God Is My Father

Happy New Year everyone! Another new beginning awaits, new calanders to be filled up and new chapters to unfold! Hope that your New Years celebration has been good.

I have been thinking a lot about the Fatherhood of God lately, how it affects me and my relationship to Him. I am fully aware of my sinfulness and how undeserved this love is towards me and yet He has chosen to adopt me in His grace and through His Son Jesus! When I think about the whole doctrine of adoption it truly boggels my mind, just the lengths that God has gone through in initiating a relationship with me. Ephesians 1:5 tells me that this relationship was in place even before I was ever a thought! that it happened according to God's will and His doing! I have absolutely nothing to do with it.

We have such a dysfunctional view of Fatherhood and it totally affects our view of God as our Father, there is such emotional fallout from all of the abuse and neglect that a lot of us experienced as children growing up in a fallen world and this time of year always makes me think about my father. He passed away on December 20th 1984 and my mother and I buried him on December 24th of that same year, I was 14. The absence of my Dad left a huge hole in my life and even in the loss and the grief, God's hand was upon my life and in that dark place my true Father had already adopted me as His son! God's gift of adoption is an act of His grace and nothing I can do or have done can affect that, it is a legal declaration!

I long to know God as my Father even more and I want this year to be a year of gaining a better understanding of who He is and gaining even more of an understanding of this amazing love that He has lavished on me through the giving of His Son. If you find yourself in a place of sadness and loss or if you struggle with seeing God as your Father, dwell on the docrtine of adoption. Read great books on the subject, Knowing God by J.I. Packer chapter 19 is a great place to start as well as God Our Father by John Koessler. Galatians 4:1-7 is a wonderful chapter to study, memorize and apply to your life, God is very eager to reveal Himself to you as Father and as J.I. Packer has said, "Father is the Christian name for God."