So often with all that’s going on around us; with all that life’s throwing at us, with business or loneliness or frustration or fear – whatever it is – man, it is so hard to believe that God’s great and mighty Father heart beats for us.

A Father’s Love

What a fantastic week it is to kick off a new series of messages that I’ve called “The Incredible Father Heart of God.” So often, we just breeze past Easter weekend and roll on with our life as we know it. But this whole Easter thing – God sending His Son to die on a cross – this whole Easter thing makes you really ask the question, what sort of a Father is God, after all, that He would allow His one and only Son to become a man, to be reviled, rejected, beaten, spat upon and nailed to a cross? What sort of dad would sovereignly choose a destiny like that for his son?

Jesus did something incredibly radical – He called God ‘His Father.’ And by doing that He claimed directly, to be His Son. It was radical because up until then the Jews so revered God that they rarely, if ever, even uttered His name on their lips. And Jesus comes along and starts calling this God “Dad”. And then this Dad allows His Son to be nailed to a cross. Seems to me if we are going to talk about the incredible Father heart of God over these coming few weeks, we had better sort this mess out because unless we do, you have to ask yourself, is this really the sort of Father that we want to be involved in? Well, is it?

So, how has your Easter weekend been – a bit of time for rest, maybe some chocolate, a bit more chocolate than you should have had, maybe? Maybe it should be church; after all it’s Easter, but then again, maybe not. A time when Christians the world over celebrate this grisly thing – Jesus dying on a cross; being nailed hands and feet to a piece of wood and strung up and ridiculed and suffering the most gruesome, painful death.

The reason they celebrate this grisly event, they tell us, is that this Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God, came to die for their sin. Funny word that word ‘sin’ – almost a four letter word these days! But the thinking goes, in the Christian camp, that each of us fall a long way short of the glory of God and so our rebelling; our rejection of God deserves punishment – we deserve an eternal death; an eternal separation from God. Because God loves us so much His sense of justice is satisfied because He sent His Son to die in our place so that when we believe in Jesus, we’re forgiven.

On the surface of it; when you just step through the logic of it dispassionately like that, it sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it? It does and if we just keep it there as a theoretical bit of logic, I guess it stays kind of weird. But put a human face on it – the reality of Jesus into it and it becomes a compelling story.

Jesus upset the religious leaders something fierce. He cut through their hypocrisy, He loved the outcasts, He healed the blind and the sick, He powerfully brought the love of God to a people oppressed … oppressed not only by brutal Roman occupation but by a form of religion that God never intended. So He threatened the religious status quo.

What did the religious leaders of the day do? They trumped up some charges against Him; manipulated the judicial system, such as it was, and had Him crucified. Have a listen, though, to what happens when Jesus is arrested in the garden of Gethsemane – Matthew chapter 26, beginning at verse 47:

“While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.” At once he came up to Jesus and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you are here to do.” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him.

Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which says it must happen in this way?”

So, there it is. This is not something that Jesus is being forced by His Father God to do. It’s something that He is doing willingly. “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send more that twelve legions of angels?” And He says it elsewhere too – in John chapter 10, verse 17 and 18:

“For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

See, that’s an incredible statement! Imagine being called to be nailed to a cross; to die this agonising, excruciating death. Can you imagine if that was you or me? I think I would want to run a million miles! So it’s not the Father forcing His Son into something against His will; it’s the Father and the Son, God Himself, deciding that this is so important – your sin and my sin, which we so often sweep under the carpet – it’s such a big deal that someone has to pay and that someone is Jesus.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life.”

We’ve heard that so many times that it almost washes on by – it’s so familiar that we don’t take any notice of it. But there … right there in that, oh so familiar passage, beats the Father heart of God. “For God so loved the world” – so loved us – so loved you, so loved me, He took our eternal destiny, apart from Him, so seriously, that He sent us His Son and this Jesus died to pay for our sin – yours and mine.

And if the story ended there it would be awesome enough, but it doesn’t end there. It ends with a risen Jesus; it ends with an empty tomb; it ends with a hope of eternal life. Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 9:

“We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

What all that tells me is this: God has an incredible heart after you and me because He wants us to live a life; an abundant life; a super abundant life – John chapter 10, verse 10 says:

“The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I came,” said Jesus, “that you may have life and have it abundantly.”

In fact, the word that we translate ‘abundantly’ actually means ‘super abundantly’ and His heart … the ache of His great and mighty Father’s heart for you and me is to give us a new life; an abundant life; an eternal life. His plan: for God Himself to suffer and pay the price. His plan: for Jesus to rise up out of that tomb and ascend into heaven. His plan is for you and for me to spend eternity – a glorious eternity; an eternity that we can’t begin even to imagine – with Him – despite our sin; despite our rebellion; despite the punishment that we deserve – by heaping that punishment on Jesus Christ, His Son.

Don’t know about you, but that tells me a lot; it tells me everything about the Father heart of God for me. He loves me so much – He loves you so much that He would go to this great length to bring us home to Him. Question is, how do we respond to that? How do I respond to that? How do you respond to that?

A Father’s Father

We were chatting earlier about the incredible Father heart of God and there’s a reason for that. Here’s what I think: so many people are so busy living their lives that it’s hard for us to connect with this amazing love of God. All the clamour and the noise and the stuff that we do – we just rarely have time to stop and listen to the gentle, strong heartbeat of God … a heart that beats for us. And it goes on so long that we forget that we can actually experience a personal relationship with Him.

But that’s not the way it’s meant to be. An intimate, real personal relationship with God is open to each one of us – it doesn’t matter how old, how young, how good, how bad – it’s open to each one of us. What the colour of our skin is; whether we are rich or poor; whether in the world’s eyes by the world’s standards, we’re successful or whether we’re nobody – God is here for us and He has this amazing Father’s heart for each one of us.

Now, it’s one thing for me to tell you about it – it’s one thing for you to hear it on radio or on line or via a podcast but when you hear that and you look at your own life, it’s kind of easy to imagine that all this talk about God’s incredible Father heart, is just that … talk. ‘Not in my life – I’ve never experienced it. What is this joker talking about?’ Good question … good question!

I remember years ago, people talking about God and His love and all that stuff and thinking to myself, ‘Yea, well, you know, what’s that based on?’ Because all I ever saw of Christians was the grumpy old men they put on TV in the short eight second grabs on the evening news. Men who told us we shouldn’t be doing this and we shouldn’t be doing that. In fact, my overwhelming impression was that, here was a bunch of party poopers; people who seemed to be intent on telling us all the things we shouldn’t be doing and yet, when I look at them, they didn’t seem to be enjoying life and they never actually, any of them, brought any joy into my life.

Now, you might find that a little offensive and maybe that perception wasn’t entirely accurate but that was my perception and it was a perception that, in fact, many people still have, from the outside looking in. And so it kind of jarred with me, this talk of God’s love. I remember when I was a teenager, it was all the rage to have these brightly coloured, psychedelic ‘Jesus Loves You’ stickers stuck on your school bag and stuff. Seemed to me all this talk about God’s love was a recent fabrication. I knew what being a Christian was all about! It was about religion and boring and interminably long church services, about following rules, about being austere and not having any fun and … I knew, I just knew.

But it turns out that God … God isn’t some recent invention and His love isn’t the fabrication of some recent PR campaign. It turns out that the Father heart of God has been around a long, long time – for eons in human history. Jesus popularised the term “My Father” – in fact, He most often actually said “My Dad” in referring to God. That was radical; it was considered sacrilegious at the time. And back in the Old Testament days, people didn’t even utter God’s name, they so revered Him.

But interestingly, the words ‘God and Father’ appear in the same sentence over and over again in the Old Testament – just not in the same familiar way that Jesus used them. Instead, in the Old Testament, its God saying of Himself, “I am the God of your father.” There was a time when Isaac, Abraham’s son was going through a bit of a rough trot – Genesis chapter 26, verse 24:

“And that very night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake. I am the God of your father.”

Now, why did God say that? Why did He make the claim of being the God of Isaac’s father? Why is God pointing backwards in history? Well, here’s what I think: because so often it’s hard to believe in this mighty, amazing Father heart of God in the middle of the maelstrom of our lives.

So often with all that’s going on around us – with all that life’s throwing at us – with business or loneliness or frustration or fear or whatever it is, man, it’s so hard to believe that God is in this place with us. It is so hard to believe that God’s great and mighty Father heart, beats for us. Have you ever felt that way? You know the theory; you know what God’s supposed to be like and you know what He’s supposed to do and that He’s supposed to show up – that’s the theory. But the theory seems such an incredibly long way away from the practical reality that we live out day by day, when stuff is happening all around us.

And that’s what’s happening here for Isaac, around this time when God appeared. There was a famine in the land; that meant people were starving to death and Isaac … Isaac wanted to flee to Egypt, yet God called him to stay. And he planted a crop, despite the famine, and he went and had to re-dig the wells that his dad had dug years before because people had come along and filled them up and then, he slaved away at digging out those wells. But masses of people came from all around and claimed the water, so he’d dig another well and that would cause arguments and contention. So he went and dug another well and … well, he was exhausted and dejected and frustrated.

And my hunch is that, each of us, in our own way, finds that story more than just a bit familiar. We know what it is to live a life like that – it’s tough, it’s demoralising and God … God comes along and says to this man, in the middle of all this stuff; in the middle of his pain and frustrations and the famine and his exhaustion, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.” Why? Because Abraham made it through!

Abraham had a tough life and he made it through. And no doubt Abraham had sat round the camp fires at night with young Isaac and told him the stories of God’s faithfulness. Like when he had been on this long journey that lasted a quarter of a century, to the Promised Land; the impossible promise of a son, even though he and his wife were old and barren; about the night where he cried out to God in his frustration and isolation and fear, the night when God showed up, in Genesis chapter 15:

“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

How beautiful and tender and wondrous was God’s love and God’s faithfulness to Abraham. That’s what Isaac needed to know that night in his restless sleep. He needed to know, deep in his heart, that this God isn’t some ‘Johnny come lately’, that the love of God is real. It was real for his father – it was real for him; it’s real here and now.

When you are in that place that Isaac was in, I want to encourage you to pick up the Bible and read about the God of your fathers – the God who’s been faithful and loving down through the centuries in ways that completely blow us away. And when we read those stories, in them we will hear a strong, gently heartbeat; it’s the sound of the mighty Father heart of God.

Can’t Possibly Be for Me

So often when I start sharing about the wonder and the glory of the incredible Father heart of God, people respond something like this: well, you know, that may well be, but that guy rabbiting on so much about how God loves me, what does he know? He doesn’t know me! He doesn’t know the things I’ve done. He doesn’t know what mess I have in my life. He doesn’t know what a ‘nobody’ I am. This incredible Father heart of God may well be, but for other people, not for me.

And I know how easy it is to feel that way and to think that way. There have been times along my journey when I have felt exactly the same way. But today I want to banish those thoughts and those feelings, once and for all – and not through anything particularly clever that I have to say, but with the very words of Jesus Himself. He was wanting to explain to the people how the incredible Father heart of God was for them, so He told this parable, which is what He often did to bring the wonderful, glorious truths of God right down to earth so we could understand them.

So have a listen as Jesus explains all about the incredible Father heart of God. To some it might be a familiar story but simply told and simply read, I know no more powerful way of healing the heart of the one who’s listening today and imagining that this incredible Father heart of God can’t possibly be for them. Have a listen – from Luke chapter 15:

“Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the property and I will go. So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating but no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough to eat and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands. So he set off and went to his dad. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran out and threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now he’s found. And they began to celebrate.

“But the elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. The slave said, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” The other son became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes; you killed the fatted calf for him. The father said to him. “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate, we had to rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and now he’s found.”

What that young son did was foolish – I’ve been there; you’ve been there – and yet he turned back to his father, not out of some great sense of right or wrong but because he was starving. And his dad … his dad was waiting for him out by the letter box and instead of admonishing him or giving him a lecture, he threw his arms around him, put a robe on him, the family ring, sandals for his feet – he threw a party.

The other son was right – it wasn’t fair but there’s nothing fair about the mercy and the grace of God. It’s completely unfair! That’s because it springs out of the incredible … the incredible Father heart of God – a heart that God has for you and a heart that He has for me.

Even when His children have dishonoured Him; even when He’s been taken to the point of punishing them, there’s a purpose in this punishment – to bring them back to Him. And there … right there we discover the incredible faithfulness of God.

A Father’s Authority

Back in my day when I was growing up, I remember getting more than belting from my dad. The strap a couple of times; the odd slap across the backside – not often mind you; pretty rare actually but not surprisingly, those times stick in my memory. I don’t feel in any way traumatised by those things; I don’t feel angry towards him; I don’t feel as though he shouldn’t have done those things. Of course, in disciplining a child, some people do go overboard and that has horrible consequences. Children are abused; sometimes even killed through beatings and that’s a terrible thing but that never happened to me.

My parents disciplined us, my sister and me. Sometimes it was a belting, other times it was being sent to our room or banned from watching the TV – black and white, of course, back in those days – or we weren’t allowed to go out and play with our friends. And at the time it was never fun – I mean, who enjoys being disciplined? And perhaps, sometimes my parents didn’t quite get it right – especially, let me tell you, when it was my sister’s fault and I copped the blame instead. Of course it never happened the other way around!!

But I think of the alternatives – a child who grows without discipline – and that’s a pretty scary thought, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what part of life it is, there have to be boundaries. There are rules, there are consequences if we step over the boundaries and break the rules – whether it’s driving a car, whether it’s in business, whether it’s simply walking down the street – there are laws and breaking them has consequences.

It I walk down the street and just punch someone in the nose, well, chances are, that I’ll end up in front of a magistrate with a charge for assault. If I walk into a shop and just take something without paying for it, well, I can expect to be fined or locked up. And if the whole system of law and justice is working well in the place where we live, we don’t sit there at home thinking how oppressed we feel by those laws, do we? I mean, I don’t sit as home thinking, ‘Man, I feel so oppressed! It’s so unfair that I can’t drive my car down the street at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.’

Those laws don’t oppress me – they keep me safe. They set me free to enjoy the world and the country and the city in which I live. Okay, people still break laws. Someone was murdered recently, just a kilometre from where I live. Sure, people still break the speed limit or they drink and drive or they kill children, but the fact that the laws exist and that most of the time, most of the people keep them, it brings a level of safety and freedom that lets us get on with our lives and live them to the full. That’s because laws are carefully designed to balance personal freedom with the need to restrict behaviour that is dangerous and bad.

That might be oversimplifying things a tad, but that’s basically it. Some of the people listening to the programme today, live in a place where the rule of law has broken down – where people can do almost whatever they like and that’s a dangerous place – very dangerous. Others perhaps live in a place where the laws have been enacted but instead of protecting freedom, they restrict it. Or they live in a place where authorities can abuse the rules and arrest people just when they feel like it.

In those places the laws don’t work well at all. In those places the laws oppress people instead of setting them free. Good laws; good rules basically only prevent us from doing what’s wrong. That’s the basic principle – it’s a good one and none of us would argue with that – it’s obvious; it’s plain common sense.

It’s the same at home when we are growing up. Our parents set boundaries for us in our behaviour, in what we say, in what we do, in when we come home at night. Maybe we might not have set those boundaries exactly the same way, but hey, when we have kids we end up doing exactly the same thing.

One of the things that really, truly worried me about these Christians was that religion was just another bunch of rules – don’t do this, don’t do that, if you break the rules, then WHAMO, God sends a lightning bolt out of the sky to zap us – one flash and you’re ash!! And, I reasoned, that is absolutely no way to live your life. I mean, who wants it; who needs it? Give me a break!

Funny the ideas we have! We accept boundaries and rules in every other part of our lives because whilst we may not agree with the precise detail, we understand that they’re need, that they’re reasonable and that they’re good. But then when it comes to God, we imagine that He’s some kind of lunatic despot; that He keeps a whole bunch of impossible rules on our shoulders. But what if He’s not? What if God truly is our Father and because He’s God and because He’s our Dad, He only wants to protect us from the stuff that’s wrong and the stuff that’s going to hurt us? What if the boundaries that He sets are much wider than we ever expected; what if the things that He says ‘don’t do’ are actually very few? And what if it’s pretty obvious that the things to which He says ‘don’t’ are really, really straight forward and obvious – well?

Have a listen to Galatians chapter 5, beginning at verse 19. It says:

“The works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, (which means ‘sleeping around’) impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissentions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom God.”

Now, I don’t know about you but all of those seem pretty obvious to me. They’re the things that are going to hurt us and other people; things that aren’t good for us; things that are going to rob us of a full and abundant life. And there’s actually not many of them there.

God’s our Father; Abba, Dad and He loves us; He loves us so much. He wants us to live this amazing, abundant life, just like any dad wants for his children – wherever they’re born; whatever their circumstances, He wants them to overcome this world and be all that they were made to be. And sometimes, like any good dad, He’s going to discipline us; He’s going to set us straight – let us wear the consequences of our own mistakes so that we’ll learn.

And no it won’t be fun at the time. Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 7, says:

“Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent doesn’t discipline? If you don’t have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? … Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Isn’t that fabulous? A father who fails to discipline his children, frankly, isn’t doing his job because his job is to help them to grow up and part of that growing up is that we have to learn to control ourselves. And as a dad, I can tell you, sometimes the easiest thing in the world would have been to give up. It’s hard work and sometimes you just can’t be bothered but a father who does love his children, doesn’t give up. And I thank God I had a dad who didn’t give up.

That’s what our Father in heaven is like. It’s part of God’s incredible Father heart for us.

A Father’s Faithfulness

It’s good to talk about God’s discipline but there’s another side to Him that’s just as important – His faithfulness. One of the things about being a dad is this: your children don’t always honour you the way they should. In fact, that’s an absolute given! They don’t always grow up to be what you wanted them to be. Children go their own way in life eventually and sometimes we are blessed to have children in whom we can delight. Other times it’s not that easy. Other times they go and live a life that, to the father, is just plain wrong. Sometimes they reject their father; sometimes they don’t show their father the honour that’s due to him as their father. That’s life; that’s the way it is.

And when our children turn their backs on us, as sometimes they do, or when our children forsake the values and the morals that we’ve brought them up with, as a father, that hurts. I can tell you it hurts terribly. The question is, as a father, how do you respond? What do you do? Sometimes it has to be tough love – sometimes we have to tell things just the way they are and sometimes we have to stand our ground because right is right and wrong is wrong, however much we may love our children. And when you look at it that way through the eyes of a dad, then the way that God the Father behaves towards us, well, it starts to kind of make some sense – at least it does to me.

There was a time when God’s chosen people, Israel, rebelled against their God. In fact, there were lots and lots of times like that – it’s the whole story of the Old Testament. The very name ‘Israel’ means ‘he struggles with God’. The whole story of the Old Testament is how Israel struggles with God – God punishes them but then … then He does the same thing time and time again. Let me share with you one particular time when God’s chosen people had rejected their God. Jeremiah chapter 32, beginning at verse 34:

“They set up their abominations in the house that bears my name,” said God, “and defiled it. They built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Mollech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination, causing Judah to sin.

Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, “It is being given into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”

In other words, they rebelled against God by worshipping idols and other gods and so God punished them by exile; He destroyed Jerusalem; He destroyed the temple – it was a terrible time for God’s chosen people. They went into slavery and exile in Babylon. Now God didn’t do this on a whim, it took Him several centuries of His people’s unfaithfulness for this judgement to fall. But even in their punishment; even in their slavery, God had a good plan for them. We’ll continue on, Jeremiah chapter 32, going on at verse 37. God says:

“See, I am going to gather them from all the lands to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in my great indignation; I will bring them back to this place, and I will settle them in safety. They shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing good to them, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul. For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them.”

There’s a reason for all that. It’s a very important reason – it’s about the Father heart of God. Even when His children have dishonoured Him – even when He’s been taken to the point of punishing them, there’s a purpose in this punishment – to bring them back to Him. And there; right there, we discover the incredible faithfulness of God. Fathers are always faithful to their children – at least, they should be. Even when their children rebel; even when dads have to discipline them, fathers discipline in love, with the purpose, not of destroying their children, but of bringing them up, helping them to grow up and bringing them back.

The heart of a father should be filled with incredible faithfulness; the sort of faithfulness that lasts a life time. And that’s precisely who God is! That’s what King David wrote – he said, in Psalm 86, verse 15:

“But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

At times in my life as a dad, I’ve been quick to anger. It’s the personality; the Father heart of God towards me, that’s been working in me to heal me of that. There is an enormous wisdom in being slow to anger – something that every dad needs to learn. I might add here that some fathers have to learn that sometimes they do have to show some anger; sometimes they do have to discipline their children – that’s an investment that costs us emotionally but it’s a necessary investment.

What I love about God though, is that He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger. Even though He does anger if we continue to provoke Him, make no mistake, He will discipline us. You know what mercy and grace are? They’re things that by definition, we don’t deserve. When God shows me mercy He’s withholding the punishment that I deserve and giving me time and space to sort out my life. That’s what a father does. Kids are born into what should be a loving family because they have to grow from immaturity to maturity and the idea is that they have to have a safe, loving environment in which to make mistakes, to rebel, to learn how to grow up – even though that sometimes involves a father’s discipline and a father’s anger.

And right throughout the Old Testament, when we read of God that ‘He is slow to anger’, those words are almost always followed by these: ‘and abounding in steadfast love.’ That’s who our God is; our Dad and His grace and His mercy are poured out on the cross when He allowed His Son to take my punishment; the punishment I deserve, and yours, as He was nailed to that cross.

So many people are wandering around imagining that God is this god of rage; this cruel despot who will punish them if they set a foot wrong – this God who is sitting there, just waiting for them to step out of line so that He could whack them over the head. But that just isn’t true – that’s just not who He is. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness and that changes everything. It puts us in a place where, all of a sudden, we can rely on God’s mercy and grace. We can rely on the fact that God is show to anger. We can rely on the fact that He’s abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

I don’t know about you, but I make mistakes every day of my life. I get up – I plan on doing my best, I try to do my best, but I make mistakes. And now, instead of walking on egg shells, instead of spending my life worrying about what God is and how He’s going to punish me at every turn, I can just go to Him, relying on His grace; the grace and the mercy that He showed me by letting Jesus take my punishment for me. I can say God, I am sorry and I know that I’m forgiven and I know that I can turn around and move on.

The Father heart of God truly is amazing. His heart is full of steadfast love and faithfulness – even when we fail Him; even when we rebel against Him. His every move is designed to bring us back … back into a close, warm, intimate relationship with Him because that’s who He is – that’s God!!

What Do You Make of That?

Well, here’s the thing – what do you make of all that? On the one hand, God’s a Father who is prepared to discipline us – that’s exactly what His Word tells us. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 7:

“Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? … Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

And yet, on the other hand, He’s a God, a Dad, who is incredibly faithful. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Let me ask you a question: do those two go together in the one Father, in the one God, or are they contradictions? Don’t know about you, but I remember some of the times in my childhood when my father disciplined me.

As I said, I had the odd belting and the odd time when I was banned from watching my favourite TV shows after school. The old slap on the wrist when my hand went into the cookie jar when it shouldn’t have. I look back on it, as I said earlier, it wasn’t fun at the time but had my father not done that, I can’t imagine how I would have turned out. I actually think that it’s a sign of great love that parents take the time and the effort and the emotional energy to discipline their children.

You see, kids who are neglected by their parents – and it happens at every level of the socioeconomic scale – from the rich and famous through to the very poor – you see those kids who’ve been neglected by their parents and they have anger and resentment and deep hurt going on in their lives. Of course, there’s a line that a parent can step over when they are disciplining their children – when discipline becomes violence – and that’s not right.

A good, solid discipline is part of being a loving parent and that’s something that I appreciate from both my parents – investment that they made to my life. And there’s a purpose to it: the purpose is to help us to grow up and to live a good life. And there’s a purpose to God’s discipline too – it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it – a fruitful life. Now Jesus said in John chapter 15, as well. He said:

“I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower. He removes every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

To tell you the truth, pruning is not fun but it is an investment of love. And actually, I don’t see God’s discipline on the one hand and His faithfulness on the other, as being some diametrically opposed difference that’s hard to reconcile. I truly believe God’s discipline is simply part of His incredible faithfulness towards us. He’s not one of these angry, despotic fathers who fly off the handle at the slightest thing – no! He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

So a gentle, loving, faithful God but a God who will, out of His great love and faithfulness, prune us from time to time; cut us back from time to time – let us travel, seemingly alone, through a wilderness, from time to time; allow us to suffer from time to time, in order that His purposes: His great hope; His great plan for our lives, will be achieved. And that’s why, as Paul writes in Romans chapter 5, that’s why:

“….we can boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

God is an amazing God. That’s who He is – that’s how He loves us through His Father’s heart; His great and mighty and incredible Father’s heart. He is a God of faithfulness, He is slow to anger, He is abounding in steadfast love and yet He loves us so much that He’s prepared to take the time and make the investment, from time to time, to prune us back; to cut us back; to discipline us, so that we will bear much fruit.

And Jesus went on to say, “It is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit.”

This is God!!

The Bible is full, full to overflowing with God’s express desire to be there for us in our experience so that when we need His affection most, we can have it.

A Father’s Generosity

With all the things we have to do to earn a living and just live life, it’s so easy to be focussed on the ‘doing’ that we forget about the ‘being’. We’re called ‘human beings’ not ‘human doings’ – although judging from the way that a lot of people live their lives, you could be forgiven for getting the two mixed up.

One of the reasons I love getting up really early in the morning is that it’s so quiet and still. In the summer months, I open the door to my study and I sit and peck away at the computer preparing these programs. I love the stillness. I love just stopping and breathing in the fresh, cool air of the morning and thanking God for being alive and the sweetness of the air in my lungs. A new day, fresh challenges – things to do of course.

But ‘being’ – knowing God, knowing how wonderful it is to be alive and to have another day to know Him and serve Him and love Him – that is an awesome thing. Being is the place where I draw the strength for my doing. As Paul the Apostle wrote almost 2 thousand years ago – ‘in Him we live and move and have our being’. And that’s why last week and this week again, on the program, we’re taking a look at the incredible Father heart of God!

Just stopping amidst all the noise and clamour of life … just to be. Just to hear the strong, gentle heartbeat of God. To hear it for ourselves. And one of the things that I hear when I hear the heart of God beating, is the generosity of God. You know, I’m a dad and I can tell you this – God made dads. He hardwired us to want to bless our children. I can’t help myself. I want to see my kids blessed. Not that I’m a perfect father every day. I’m not. It’s not that I don’t get cranky or grumpy sometimes. I do. But we dads – 99.9% of us – want to bless our children.

And you see, it’s the nature of fatherhood that God’s tapping into when He reveals Himself to us as God the Father. Jesus – radically, heretically in the eyes of many – called God His father, and He used this Word ‘Abba’ which literally means ‘Dad’. To Jesus, ‘God’ equals ‘Dad’. Strong and loving – and hardwired to bless His children. I want to read to you this beautiful passage. It was Jesus explaining how Dad is wired, how God the Dad wants to bless us. Have a listen and as you pause, let God’s Word sink deep into your heart:

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:7-11)

Don’t you love it? Jesus is directly reaching into our understanding of what a good parent is. He’s directly reaching into our parental understanding of the fact that we love to bless our children. I mean, think about being a parent. It’s years of hard grind. The sleepless nights. A friend of mine in South Africa, Jonathan, his little baby is just a few weeks old. And I don’t know if you use the technology but he’s one of my friends on Skype, so that we can call each other over the internet and talk.

And one of the things that the Skype application lets you do is have a little mood message. Jonathan’s one of those people who regularly updates his mood message and the week that I prepared this program, his mood message said “No one told me the sixth week would be so rough! Fortunately it’s week seven now”. Anyone who’s had babies knows what he’s talking about.

And then they grow up and we have to teach them over and over and over and over and over again. ‘No. Don’t do that’. ‘No. Don’t rub your food in your hair’. Over and over. And then before long they’re teenagers and fortunately by then they know it all. And then they become adults, by which time we parents are pretty well bankrupt from bringing them up and we’re old and grey.

Bringing up children is an incredibly tough gig and yet, all along, what we really want to do is to bless them. When you think about it that way, this desire to bless our children is pretty much counterintuitive isn’t it?! But Jesus knows it’s in us and so in teaching us what God’s like, He appeals to our understanding of this hardwired passion of blessing and generosity we have towards our children.

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?

And then, then He steps this parental passion of blessing and generosity up a huge notch, from a weak and imperfect and fallible parent, to a perfect and mighty God.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

So, what’s Jesus saying here? God is just like us only a gazillion times better. God is generous. God has a passion to bless His children, just the way you do, only much, much better. And we discover God’s abundant generosity over and over and over again in His Word.

Ephesians 1:3 says that He’s already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. In Ephesians 1:7&8 we discover that He’s lavished His grace on us – with all wisdom and insight. The picture there is of overflowing abundance. Completely overflowing. More than enough:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back. (Luke 6:38)

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. But I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

And those are just a few. God is a God of incredibly generosity.

To Abraham He said: I will make you exceedingly fruitful. (Genesis 17:6).

My friend sometimes we look around and it’s hard to see the generosity of God. That’s because we’re racing around so busy, too busy to notice it. But when we get still before God in the cool of the morning, completely alone with Him, and just breathe in the sweet air that He’s given us, and start to read His Word for what it is – start to see Him for who He is – what we discover is a God of great generosity.

God is generous towards His children. And sometimes when the going gets a bit tough, our response is to pedal harder and harder. And we become more and more exhausted. We worry, we fret, we carry on. Instead of placing our faith in God the Dad, our Father in Heaven who’s very nature is to be exceedingly generous towards us like any father to help us with the things we’re struggling with, to see us grow and developed and be blessed:

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

My prayer is that those words would warm your heart today. May they just rest inside you and may the Spirit of God make them a part of who you are. Because when we take God’s Word in, when we feed on it … well, you know the saying: we are what we eat. And God the Dad is the most generous and gracious dad there is.

A Father’s Affection

One of the things that many men find a bit difficult to show is affection. Many of us grew up with fathers who didn’t show much affection. And so – well, you know how it is – it’s what we learned. We imagine that being a man, we’re meant to be strong and part of that strength is not to show in affection. Men aren’t supposed to cry. Men aren’t supposed to be this or do that.

Now hopefully that’s changing a bit. But you know what I mean. Often for a man it’s difficult to show affection. But children, children need affection about as much as they need mother’s milk. Affection is what tells them that they’re safe and they’re secure and they’re loved.

It’s when children are shown affection that they grow up with a healthy sense of self, with a sense of confidence. That’s why God puts kids into families. So that we’ll love them and nurture them and keep them safe. That’s why kids need hugs. It’s why they need words of encouragement. It’s why they need to be told: yes, you can do this. Yes, you are beautiful. Yes, you are good. God gave kids parents for us to do that, and a huge, huge part of this safe, loving, nurturing family environment that kids are supposed to grow up in is affection. And when they don’t get that – and many don’t – the effects on their lives are devastating.

So, here’s the question: if God is indeed a father, as Jesus told us He is, does He show us affection? And if so, HOW? A man by the name of Barry Adams wrote a book called ‘Father’s Love Letter’ – it’s just a brilliant book, and like most brilliant books, it’s quite short, about 120 odd pages.

And what he does, is that he goes through God’s Word and pulls out the wonderful, warm and intimate things that God says about us – you and me, how God feels about us, how He sees us, and puts them all together in this one book. In that book He takes us to Psalm 139 where God says:

You may not know me, but I know everything about you. I know when you sit down and when you rise up. I’m familiar with all your ways.

God is our Dad. He was the one that knit us together in our mother’s womb. He was the one that decided the incredibly complex combination of genes and DNA to make us who we are. He was the one that chose everyday of our lives for us. He is the most amazing Father and His great and mighty Father’s heart beats for us. And when we ache, He aches for us, and when we laugh, He laughs with us. And you see that right throughout His love letter to us – this beautiful thing they call the Bible.

I just want to pick out a small handful of the things that He says to us in that Love Letter, because my hunch is that there are a few of us today who need to know … who need to know beyond any shadow of doubt that God our Dad wants to put His arms around us and to lavish His affection on us. You know when I need God’s affection more than any other time? When I’ve taken a hit, when I’m down low, when I’m struggling or tired or rejected. I mean – think about it – when a child falls over and skins it’s knee the thing it needs most right at that moment is a mother or a father to throw their arms around the child to hold him or her close and whisper comforting words in their ears.

When a young child runs in a race at school or they try their hardest in the art competition and they miss out on a prize and their lip quivers and the tears well up in their eyes. Right at that moment they need a parent to step in and show them affection, both in word and in deed.

Affection at other times, well, it’s really nice. I love it when my wife gives me a kiss, or she cuddles me or she tells me that she loves me. I love that. But it’s when I’ve been through some disappointment, or I’m tired or dejected, that’s when I need the soothing balm of her affection. That’s when her affection works it’s greatest healing in me. Well, have a listen to the affection that God has for us in those times:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3)

Do you see that? God Himself pulls along side in our affliction, in those times when we need Him. At that time we actually need to experience His love. We need to experience His Presence. Some people shy away from that, this notion that religion is something you understand with your head alone and that anything experiential isn’t true Christianity.

Rubbish! The Bible is full, full to overflowing with God’s express desire to be there for is in our experience, so that when we need His affection most, we can have it. Jesus, just before He’s about to be crucified says to His disciples:

You know, I’m going to send you another comforter another one just like me to be with you forever. (John 14:15) And He goes on to say … I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. (John 14:18)

Now the point of saying that is that He’s about to be crucified and they are going to fear for their lives these disciples and then for a little while they’ll see Him again when he’s risen. But once He ascends into heaven, they won’t see Him. They’ve been with Him three-and-a-half years now, seen His miracles, heard His amazing wisdom, experienced His strength. And in a little while He’ll be gone. And so He says to them:

‘I will not leave you orphaned. I will not leave you as little children without a parent to comfort you and guide you and teach you and keep you safe. I am sending another comforter just like me. The Holy Spirit to be with you through all your trials and tribulations. The very Presence of God in you, so that you can know and experience the affection, the comfort, the intimacy of God Himself in your day to day life’.

In fact, so important is this, that a little later Jesus actually says to them, ‘You know something, it’s good that I’m going away for if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t be able to send you this new comforter’. (John 16:7) In other words: ‘This new comforter – the Holy Spirit – is even better than having me around’.

Let that sink in! God’s intimacy and affection through His Presence in us as we believe in Jesus His Son is actually better than having Jesus here in the flesh. Why? Because the Spirit of God is with each believer every minute of every day. Every step. Every trial. Every skinned knee. Every loss and disappointment. The Spirit of God, the Comforter just like Jesus Himself, is with us. And when we know that, and when we put our trust in this Comforter, then we can and will experience the affection of Father God.

Just think of this amazing provision that He’s made for us – His Comforter, His Spirit – dwelling in us when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. My friend, when we put our trust in what God says then, then we can experience the very Presence of God. We can experience His affection, His comfort, His arms around us, His words of assurance.

That’s God. That’s who He is. God the Dad. God the Comforter.

Be Still and Know

You know what I see time and time and time and time again, is people who believe in God, believe in Jesus but they have incredibly low expectations of God. Sure, they read about the Blessing of God and the Affection of God and the Faithfulness of God and the Love of God – but they just don’t expect those things about God to be things that would ever happen in their lives. We talked a bit about this on the program a couple of weeks ago.

And the reason they don’t is that in their minds they’ve never experience those things. Here’s how the reasoning goes: ‘Well, you know, look at the mess things are in. At work, I missed out on that job promotion and my second son, look at the mess he’s making of his life … and then some joker runs up the back of my car’.

So obviously the blessing, faithfulness, affection and love of God were never meant for their lives. That’s the logic. But – and here’s the huge BUT – it’s completely flawed logic. I want to share with you one of my favourite psalms with you. It’s about God, in the middle of a human mess!!!

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. (Psalm 46:1-9)

What the psalmist is saying here is: well, so the world’s falling apart, mountains are falling into the sea, the waters are roaring, the earth is moving. The Hebrews were scared of being on the water, this was a fearsome thing. Nations come against us – but you know in the middle of the mayhem – in the middle of the mess:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

But how do we get a handle on that. Let me ask you, how do we hear the heart beat of God … for ourselves? Instead of other people coming along and telling us God’s there, how do we hear His heart beat for ourselves? How do we know that we know that we know that He’s here? How do we experience His Presence amidst the clamour and noise and pressure and fear and …? Well, have a listen to what David has to say as He concludes this psalm:

“Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

It’s so simple, it’s almost embarrassing that it wasn’t obvious to us in the first place. Get still. You can’t hear God’s heart beat in the middle of the battle … when everything’s happening, when the mountains are trembling and falling into the sea.

Get still: in the cool of the morning; at lunchtime in the park; in the evening alone; whenever or wherever makes sense for each one of us in our circumstances – get still before God. And you know what happens then He speaks to us. Through His Word and His Spirit He speaks to us. He shows us the river of gladness running from Him into our lives. He shows us that He is in the middle of this with us and that we will not be shaken. He gently embraces us and opens our eyes to the reality, the powerful reality of His Presence and who He is.

My friend, get still. Get still before Him and know that He is God. Know not just because someone else came along and told you, but because you have experienced the Presence of God for yourself.

And when we stop, get still, pause wait … and hear the very heart beat of God!

When we stop long enough to hear His heartbeat for ourselves, what we discover is a God of such incredible power; a God above all on the one hand, but a God who is closer to us than the deepest secret of our hearts.

A Father’s Attention

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who works as a relief teacher in some of the wealthiest private schools in the country. These children have everything that money can buy – the latest toys and gadgets – more disposable income by way of pocket money than many families have to live off in a week, in the developing world. On top of that, they live in fantastic houses with amazing views and more rooms than anyone could ever imagine.

I remember her telling me this story. She said: it would blow your mind but … and there is inevitably a ‘but’ … but she said, the one thing that many, many of them don’t have is their parents’ attention. They come home to empty homes – they go into their rooms, they chat with their friends online, but they hardly see their parents, in fact, they may as well be orphans. And she told me of the deep pain in many of these children’s hearts. They have everything, yet in their heart of hearts, they’d trade it all for some attention from their parents.

And you know something – if God holds Himself out to be our Father, then unless He gives us His attention, He’s no better than the wealthy parents of those kids I’ve just been telling you about. What’s your image of God? I mean, if He is God and if He did create the whole universe and if He does hold all things together, then He’s one busy God. As well as the six point seven five billion people alive on planet Earth today, He’s got a trillion, trillion stars to worry about – not to mention those people who have died and gone to be with Him.

And because we are so often too busy to make time for God – be honest, many people are – it’s easy to start getting this idea that God is far too busy to worry about, oh, the little ups and downs in my life. I’ve met so many people who don’t take their needs to God in prayer because they’re carrying this picture of God around in their heads that says, ‘Well, you know, He couldn’t be bothered with that – He’d be too busy and my need is too trivial.’

Let me take you back to being a kid for a while. Remember the little disappointments – you know, when the other kids at school perhaps made fun of you or your pet caterpillar died or your favourite toy broke – you look back on those now as an adult and we smile to see how trivial those things were in the scheme of things. But when we are going through them, they were everything; they were the most important things in our little world.

I was devastated when my first goldfish died; I was devastated when other kids poked fun at me because I couldn’t run as fast as them. And on the flip side, when we are children we need our parents to participate in our joys and triumphs – we need them to celebrate our celebrations with us. That’s why kids’ birthdays are so important; that’s why praising children is so important; children need their parent’s attention.

And actually, when we grow up, it’s the same thing. The person who sneered at us and belittled us at the office today; the difficulties and the triumphs of life – we need someone to share those with us, don’t we? But does God notice; does God share in those little things with us? Or is He too busy, not really that interested? Come on, in your life, what’s the answer to that question?

Jesus was talking to people about their fears and concerns one day. You know, the people whose opinion we value; the people who seem to have the power of life and death over our lives and He was making the point that perhaps, we are focusing on the wrong people. Have a listen – Matthew chapter 10, beginning at verse 24:

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave to be like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household!
So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing is secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both your body and your soul in hell.”

So Jesus is saying to us, ‘Look, all these people who seem to be powerful today, who laugh at you for believing in Jesus; who poke fun at you; who malign God’s people – stop worrying about them. One day their deeds will be uncovered; one day they will get their comeuppance.

The one that you really need to get focussed on here is God because He has eternal power of life and death over you. But then in a sharp twist – something that Jesus often did when He was speaking – He hit people with the completely unexpected – tell them what God was really like. And this is what he says; straight on from what we were talking about before, about this God that can destroy your body and soul. Matthew chapter 10, verse 29:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid, for you are of more value than many sparrows.”

There it is – the attention that God pays to us!! We are so busy focussing on all these people who don’t really matter in the scheme of things and all the time God’s eye is on us. In many parts of the world sparrows are a pest – they’re in plague proportions. So not only are they worthless, they’re worse than worthless. When it comes to the animal kingdom, they’re pretty well down there in the pecking order, aren’t they?

That’s why Jesus chose them for this example. And He tells us that when one of them falls out of the sky – imagine this little sparrow flying along, flapping its little wings and all of a sudden he has a little heart attack and plummets into the dirt. Well, God notices that – nothing escapes His attention! And how much more are you and I worth in His sight than that little sparrow? Infinitely more is the answer!

And we somehow delude ourselves into thinking that God doesn’t notice the little things in our lives – that He doesn’t pay attention to our troubles and our triumphs. ‘Get out of here’, Jesus is saying, ‘that thinking completely misses the point. Get your focus off people, get it back onto God and you will see that He doesn’t miss a thing … not a thing. That’s how much He is into the detail of our lives. That’s how much this God, who created all the universe, lavishes His attention on you and on me. That’s what Jesus is saying here, to you and me, my friend.

When we stop long enough to hear His heart beat for ourselves, what we discover is a God of such incredible power; a God above all on the one hand but a God who is closer to us than the deepest secret of our hearts. We need never ever be afraid to take anything and everything to Him; however big, however small, to chat, to pray, to ask Him for help, for wisdom – He’s an amazing God. No job too big, no job too small.

That’s God!!

A Father’s Acceptance

Have you ever done something really dumb – I mean, really, really dumb? Perhaps you have lied or cheated or stolen, or maybe you stabbed someone in the back or maybe you’ve hurt someone you love beyond measure? Perhaps you’ve … well, the list goes on doesn’t it? And here’s the thing – we all have things in our past that we’re not proud of … things that, well, if there was some way, we’d wind back and undo them and do them differently. We all have that – problem is, we can’t wind them back; we can’t undo them.

And what’s happened as a result of our stupidity, or our wrong, or our selfishness is that relationships are broken. I wonder whether there is a single person alive on this planet today who hasn’t done something to contribute to the breakdown of a relationship – I very much doubt it. And when those relationships are broken, what happens is that you or I are rejected by another person.

We failed someone or we hurt someone and so they’ve rejected us – they’ve thrown us on the scrap heap, as it were. Now quite probably, others have picked us up off that scrap heap and we get on with our lives, but when it comes to that one person … that one relationship, we are on the scrap heap.

And this reality shapes our expectation, that when we fail badly, the natural consequence of that is that we’re rejected – we’re thrown, as it were, on to the relationship scrap heap. And in a world that more and more values those who succeed, as measured against some worldly template of success, the more and more those who fail to succeed are rejected. That’s our expectation with people and sadly, it’s an expectation that for many, translates into their relationship with God.

Let me ask you – when you fail; when you turn against God; when you do things that are wrong in His sight, what’s your expectation? In your heart of hearts, what do you expect God to do with you? Many people know the theory that when we fail God that’s what sin is. When we do that and if we believe in Jesus, who died to pay for that sin again and rose from the dead to give us an eternal life, if we believe in that Jesus, then we can go to God and receive His forgiveness.

Many, many people know that, the problem is, we have become so conditioned by the world’s approach – if you succeed, you’re accepted, if you fail, you’re rejected – a bit simplistic perhaps, but accurate, never the less – we are so conditioned by that that we just can’t bring ourselves to put the theory about God’s grace and forgiveness into practice. We can’t image for one minute, that given the things that we’ve been into, that God could ever forgive us completely; that once we believe in Jesus, His acceptance is absolutely unconditional.

But this is not just some theory – this is the truth! It’s something that God would have us believe absolutely, wholeheartedly, completely. Perhaps you may have heard me speak about this once or twice before but Jesus told a story, a specific story; a parable to try to help us get this truth in our heads because it turns out, people had exactly the same problem: believing in this unconditional grace and acceptance of God back in the first century, as they do here at the beginning of the twenty first century.

It’s the story of the Prodigal Son: the son who grabbed his inheritance from Dad early and then went and blew it all and found himself starving; the son, who despite the shame of his stupidity and out of his hunger, turned back around and came home to Dad. Now have a listen to how Dad reacted on his return. Luke chapter 15, beginning at verse 18. The son says:

“Look, I will get up and go back to Dad. I’ll say to him, “Dad, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you and I’m just not worthy to be called your son. Look, just treat me like one of your hired hands.” So the son sets off and goes back to his father but, while he is still a far way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion and ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you and I’m not worthy to be called your son anymore.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quick, bring out a robe; the best one. Put it on him, put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet and go and get that fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate for this son of mine was dead but now he’s alive again, he was lost but now he is found,” and they began to celebrate.”

What that young son did was foolish – I’ve been there, you’ve been there – and he turned back to his father, not out of some great sense of right or wrong but because he was starving and Dad was waiting for him out by the letter box. Instead of admonishing him or giving him a lecture or … he threw his arms around him, he put a robe on him, a family ring, sandals for his feet – he threw a party. Now the other son – the other son who’d stayed home and was faithful – he got really angry. It wasn’t fair!! You can read about it in Luke chapter 15, beginning a verse 25. He became so angry that he wouldn’t go inside.

See, there’s nothing fair about the mercy and the grace of God – it’s completely unfair. That’s because it springs out of the incredible Father heart of God; a heart for you and a heart for me. The bit that really gets me about this story though is Dad standing at the letter box every day, not knowing when his son would come back; not even knowing whether he would ever see his boy again. And then when he glimpses him off in the distance, running towards him, throwing his arms around him, lavishing his love on him because of his father heart and that is what God is like.

A Father’s Hope

I’d like to conclude this series, over the last four weeks – “The Incredible Father Heart of God”, with a word of hope because it turns out that God has hopes and dreams and plans for our future – for yours and for mine. If God’s our Dad, well, of course He believes in us and hopes the best for us. In Psalm 139 He tells us that every day of our lives was written down in His book before any of them as yet existed. And in First Corinthians chapter 13 He tells us that love bears all things, believes all things and hopes all things and that love never comes to an end. And since God is love, since God is where we get our whole notion of love from, then His love for us is just like that – perfect in every way.

God, our Dad, looks at us and He believes in us – He made us, after all! He hand crafted us for the plans and purposes that He has for our lives. And that … that’s where God’s hopes differ from your average Dad’s hopes for his children because He made us, He knows exactly how He made us for different purposes and functions and we can see that as we look around – people are different. They have different motivations and gifts and abilities but it’s not just that He made us different, it’s that He wrote down every day of our lives in His book before any of them as yet existed. In other words, He made us for a purpose. You’ll often hear me say this because it’s so important. Who we are and the plan He has for our lives; those two go hand in hand – the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ – go hand in hand.

I, as a father, invest in my children and then release them into the world and I hope the best for them. I help them when I can, but by and large, the choices they make are theirs and totally out of my control. And God creates you and me and releases us into this world and He knows the choices we make at some point … some point are going to involve us rejecting Him. And this … this is where God does something an ordinary father can’t do – God makes provision for that. God, the Dad, knows we are going to reject Him at some point and go astray, in a way that deserves eternal punishment, so He makes provision for that, at great cost to Himself. Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 31:

“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”

In other words, God’s on our side! He demonstrates that by sending His one and only Son, Jesus, by giving Him up to death on a cross so that you and I can be reconciled back to God. Second Corinthians chapter 5, beginning at verse 18:

“All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

It’s in Jesus that we discover how much Dad loves us. The death of Jesus is the ultimate expression of a Father’s love for His children. “That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that everyone” not just some people, not just the spiritual superstars but everyone “who puts their faith in him will not perish but will have eternal life.”

I’m not sure whether you are a parent or not, but if you can, can you imagine – can you even begin to imagine – how hard it would be to give up your child to be nailed onto a cross to pay for the crimes of another person? Can you imagine that? But God, the Dad, did because He has a plan for our lives – a plan for His best and we often, inevitably, inexorably stray away from that plan. And Jesus is the way back – the way back to God, the Dad. Through Him we have forgiveness; through Him we’re reconciled back to Dad.

One of His disciples, just before He was crucified, protested: ‘We don’t know where you’re going – how do we get there?’ Have a listen to what Jesus said – John chapter 14, beginning at verse 5. Thomas said to Him:

“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ And Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and you have seen him.”

Putting our faith in Jesus – that’s the way back to God, the Father – it’s the only way back. And Dad’s opened the door – despite our rebellion; despite the fact that, when He set us free, into this world with a great plan for our lives, we wandered away from that plan; despite the fact that we’ve turned our backs on Him, time and time and time again – because He’s our Father, our Dad; because His love bears all things, hopes all things and believes all things; because He sees the potential in you and in me; because His great and mighty Father’s heart aches to spend an eternity with you and me.

He offers up the one thing that’s more precious to Him than anything else – His one and only Son – to suffer, to die a brutal death, in order to open up the way back to Him. A way that meets the need for justice, because God is a just God and our rebellion does demand punishment but a way that avoids the punishment we deserve, by putting it on the shoulders of His Son. So great is our Father’s love – Dad’s love for us – for you, for me, that He sent us His one and only Son to die for us in our place, so that whoever … whoever puts their faith in this Jesus will not perish in an eternal inferno but will have life eternal in the very presence of God.

That’s the hope in Dad’s heart for you and for me but the decision … the decision to respond; the decision to put our trust in this Jesus; the decision to take the way back – that decision is ours – completely ours. The cry of God’s heart – read it throughout the Bible, almost from the beginning to the end – is this: I will be your God and you … you will be My people. That’s the cry of the incredible Father heart of God and in and through Jesus, He’s done everything that’s needed to make that happen.

All we have to do is to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour because He is the way back – He is the only way back.

My friend, if you have never made that decision for yourself, I want to say this to you: don’t lay your head on a pillow tonight until you have given your life to Christ.