He’s a GOOD Father!

My dad is a great guy.  He’s kind, gentle, and easy-going.  He’s always been there when I’ve needed him. There is nothing that is in his power to give me that he has withheld.  In fact, he has at times moved mountains to meet a need for me.  There is no one, living or not, who could have been a better suited father to me than the one God gave me.  As dad’s go, mine is tops (same goes for my mom too, but that’s a post for another day)!


The absence of fathers is of epidemic proportions in the western world.  And I’m well aware that not everyone was as fortunate as me.  But my clinical experience working with trauma survivors for almost two decades informs my view that far more people had good (or at least acceptable) fathers than bad ones.  They weren’t perfect, but the vast majority clearly did the best they could and demonstrated some capacity for love, protection, and care.  


So why then has our perception of our eternal Father, our Creator, Sustainer, and All-in-all, been so distorted to a false image of wrath, anger, and capricious malice?   


The answer is religion.  Religion needs a wrathful judge sitting “up” somewhere, ever-ready to drop the hammer on anyone who would dare look at him crossways.  That fabrication is how religion keeps you subservient (which they misidentify as “humble”), perpetually dependent on the religious system and its carnal remedies for the issues of life…and the life to come.  


There is a generation that is waking up to the reality of the Father’s true nature.  What was that true nature, you ask?  


👉He blesses with provision in excess of what even the best natural father ever could (Matthew 7:11)


👉Not content to let man’s misrepresentations of Him go unanswered, Father sent Jesus, His Son, to serve as THE FULL REPRESENTATION of all that the Father truly is (Colossians 1:19)


👉Even His corrective action after ‘the fall’ was protective and restorative in nature.  Man was removed from the garden to keep him from eating from the tree of life and living an eternal existence with awareness of shame and guilt, something Father never intended for him.  But even after removing him from Eden, Father places guards (cherubim) at the gate to ensure the way would always be clear and illuminated for man to return once he could once again see himself as Father saw him. (Genesis 2:25 - 3:24)


👉And so many more examples I could provide!


Until the ekklesia sees Father through the lens of His fullness as revealed in Jesus Christ, and thus can dispense that revelation to the world, people will remain at best tolerant of, and at worst terrified of, the God they are simultaneously told they are to love.  In psychology there’s a word for the dichotomy I just described, wherein you are expected to love that which you rightly fear: abuse.  


Until we see our Father in the eyes of Jesus, everything else we do is merely spinning our spiritual wheels.   



Passages to Consider:


Matthew 7:9-11

“Do you know of any parent who would give his hungry child, who asked for food, a plate of rocks instead? Or when asked for a piece of fish, what parent would offer his child a snake instead? If you, imperfect as you are, know how to lovingly take care of your children and give them what’s best, how much more ready is your heavenly Father to give wonderful gifts to those who ask him?”


Colossians 1:19

For God is satisfied to have all HIS FULLNESS dwelling IN Christ.


Genesis 2:25

And the man and his wife were both NAKED and were NOT ASHAMED.


Genesis 3:6-8

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.  And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.


Genesis 3:22-24

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword [illuminates a path and cuts away overgrowth that could impede access to the path] that turned every way to GUARD THE WAY to the tree of life.




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