The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
(It is Father's Day in the United States today. This is a tribute and a repeat from several years ago, inspired by one of my dearest friends, Bryan W.)
"A Great Father!"
"God loves His trusting children in Christ with the same love He has forever bestowed upon the Lord Jesus. The Spirit of Christ dwells in us, and when our Father looks upon believers, He sees us as united to His beloved Son."
"We have a great Father!"
A dear friend and brother in Christ shared this wonderful thought with me in an email yesterday. Such a true and wonderful affirmation led me to recall that I did not know what it meant to have a father until I became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ at eighteen years old. My human dad passed away when I was 2, and while I was told much about him by my mother and other family members, I have little recollection of him. Throughout my childhood, I felt the challenge and difficulties of being without a father. I still sometimes sense in my personality and disposition the deficit that God allowed in my early life. However, I know my Heavenly Father works all things together for good, and has used my earthly father's absence to fulfill His loving purposes in my life. "As for God, His way is perfect" (II Samuel 22:31).
This leads to the main reason I share this with you. When I became a Christian, I entered into the family of God, and into the experience of His fatherhood. In the pages of Scripture, I discovered - and continue to discover - what a father truly is. I also experienced our Heavenly Father's presence and working along the pathways of life as my perfect authority, provider, protector, teacher, disciplinarian, and faithful administrator of grace and truth. I marvel continually as the journey proceeds, being overwhelmed by God's kindness, thrilled by His trustworthiness, encouraged by His working, challenged by His discipline, and at times puzzled when I cannot fully understand His ways. In all, however, my friend's affirmation - "We have a great Father!" - shines brilliant light upon the pathway God paved for me, and on which He accompanies me along every step of the way.
God, of course, has always been a father, and has forever had a son - the Lord Jesus Christ - whom He has loved, and to whom He has been a perfect patriarch. In the glory of His grace and mercy, our Heavenly Father now bestows such love on those who freely enter into His favor through Christ:
"I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26).
Wondrously, God loves His trusting children in Christ with the same love He has forever bestowed upon the Lord Jesus. The Spirit of Christ so dwells in us that when our Father looks upon believers, He sees us as united to His beloved Son. Grace ever and forever fills His heart toward us, whether in times of tendnermercies, or when He must act toward us with necessary firmness. Our Father abides with us along every step of the way, and always will. His gift of the Lord Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit provide such assurance, confirming how rightly my dear friend expressed the truth yesterday: "We have a great Father!" Yes we do, and let us rejoice that our discovery of such glory and wonder that began when we trusted the Lord Jesus will never end.
"Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father."
(Galatians 4:6)
"Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
(John 14:23)
"Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name."
(Matthew 6:9)
Weekly Memory Verse
Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else."
(Deuteronomy 4:39)
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