Have you ever stopped and thought about the fact that God is your father? It’s a crazy thought, really. When God created the world and all that is in it, the only thing that He made to be his children were human beings. He could have made trees his children, or mountains, tigers, or electrons. But he chose instead to make us his children. We tend to forget that we are part of the family of God. If our relationship with God were subject to legal ramifications (and thankfully it’s not), we might be liable for parental neglect.
And furthermore, why did God create that type of relationship for us? He could have been God our Boss, God our Uncle, God our President, or God our Commander. But He chose instead to be God our father. Why do you suppose he did this?
I believe it is because there is a very special relationship between parent and child. It is a relationship of intimacy and love. How intimate do you feel with God? Do you think most people view their relationship with God this way? I believe that many people fail to grasp the fact that we are part of the family of God, and there is a certain tight-knit intimacy that is inherent in that type of relationship. Like all relations of intimacy, we have to be able to drop our guards and our pride to allow intimate relations to exist, to allow dialogue and freedom and love to manifest and grow. Most of us treat God the Father as some person who is of no relation at all. We treat God as some faraway stranger or vagabond. But God is our relative, and he should be the closest relative we ever have. He should be closer than mom, dad, sister, brother, uncle, cousin, and grandma.
Our perception of God begins to falter when we assume that God is like our earthly fathers. Human associations with the word “Father” is becoming progressively more jaded. Our perception of what “father” means is in the process of dramatic transformation. Yesterday’s fathers were loving, kind, present, able, and strong. They are like Andy Griffith, Ward Cleaver, or Cliff Huxtable. Today’s fathers are flawed, angry, and absent. They are more like Archie Bunker, or the guy that left your mother twenty years ago, or even someone you have never spoken to.
We have conditioned ourselves to think about the nature of a father by our perceptions—whether it be a negative one or a positive one—of our earthly fathers. If our earthly father has been absent, our conditioned mind thinks that a “father” is someone who is absent and in ways, untrustworthy. If our fathers have subjected our entire lives to condemnation and guilt, why should we not believe that God is the same way? If our actions prove to be subpar, isn’t God up in his heavenly perch storing up wrath and condemnation and anger?
What a child repeatedly hears, he eventually begins to believe. If we are told that we are cowards, punks, idiots, and losers, we eventually begin to believe this. Disparaging words leads to the eventual whittling away of a child’s confidence and self-worth. We must go through a process of deconditioning ourselves to think like this. But much more so, we should take into account instead what God is saying about us. The Bible says that there is no condemnation in Christ: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”[1] God is not storing up His wrath to throw at us like lightning bolts.
He sees us as men and women of tremendous potential who have been given gifts beyond measure. We can rest on the promise of Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” God says that we can do all things through Christ! This doesn’t sound like a loser to me.
The key to finding success is being able to break free from all the negative things said about us and concentrate on cultivating God’s power in our life. Yes, we are all small and insignificant and cowardly—without the presence of God in our life. Imagine then what we have with God. He is more loving than we can ever imagine…our human condition cannot possibly fathom the depths of his love and understanding. God is love. Do you believe that?
