Tag Archives: fatherless

DID YOU KNOW (11)…THAT THE WORLD IS AN ORPHANAGE?

DID YOU KNOW (11)

…THAT THE WORLD IS AN ORPHANAGE?

How do we know that the world is an orphanage? Jesus spoke about it on the eve of His death. His disciples were distressed because He kept telling them that He was going away. After three years with Him, they could not imagine what life would be without Him. They had thought that He would be with them for a very long time. After all, were they not His disciples? They had committed their lives to Him, not just a few years.

He assured them that, despite His imminent departure, He would return. How could that be?

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you (John 14:18).

These words assume that they were already orphans, or perhaps that they felt like orphans.

It was never God’s intention for humans to be fatherless. He created Adam and Eve to be His children, the beginning of an eternal family of all their offspring in an intimate relationship with Him as their heavenly Father.

However, something went terribly wrong. Adam was influenced by Satan posing as a serpent to believe that God was someone less than a perfect Father. He tricked him into thinking that God’s instruction not to break ties with Him by disobeying His one single prohibition was a less-than-loving way of cheating him of something important in his life. The moment Adam doubted the character of God as perfect love, he was on the road to betrayal. Instead of holding fast to what he already knew about his Creator, he swallowed the lie and broke ties with the source of his life.

That one act of foolishness cost him and the human race that would come from him, the only way he would ever know his true identity and the security of trust and fellowship with his Father. From that moment, Adam and Eve were fatherless, orphans, and alone, left to make their way through life without the comfort of their Father’s strength, wisdom, and protection.

Why would the devil target and destroy the relationship of the Father and His children? He knows that fatherless children have no identity and no security in life and are open to fear which they will do anything to suppress. Without the love and protection of a father, children do anything just to survive. They have no one to model and teach them the real values or life. They live by their wits, without boundaries, and eventually without a conscience.

The world is indeed an orphanage. The sexual revolution has deceived people into believing that sexual pleasure is an end in itself and does no psychological damage when it is misused. There are millions of “orphans” without a father figure. living with single mothers who can never replace the role of a father in their lives.

The gay agenda targets legitimate relationships between husbands and wives in a monogamous union.  So-called “free sex” and the “condomising” of the world as a solution to infection, has left a trail of death and destruction through AIDS and STDs. Paedophiles have destroyed the lives of thousands, if not millions of children by destroying their innocence and robbing them of a healthy relationship with a father figure, to say nothing of the murders which accompany the actions of sexual predators.

Rape is a worldwide phenomenon – sexual violence against women as a vent for male anger. What about prostitution and all the evils associated with so called “sex workers”?

All these evils are directed towards one thing – the distortion of the father image so that people, both adults and children have no idea what a real father is like. The world is an angry place, and Satan makes sure that the anger is directed at fathers who have failed to fulfil their role in the family as protectors and providers, and families that are the victims of father’s failure.  

As Malachi wrote, in the last verse of the last book of the Old Testament, a major role of the “Elijah” who was to introduce Messiah to God’s people and to the world was to .…

“…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 4:6

One of Jesus’ primary purposes was to reveal the true nature of the Father, to wipe the face of our fathers off the face of God so that we can know Him through Jesus.

In response to Philip’s request, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us,” Jesus responded, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:8-9a).

He came to reconcile us to the Father and to take us to the Father so that we can once again be a part of His forever family. Without this connection with the Father, we will always be orphans, nameless, homeless and without security for the present and the future.

No, we are no longer orphans because Jesus has restored us to the Father and to His family.  

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

A FATHERLESS GENERATION

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.