THE GOOD FATHER
WILDCAT
I was watching this nature documentary about a couple who raised a cub from infancy for the purpose of releasing him into the wild. I know it's much better for animals to be in their natural habitat, but there was a heart-breaking moment when the young cat realized he had been abandoned by the one person he trusted and loved—the only thing he ever knew as his "momma," "pappa," teacher, and companion.
I realized the reason it was so triggering is because it's a common human experience, all of us have faced abandonment in one form or another.
I don’t hear audible voices but I often hear God speak to me in my mind and as I was getting myself worked up about the poor baby lion who was all alone I heard God say to me:
“Lisa, who loves that baby lion more? Someone who watched him for 30 min on a tv show or someone who made him from his own imagination and knit him together in his mother's womb?”
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
God reminded me that the baby lion wasn’t left alone. He reminded me that like the Scriptures say, not a single sparrow falls to the ground without our Heavenly Father knowing, he even takes the time to clothe the grass of the field.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
Get your love from a secure source
There are philosophies that say if you want to avoid pain, then you have to avoid all attachments and they actually aim to do that, the only problem is what kind of life is a life without ever loving anything at all? Plus it’s near impossible we are made to love it’s in our DNA, you can’t just switch it off.
You can’t avoid attachment but what you can do is make sure that you keep you biggest attachment and hope connected to something fully secure, you get your love from a secure source, and your identity from a secure source so that even if some of the rivers and streams dry up the ocean never will. Even if the vehicles of those things are removed you can still go directly to the source.
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.”
Now I’m sure your saying that sounds great but what could possibly be a secure source in a world where everything dies?
And the answer is the source isn’t of this world and he isn’t subject to its limitations.
God is literally the opposite of a being that would abandon us.
The opposite of abandonment is twofold:
Provision of care, Support: Abandonment involves the lack of support, care, and presence, whereas support involves the provision of help, encouragement, and resources.
“Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.”
Commitment: Abandonment involves breaking a commitment or relationship, whereas commitment involves the effort to maintain a relationship or fulfill a promise. The word for commitment in Hebrew is "חיים" (khayim). This word can mean life, existence, or commitment. In the context of commitment, it can refer to a steadfast and unwavering dedication to something or someone. Another word for commitment in Hebrew is "אמון" (emun), which means faithfulness, reliability, or trustworthiness.
God is the epitome of steadfast dedication like an artist and you are his masterpiece.
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
In the Old Testament, when his people were subjected to slavery, he didn't abandon them. He went through great lengths to secure their freedom he had a steadfast dedication to seeing them released. When they were traveling in the desert, he didnt abandon them, he was their provision giving them water from a rock and and even splitting a sea when they were chased by their enemies.
How has God shown his love to you: The great swap
You may be saying “how could God be my source? That's nice he did things for other people in the bible or in the past but he hasn’t shown his love to me at all look at my life the whole reason we are having this conversation in the first place is because the universe gave me the short end of the stick, my life is full of constant pain, I lost those I love the most, I don’t feel looked after or taken care of at all.”
I promise you only feel that way because even if you’ve heard the story you don’t really grasp the story yet of what he did for you.
We look at our entire existence as though it ends at year 100, we fail to grasp the eternity that comes after that, or how an eternal perspective might change the way the picture looks.
We can all agree that eternity is more than one year right? Yes, but let’s shorten the timeframe to better understand.
Let’s say you went to a foreign country and you knew the laws there were not to bring fruit in because it could introduce diseases that they didn’t have defenses for and mess up the eco system.
You knew it was wrong but you didn’t really get it, you thought, “What harm could an apple do?” So you bring in the apple, a disease spreads and thousands of people die. The families of the dead demand justice, someone has to get the death penalty for this according to their laws. You scream to the judge that it’s not fair you didn’t realize how serious your crimes were, in your country they would never give someone the death penalty for something minor like this. But you aren't in your country and your subject to the rules of this land.
So your father hears about your situation and makes a bargain with the judge to take him instead. He will take the punishment in your place, but he doesn’t stop there, when you return home all that was his will be entrusted to you. Your father was a king so for the rest of your life you will have millions of dollars, a kingdom, and your own flock of horses.
The deal has been struck the contract was signed, your father has already given his life on your behalf, the estate has been signed over but you have to wait in the jail cell for 3 days for the paperwork to be processed. While your there your still hungry your still cold and alone and there still is only a rat in your cell that you can call your own.
If you were unaware that your father had done all of this for you what would your perspective be? You might wrongly believe for those three days that he didn’t love or care about you and that he had never done anything good for you.
But if you did know what he had done and you knew you only had three days left in the cell would that change your perspective?
If you did know about the deal and you were still complaining about the cell I might ask if you were thinking straight.
All analogies about God break down, this is not a perfect one but the general idea is true.
We all sinned, the punishment for sin was death. God came down as a man and died in our place and offered us his own inheritance.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
If we accept his pardon and his gift we have been given more then the girl in this story.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you.”
No matter what you might have experienced in the jail cell, in this life. It can't be compared with the blessings that are to come that have already been given to you.
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
The beginning of the story
I am sure many of you are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, it goes like this.
God creates man to be in relationship with himself. The nature of God is that he is perfectly loving, holy, and perfectly just, which means he cannot be in the presence of Sin.
He wants real relationship he doesn’t want robots, so he gives them freedom of choice but warns them of the consequences. They are given a paradise to live in, meaningful work to do, and all of their needs are met. But they are told there is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they eat from it they will die.
The snake in the garden comes to eve and says “has God really forbidden you from eating? "You will not surely die," suggesting that God has lied to them in order to keep them from gaining knowledge. He tells Eve that if she eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she will become like God.
With a few clever lines he convinces her to doubt God's goodness and to make a choice that ultimately brings sin, pain and death into the world.
“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.”
Now before you judge Eve too harshly I want to pose a question to you.
If faced with the same proposition what would you choose? You could have eternity with God experiencing the fruit of his spirit which is love, joy, peace goodness. But you had to let God be the God of your life, you would have to trust and follow his ways instead of your own. Or you could be God of your own life and do what ever you want but you would spend eternity separated from Gods spirit, seperated from everything sourced by him like love, joy, peace, kindness. What would you choose?
The verse says that the sepant was more crafty then anyother creature on earth. Now I don’t know about you but when I read the story of Adam and Eve I dont really see whats so genious about his aproach. It seams like he just makes a basic apeal to their ego and they fall for it whats so cunning about that?
I would like to propose that how you answer question number one is going to be based on a different question a question that the snake was very very aware of and was able to geniusly mold in his favor.
The Biggest Lie
The answer that you would need in order to choose your fate in scenario number one is, what kind of God is Yahweh? If im going to let him be God of my life and pledge to follow him, can I trust that where he will lead me is where I want to go?
If God truly knows everything, he has named all the stars in the sky and he loves us more than we love ourselves, then anywhere he directs me to go is what I would choose for myself if I loved myself fully and fully knew everything.
I could trust that love was the decision maker of my fate, not a general love but someone who knew every hair on my head and knit me together in my mother's womb. A truly good father, a good shepard that would lie down his own life to save mine and the source of love and wisdom itself, that kind of a God I think I could pledge to follow.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
But what if God wasn’t going to make decisions out of our best interest, what if he was just this distant cosmic judge that might hold out on us? Well now as scary as death sounds the alternative proposal almost sounds like slavery and some would argue that they would rather die then be a slave.
If we boiled it down we can think of marriage vs slavery. In both cases people agree to bend their own will to the will of another to give up some freedom but in the case of marriage the love is mutual they are mutually acting in each other's best interest. If only one party is acting in the best interest of another but it is not reciprocal it is called slavery.
The snake knows he has to convince Eve that God is not “the good Father” or “unconditionally loving husband” he is the slave owner. Thats the only lie she must believe to be willing to risk death.
We know the snake is after this from the start because of how he refers to God. The ancient rabbis have many comentaries showing that when God is doing things that involve his justice or cosmic power the name Elohim is often used. When it speaks of his loving relational nature it is yaweh eloheim.
When God interacts with man it's always yaweh the loving, good father the relational being coming to walk with them in the garden. But the snake doesn't say “did yaweh” really say he gets her focus off of his nature as a loving father and instead says did Elohim really say” you could think of the full name Yahweh Elohim as a name that means my righteous God that loves me but the snake leaves out the second part and gets her to just focus on him as just a righteous God but without the loving father part.
He then over-exaggerates the rule to make it seam like God is holding out on them.
“Did he really say don't eat from any of the trees?” When he only mentioned one. Then he makes her think God doesn't really have their best at heart but rather is looking out only for himself as if to say “this isn't a love relationship this is a slave relationship.”
So while I agree with commentators that our ego of wanting to be God of our own life is the major sin that keeps people choosing to be separated from God I think it’s important to go a step beyond that and ask why? Do we really cling so tightly to this only because of our ego? Or does it stem from a lie in our mind that believes God is asking for slavery when he is really asking for a love relationship.
If you are already a believer but are having trouble letting go of a sin this same lie might also be a root cause in that scenario. We think God is asking us to sacrifice and suffer by giving up this thing we think we want but in reality, he is saying that if we really knew everything we wouldn’t choose to have anything to do with it. We wouldn’t actually want it at all. Be careful when your mind tries to tell you that you know better then God, Love yourself more then God or are looking out for your own best interests more then God. He isn’t holding any good thing back from you, he does not have plans to harm you and he will never abandon you. Rather he will be your constant devotion of care and provision. An ever present help in trouble.
Love or Slavery
If you have ever been abandoned, mistreated or abused especially by someone you love or a parent Satan will try to do everything he can to convince you that that is what God is like. But God proved to us that he wasn't anything like that. He proved instead that he was the lover willing to lay down his own life to save ours so that he could prove to us once and for all what kind of God he really was and brake the lie and deception of the enemy.
See while we were all in complete rebellion against him. He could have stayed up in heaven and left us to the fate he warned us about. He could have said I told them the rules, they broke them, that’s it. But that isn’t how a good father responds.
Instead, he entered our reality and came down as a man he experienced all of the sorrows of men and he allowed himself to be tortured and crucified in our place he took the punishment of death upon himself so that we could be set free. Then three days later he raised from the dead to prove to us that the debt had been paid the curse had been lifted and we all had another chance to make a new choice.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
The Choice
We could be freely forgiven of all of our sins we wouldn't be judged by what we had done, no scale weighing our good against our bad would be invoved. We could have a love based relationship with God or we could reject his free gift and continue to live apart from him.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
God is saying now that you have seen what depths I am willing to go to to love you will you trust me now? Follow me let me be God of your life and have eternity with me or will you continue to believe the lie in the face of the evidence of his shed blood, reject his gift and choose eternity apart from him?
It’s like a father out on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean looking for his kid after a shipwreck. The kid sees the lifeboat but thinks it's an enemy ship so she hides instead of being rescued. God is not the enemy ship he is your loving father. Get in his boat and open the door of your life to him.
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
My Prayer Journal - 120 Days of Prayer, Reflection and Praise
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