Episode 1. A Father’s Generosity
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One of the things that we dad’s pretty much like to do whenever we can – is to be generous to our children. We want the best for them, right – we want to lavish our love on them. Well – if …
It’s the beginning of another week and yes – the year is marching on. All the things we have to do to earn a living and just live life – 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 many 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 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 my strength for 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 again this week 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 kids.
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 the Word He used – Abba – literally means – Dad.
To Jesus God = 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 His words 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 6th week would be so rough! Fortunately it’s week 7 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? (Matthew 7:9-10)
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! (Matthew 7:11)
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 He’s already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places
Ephesians 1:7,8 – we discover that He’s lavished His grace on us – with all wisdom and insight – 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. 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 incredible 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! (Matthew 7:11)
May those words 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.
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