“Our Father”
What if the greatest gift we could give back to God this Father’s Day would be to love each other as brothers and sisters?
Imagine being an unbeliever and trying to gauge who God is based upon how the average Christian conducts themselves. Would that unbeliever get a good representation by observing your life?
At one point Saul of Tarsus was on a mission to destroy Christ. We know that mission didn’t last. We also know that God had a different purpose for Saul’s life, and when Jesus came and encountered him in Acts 9 Saul’s life was changed forever.
God saw Saul according to his potential in Christ, not his deficit without Christ. We know that God transformed Saul’s life and he became the Apostle Paul as God loved him into his true identity and purpose as a son of God.
It was shortly thereafter in Acts 9 that the believers in Damascus were having a hard time believing that Saul had become a “new creation'' and now went by Paul. Acts 9: 21 All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” (NIV)
The fruit of Paul’s life reveals his conversion was absolutely legit as he went on to arguably bear more fruit then the rest of the apostles combined.
After years of ministry Paul later wrote a letter to the believers in Ephesus from a prison cell. He wrote this in Chapter 1 of that letter, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”
He addressed our amazing God as, “the glorious father.”
In Matthew 6 Jesus gave his first teaching on how to pray while being a follower of Him. He said, ““This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
“Our Father,” is how the Son, “the exact representation of the Father” (Heb. 1:3) tells us to posture ourselves when conversing with the Creator of heaven and earth.
You see, the Father doesn’t treat us according to our failures. He treats us according to Christ’s victory on the cross, and Christ’s blood shed on the cross is powerful enough to wash anyone clean and present them as a reborn son or daughter of “Our Father.”
How is it you see people? Do you see them through the lens of their faults and failures? Or do you see them through the blood stained lens of the finished work of the Messiah?
I was a drug addict and alcoholic for 13 yrs, until I met and began following The Christ. It was learning how to live in His presence that an understanding of the Father became clear. It was when fellow believers began treating me according to how God sees me that my Kingdom identity rose to the surface.
I am now 11 yrs into my freedom from addiction and joy of walking with “Our Father.” I now have the privilege of walking people out of addiction and into recovery as a profession, and I believe that few things bring God more joy than when we believe that His grace is sufficient to change anyone into a glorious son or daughter of God.
So, what if the best gift we could give “Our Father” for Father’s Day is that we saw and treated people not according to their past, but we saw and treated people according to their potential in Christ?
It’s in this reality that “Our Father” is filled with joy as His family is fruitful and multiplies.
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