Father

I can tell you about the birthmarks of each one of my four children. I know their eye color, tones of voice when upset, and what is likely to make them upset. I love to watch them, to be with them, and to hear about anything they are involved in. But you know what don’t know? I don’t know how many hairs are on their heads. Do you know the number of hairs on your kids’ heads? I’m guessing you don’t; we just don’t pay that much attention.

But Jesus says that God knows. Isn’t that crazy? God has spent so much attention on me and on you that he could tell you the number of hairs on your head- which changes every day, by the way. That tells me he knows me and loves me to a depth that I have never experienced, either as the lover or the loved.

Today, my friends, is another invitation to rest in God. Calling God “Father” isn’t new or revelatory, so today’s invitation is not either. But it can be a deeply necessary balm to our souls any time of year; in this season when everything feels just a little (or maybe a lot) more intense, do you think you can take a minute to contemplate what God means when he calls himself your “Father?”

My four children share some combination of two sets of DNA. But no one reading this is surprised to hear me say they are all very, very different from one another. Even if they share a particular trait that they inherited from me, it looks different on each of them. And I love that, so I parent them differently and they respond to me differently.

When you read the scriptures below, open your heart and mind to how you need God to be your Father. How is he trying to comfort, love, guide, strengthen you? God, in his love for us, has made himself shockingly vulnerable to us (especially look for this in Jeremiah 3. Let’s allow his vulnerability to become our strength.

I am including just a small selection of times God has called himself Father in the scriptures below. What you need from God today is likely to be different from what I need, but in his unchanging love he is Father to each of us.

Deuteronomy 32:1-6
Listen, O heavens, and I will speak!
Hear, O earth, the words that I say!
Let my teaching fall on you like rain;
let my speech settle like dew.
Let my words fall like rain on tender grass,
like gentle showers on young plants.
I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
how glorious is our God!
He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect.
Everything he does is just and fair.
He is a faithful God who does no wrong;
how just and upright he is!
But they have acted corruptly toward him;
when they act so perversely,
are they really his children?
They are a deceitful and twisted generation.
6Is this the way you repay the Lord,
you foolish and senseless people?
Isn’t he your Father who created you?
Has he not made you and established you?

Psalm 68:4-6
Sing praises to God and to his name!
Sing loud praises to him who rides the clouds.
His name is the Lord—
rejoice in his presence!
Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—
this is God, whose dwelling is holy.
God places the lonely in families;
he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.
But he makes the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

Jeremiah 3:19-22
“I thought to myself,
‘I would love to treat you as my own children!’
I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land—
the finest possession in the world.
I looked forward to your calling me ‘Father,’
and I wanted you never to turn from me.
But you have been unfaithful to me, you people of Israel!
You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband.
I, the Lord, have spoken.”
Voices are heard high on the windswept mountains,
the weeping and pleading of Israel’s people.
For they have chosen crooked paths
and have forgotten the Lord their God.
“My wayward children,” says the Lord,
“come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.”
“Yes, we’re coming,” the people reply,
“for you are the Lord our God.

Romans 8:14-17
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.
Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.
Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”
For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm
that we are God’s children.
And since we are his children, we are his heirs.
In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.
But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Galatians 4:1-7
Think of it this way. If a father dies and leaves an inheritance for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father had. They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set. And that’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world.
But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.

Psalm 103:13
The Lord is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.