brother of the lost son, is still trying to impress God by our performance rather than live in the freedom of the Father’s love in the Father’s house.

How difficult it is for us to grasp that we share the same status as Jesus in the sight of God! The same love that Father has for Jesus is His love for us because we have been placed in His family as Jesus’ brothers and sisters.

“In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” Hebrews 2:10, 11 NIV.

Who better to reveal the Father than the one who shares His nature and who existed with Him before He entered the world? Although it was difficult for the disciples to grasp, in the beginning, what Jesus had told them, over and over, about Himself — who He was and where He came from — eventually, after being with Him for three and a half years, listening to Him and watching Him in action, they began to realise that He was no ordinary human being but the one He said He was, the Son of God who came from the Father.

The enemy has launched a relentless campaign against fathers and children; free sex has led to single mothers trying to raise children without fathers; child abuse has alienated fathers and children and bred suspicion in the hearts of children towards men in general and fathers in particular. Divorce has ripped families apart, breaking hearts, driving fathers from their children, leaving them abandoned, defenceless and without security and identity — angry children venting their anger on the world.

The ministry of the second Elijah, John the Baptist, was to reconcile fathers and children, or else the world would be destroyed; and the world is now living out the destruction cause by its orphan status.

“See, I will send the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” Malachi 4:5, 6 NIV.

The only true Father who can bring us back to sanity in His love is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who was sent to reconcile the world to Himself and rescue us from our insecurity and abandonment so that He can take us back to the Father.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it does not know Him.” 1 John 3:1 NIV.

“The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself testifies that we are God’s children.” Romans 8:15, 16 NIV.

The Testimony Within

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THE TESTIMONY WITHIN 

“‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will sent to you from the Father — the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father — He will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.'” John 15:26-27 NIV.

The Holy Spirit, beautiful, gentle, powerful, mysterious, third Person of the Trinity, How was Jesus to explain Him to His disciples?

He would gently lead them into a new realm that they could only know and understand by experience. Although the Holy Spirit has many titles and functions, Jesus chose to call Him the Spirit of truth because truth is what sums up everything that He is and does.

He is not the Spirit of spiritual “goose bumps” or the Spirit of spiritual gifts or even the Spirit of out-of-this-world experiences like being “slain” in the Spirit or being sprinkled with gold dust or travelling “in the Spirit” to other realms. He is the Spirit of truth.

Truth, above everything else, characterises the three-in-one God who calls human beings to worship Him “in spirit and in truth”. Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’ not because he wanted to know but because he cynically dismissed truth as too mysterious and elusive to know. But the Bible gives us the answer — God is truth. Everything He is, says and does is the truth and truth is the essence of who He is in His three-in-one being.

Jesus often began an important teaching with the declaration, ‘I tell you the truth…!’ Not because everything else He said was not true but because of the importance of the truth He was about to communicate.

The Holy Spirit’s primary role and the one for which He was sent to indwell believers is to reveal Jesus to the inner being so that His followers can be true witnesses to who He is. It was impossible, at that stage, for the disciples to know everything there was to know about their Messiah. Their minds were still closed to many things, their understanding darkened by prejudice, religion and often stubborn resistance to the truth.

It would take the powerful witness of the Holy Spirit within them to awaken a new perception of their Messiah and a broader perspective of the life they were called to live “in Him”. All the other functions of the Holy Spirit have to fall into place within the scope of truth.

What is the truth that should govern the outflow of our lives as disciples of Jesus? The Apostle Paul called the Holy Spirit the one who “brought about your adoption to sonship” (Romans 8:15b NIV). Until we deal with the issues in our personal lives that block our understanding and experience of God as our true Father, our unfinished business with our earthly fathers, we will never enter into the fullness of Jesus’ life as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus came to reveal the Father and to reconcile us to the Father so that we might receive the life that permits us to be sons and daughters in fellowship with the Father, just like He was. His final audible plea to the Father before He left them was  that the Father and His disciples, present and future, would be one just as He and the Father were one.

“”My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me…I in you and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.” John 17:20-21; 23 NIV.

It is not tongues, or gifts, or goose bumps that unites us but the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth He reveals about our Messiah and the faith we have in Him that binds our hearts into one.

“Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 5:11-13 NIV.

In that unity, created by the Holy Spirit who reveals the truth that we are to treasure and guard because through our unity in Christ, we testify to the truth about Jesus to the world as the Holy Spirit testifies to the truth about Jesus in us.

A Legacy Restored

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A LEGACY RESTORED 

“‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that you joy may be complete.'” John 15:9-11 NIV.

Up to this point Jesus had not spoken of His love for His disciples; only His love for the Father displayed by His obedience to His Father’s commands. It was this love between the Father and the Son which kept Jesus steadfast and secure through all the tests of His humanity, tests which were ultimately about who and what He valued the most.

In the midst of the turmoil the disciples were experiencing, Jesus was now giving them the anchors which would hold them steady when their boats rocked in the storm. Their security lay in their confidence in His presence, in His Word and in His love. To remain meant to be sure of and to be true to those things that would not change in their changing circumstances.

When Adam and Eve chose their own way in the Garden of Eden, they forfeited the union with God which secured them in His presence, in His love and in His joy. What they had at the beginning was replaced by a sense of loss, insecurity and fear. They had forfeited their source of strength, provision and protection in God and were driven from the garden to make their own way, alienated from God and left to their own devices.

The world is a very insecure place. Because the majority of mankind had rejected God and His way and substituted their own, they are left anchorless and rudderless in the storms of life. Human beings foolishly put their confidence in things that have no lasting substance — money, relationships, achievements, position and status, and even images of their own creation, be they made out of materials or imagination.

Jesus had clearly demonstrated in the three and a half years they had known Him that He had security in the Father’s love that could not be duplicated by anyone or anything else. Now He was offering the same security to them if they would risk everything by believing what He said and throwing themselves onto Him.

This was the only way for them to receive what Adam and the human race after him had lost — God’s joy, the sense of delight, pleasure and well-being that comes from living in perfect harmony with God’s nature and will. David made this discovery centuries before as he lived his life in pursuit of God: “You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11 NKJV.

How did the disciples receive yet another revelation of truth from Jesus at this time of turmoil and confusion? Even if it made no sense to them then, He was once again sowing the seeds of truth into their spirits that would come alive when the Holy Spirit invaded their lives at Pentecost and brought the understanding they lacked at that moment. Perhaps Jesus’ words echoed in their hearts as they witnessed the terrible things that were happening to their Master. Perhaps they even drew comfort from them as they watched Him suffer. He loved them just as the Father loved Him. What did that mean to them?

What do those words mean to you when your world spins out of control? Our natural inclination is to blame God, to hold Him responsible for not intervening to prevent the catastrophes that come suddenly and without warning. We think that God should shelter us from the things that hit others because we belong to Him.

How little we understand of God’s ways! Faith untested remains flabby and useless like muscles that are never used. It is a loving Father who allows the tests that prise our fingers loose from the useless things we hang onto and teaches us to cling to Him because He is the only reliable and immovable one we have in life whose nature and promises are unshakeable. God is for us, not against us. No matter what disasters hit, He is always there and He is always working in them for our good.

Life is lived forward and understood backwards. Only when we look back can we see the path we have walked and the value of the experiences we have walked through. Only if we have chosen to remain in His love can we understand the greatness of that love when we see the outcome of our suffering.

The Father loved the Son and allowed Him to go through death for us. The prophet took a backward look and triumphantly declared: “Yet it pleased the Lord to put Him to grief. When you make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labour of His soul and be satisfied. By His knowledge my righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53:10-12 NKJV.

The True Vine

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THE TRUE VINE 

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:1-5 NIV.

Jesus and His disciples had left the upper room where they had eaten their last Passover meal together. They made their way through the dark streets of the city towards the olive grove called Gethsemane. As they walked slowly through the vineyard outside the city wall, Jesus must have stopped and fingered the vine leaves, recalling His intimate knowledge of the Scriptures.

Israel was symbolically God’s vineyard. In Isaiah 5, the prophet sang a song about His vineyard – “I will sing of the one I love, a song about His vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut a wine-press as well.”

Imagine God’s disappointment when, after all the preparation and care He had given His vineyard, it produced a crop so bad that it was worthless to Him. “Then He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it only yield bad?”

Because His people had failed to fulfil His destiny for them, He had no option but to send them into exile, away from His presence in His temple and from their land so that they would learn to distance themselves from the idols and the wickedness of the surrounding nations.

“Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.

“The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines He delighted in. And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” Isaiah 5:1-7 NIV.

There was only one “vine” that could satisfy the desire of the Father for good grapes and abundant fruitfulness — Jesus Christ, His own Son. Instead of Israel, He was the true vine that represented and took the place of God’s people who had failed to live up to His expectation. Jesus was not only the true vine but the way for God to replant His vineyard and reap crops of good grapes through those who would believe in Him.

The way of fruitfulness is the way of abiding or remaining in union with the true vine. Being joined to the vine and remaining in fellowship with Him is the only guarantee that we will produce the fruit that will bring delight to the heart of the Father. The vine, the stock, is perfect and needs no cultivation. It is the branches that need constant attention so that they will be as fruitful as they can possibly be.

The vine-dresser has ways of improving the fruitfulness of the branches. He lifts up, cleans and reattaches the branches that trail down into the dust, not “cutting them off” but treating them so that they will become fruitful again. He prunes the fruitful branches, removing everything that will hinder the production of grapes.

The branches have no other responsibility but to remain in the vine. As long as we are attached to the vine and receiving the sap of its life, we shall be fruitful — revealing the nature of the vine in our lives. The Father’s role is to cultivate and prune the branches according to His skill as the vine-dresser so that the fruit we bear is the fruit that reveals the true nature of the vine.

Love’s Greatest Test

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LOVE’S GREATEST TEST 

“‘You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens so that, when it does happen, you will believe.

“I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Come now; let us leave,'” John 14:28-31 NIV.

Strange words for the bewildered disciples! How could they grasp what was foreign to their experience? But for the Holy Spirit who would make sense of it all as time went on, this entire interlude would be lost to them.

“Going away and coming back”? And yet He kept talking about dying! No one in their experience had ever died and came back again. As for being glad because He was going away! That did not make sense. If they loved Him how could they be glad because He was leaving them?

Ah, but they did not yet understand the implications of all these mysteries! This was not only about Him; it was also about them. Going to the Father had huge spin-offs for them.

Salvation accomplished, Jesus would return to the Father to present His blood as a perpetual sacrifice for sin. He would be exalted to the highest place and be given a name above every other name. He would take up His role in the presence of the Father, representing them to Him as High Priest and Mediator. He would send the Holy Spirit to be with them forever as His other self, to be in them, to teach them about Him and to transform them into His likeness.

Is it any wonder that He told them to be happy because He was going to the Father?

However, between the present moment and His return to the Father lay the biggest test of His love for the Father — the cross! Time was running out for Him. He had an appointment to keep that would be perfectly timed to coincide with the exact moment when the first Passover lamb would be slaughtered by the high priest. Time with His disciples was coming to an end. He had given them everything He could while He was with them. It was now over to the Holy Spirit to help them internalise what they had heard during His time with them.

The prince of this world was poised to strike; he thought he was gearing up for his greatest victory, not realising, even from experience that he could never take Jesus on and win. How many times had he already tried and come out of it with egg on his face!

He had his human cronies lined up; Judas the traitor, the religious hierarchy, Caiaphas the high priest, the temple guard and Roman soldiers, Pilate, Herod and the fickle mob — quite a formidable array from a human perspective! Who were Jesus’ supporters? No one because even His most loyal followers deserted Him! He took on the world and the evil spiritual forces behind it single-handed.

Jesus made a most interesting statement. What was He about to prove? Not that He loved the world but that He loved the Father and authenticated that love by being obedient to Him to the very dregs of the cross. Why not the world? He loved the world through His obedience to the Father.

What was the point of Adam’s test in the Garden of Eden? There was nothing morally wrong with eating fruit from a tree in the garden. It was not the tree but the instruction that counted. God set up a test to check the strength of Adam’s love for Him. Love sets boundaries within which the beloved can move freely without fear. The strength of love is demonstrated by the beloved’s willingness to live within those boundaries because he trusts the one who loves him. And he failed the test.

For Jesus, the test of His love for the Father was His willingness to obey Him to the death without resistance — even at the hands of the one who hated Him the most. His entire human life was a declaration that He loved the Father and that He loved Him through the bitterest suffering any human can endure. Period!

“When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. “He Himself bore our sins” in His body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness: “by His wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:23, 24 NIV.