A Prelude to Father's Day
Father's Day brings out complex feelings in all of us; we each have our own memories, good and/or bad, from our past lives with fathers or father figures. Father's Day is a chance to pay homage to our earthly fathers as we are called to do in Scripture (Exodus 20:12); however, this day can be painful or even excruciating for some.
All of us are made of good parts and bad parts - face it - we were born in sin (John 18: 21, 24) into a world under the curse of the fall. We humans, left to our own devices, simply repeat history, our behaviors being "pre-conditioned" during childhood: we model the behavior of our predecessors, and our fathers are no exception.
Let's go there for a moment: my father came from a home with an abusive, controlling mother who was not saved until my father was grown and married. Her father was a driven man, supporting his eight children with hard work (for all of them) on a farm. My dad's father had been orphaned at an early age, being passed between 2 families, one cruel and one benevolent. In light of my grandfather's upbringing, he did the best he could. In light of my dad's upbringing, he did the best he could, even improving upon the past. But the unhealed wounds of his childhood showed up in my family, as could be expected.
Children don't see things this way. Our view of God is directly related to our view of our earthly fathers (dads have a HUGE responsibility in modeling what God is like!) and how they treat us. We navigate life from the earliest years from a self-centric perspective: "how does my world and the people in it affect and interact with me?" We receive our own sets of wounds, and unless we address them through the lens of our Heavenly Father's love, we are destined to repeat mistakes in our own parenting and interactions with others.
What we need is a shift in focus: though we are the physical product of an earthly father, we are a new creation, fully and unconditionally loved by a perfect, benevolent Heavenly Father. The perspective we choose has everything to do with how we handle life going forward.
For me, this shift started taking place during the time I was estranged from my father for years during my adulthood. My world caved in due to the loss of family connection, shaken with insecurity. Because I had never known unconditional love, my view of God was that of a judgmental, all-powerful, controlling dictator who dispensed blessing and cursing based on whim, my performance, or my bargaining as if He were Someone to be pacified (by the way, this errant thinking has a name: "Prosperity Gospel"). No matter how hard I worked, I couldn't please. And even if I did, it was short-lived. Kind of reminds you of the prophets of Baal calling on their false gods, doesn't it? And the pagan belief that gods are to be pleased, and if we get lucky, we can control outcomes based on our performance and the gods' cooperation with our desires! (I'm happy to say that my dad and I now have an amicable relationship. God is good!)
For a young adult man, this shift happened when it dawned on him that he could never please his earthly father, and that there was no way a benevolent God could be like that. He wrote this poem documenting his epiphany in 2014. Due to its length, I'll simply give you the link:
God is Not Like My Dad
Through our fathers came both hardship and blessing, but we would not be who we are today, nor where God wants us to be were it not for their influence or lack thereof. They discipled us according to what they thought was right at the time (Hebrews 12:10). I wholeheartedly believe in the Providence and sovereignty of God - He makes no mistakes in our pasts, present, or future. Perhaps His point is that the limitations of our earthly fathers actually direct us to Himself!
Now for the good news: God's love has freed us! We are not simply the product of our experiences; we are new creatures, wholly loved by our Father, under no curse of condemnation, no strings attached!
This is a relatively new concept to me, and I suspect that there are readers who are also new to this grasping for a deep understanding of and need for non-transactional love. God is showing me day by day what His love looks like, a prayer request I've had for years! Repentance is happening: changing my mind; changing my beliefs about God. I have the privilege of experiencing His grace in many ways, not the least of which is His showing me His love through other believers. Here are some rock-solid truths about God. These truths will set you and me free. They will enable us to refute the lies of another "father"--Satan himself. Consider:
Psalm 84:11: For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
Zephaniah 3:17: The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Ephesians 3:17-19: So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
As you and I journey closer and closer to the heart of God, we do well to remember that God's unconditional love looks like this: God withheld absolutely nothing; there's nothing more He could have given to come and rescue us for the sake of His love. He is always present with us, whether or not we feel it. As our Father, our "Abba", He cherishes us as individuals. He sees us. He has brought us this far, and will not fail us, even when we lack faith. There is nothing we can do to cause Him to love us more or less because His love is already perfect.
If you are struggling with the reality of God's love, ask Him to give you the grace to believe. Look for His love in your day-to-day activities, because we are assured that if we seek, we will find. It's hard - no, impossible! - for our limited minds to comprehend the vast eternity of God's love, but we can gain security and comfort according to His gracious revealing of Himself to us.
Subscribe to free weekly articles in your inbox HERE; your information will never be shared. :-)
©2020 Julianne Knapp. First published 6.18.20
All of us are made of good parts and bad parts - face it - we were born in sin (John 18: 21, 24) into a world under the curse of the fall. We humans, left to our own devices, simply repeat history, our behaviors being "pre-conditioned" during childhood: we model the behavior of our predecessors, and our fathers are no exception.
Let's go there for a moment: my father came from a home with an abusive, controlling mother who was not saved until my father was grown and married. Her father was a driven man, supporting his eight children with hard work (for all of them) on a farm. My dad's father had been orphaned at an early age, being passed between 2 families, one cruel and one benevolent. In light of my grandfather's upbringing, he did the best he could. In light of my dad's upbringing, he did the best he could, even improving upon the past. But the unhealed wounds of his childhood showed up in my family, as could be expected.
Children don't see things this way. Our view of God is directly related to our view of our earthly fathers (dads have a HUGE responsibility in modeling what God is like!) and how they treat us. We navigate life from the earliest years from a self-centric perspective: "how does my world and the people in it affect and interact with me?" We receive our own sets of wounds, and unless we address them through the lens of our Heavenly Father's love, we are destined to repeat mistakes in our own parenting and interactions with others.
What we need is a shift in focus: though we are the physical product of an earthly father, we are a new creation, fully and unconditionally loved by a perfect, benevolent Heavenly Father. The perspective we choose has everything to do with how we handle life going forward.
For me, this shift started taking place during the time I was estranged from my father for years during my adulthood. My world caved in due to the loss of family connection, shaken with insecurity. Because I had never known unconditional love, my view of God was that of a judgmental, all-powerful, controlling dictator who dispensed blessing and cursing based on whim, my performance, or my bargaining as if He were Someone to be pacified (by the way, this errant thinking has a name: "Prosperity Gospel"). No matter how hard I worked, I couldn't please. And even if I did, it was short-lived. Kind of reminds you of the prophets of Baal calling on their false gods, doesn't it? And the pagan belief that gods are to be pleased, and if we get lucky, we can control outcomes based on our performance and the gods' cooperation with our desires! (I'm happy to say that my dad and I now have an amicable relationship. God is good!)
For a young adult man, this shift happened when it dawned on him that he could never please his earthly father, and that there was no way a benevolent God could be like that. He wrote this poem documenting his epiphany in 2014. Due to its length, I'll simply give you the link:
God is Not Like My Dad
Through our fathers came both hardship and blessing, but we would not be who we are today, nor where God wants us to be were it not for their influence or lack thereof. They discipled us according to what they thought was right at the time (Hebrews 12:10). I wholeheartedly believe in the Providence and sovereignty of God - He makes no mistakes in our pasts, present, or future. Perhaps His point is that the limitations of our earthly fathers actually direct us to Himself!
Now for the good news: God's love has freed us! We are not simply the product of our experiences; we are new creatures, wholly loved by our Father, under no curse of condemnation, no strings attached!
This is a relatively new concept to me, and I suspect that there are readers who are also new to this grasping for a deep understanding of and need for non-transactional love. God is showing me day by day what His love looks like, a prayer request I've had for years! Repentance is happening: changing my mind; changing my beliefs about God. I have the privilege of experiencing His grace in many ways, not the least of which is His showing me His love through other believers. Here are some rock-solid truths about God. These truths will set you and me free. They will enable us to refute the lies of another "father"--Satan himself. Consider:
Psalm 84:11: For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
Zephaniah 3:17: The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Ephesians 3:17-19: So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
As you and I journey closer and closer to the heart of God, we do well to remember that God's unconditional love looks like this: God withheld absolutely nothing; there's nothing more He could have given to come and rescue us for the sake of His love. He is always present with us, whether or not we feel it. As our Father, our "Abba", He cherishes us as individuals. He sees us. He has brought us this far, and will not fail us, even when we lack faith. There is nothing we can do to cause Him to love us more or less because His love is already perfect.
If you are struggling with the reality of God's love, ask Him to give you the grace to believe. Look for His love in your day-to-day activities, because we are assured that if we seek, we will find. It's hard - no, impossible! - for our limited minds to comprehend the vast eternity of God's love, but we can gain security and comfort according to His gracious revealing of Himself to us.
Subscribe to free weekly articles in your inbox HERE; your information will never be shared. :-)
©2020 Julianne Knapp. First published 6.18.20
|
|
If you are a man who has unhealed wounds regarding your relationship with your father, I can highly recommend the book Fathered by God: Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach You, by John Eldridge. It speaks to the necessity of the ""passing of the baton" into manhood from father to son. In many cases, this simply doesn't happen, and men are scarred by its absence. |
|
|
|