God: Our Father

Some of us have wonderful feedbacks about our fathers and that’s great! Some of us may have painful or hurtful memory about our fathers, and that is okay. Because more than our earthly fathers, we have an Ultimate Father who perfectly loves us.
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How would you describe your earthly father? 
Some of us have wonderful feedbacks about our fathers and that’s great! Some of us may have painful or hurtful memory about our fathers, and that is okay. Because more than our earthly fathers, we have an Ultimate Father who perfectly loves us. 

God wants to emphasize to us deeper the essence of His role as the Ultimate Father of our lives. And He wants to remind us that He is our personal Father and we will always be His little children in His eyes. So here are some of the important ways He fathers us:

1. As a Father, Our God disciplines us.

Proverbs 3:11-12 says “11 My child, don’t reject the Lord’s discipline,
    and don’t be upset when he corrects you.
12 For the Lord corrects those he loves,
    just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights”

Discipline is not easy. And if we are at the season of molding and refining through trials, please do not think that our God is punishing us. But instead, He is only teaching us discipline for our sake. This is so that we can become the better persons we need to be, and He wants us to be. 
His discipline is also for our protection.

2. As a Father, Our God protects us.

Psalm 91:14 says
14“Because he[b] loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
    I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

Just as how our earthly father looks upon our safety most of the time, God watches over each of us all the time. When we learn to sincerely love Him and completely acknowledge and trust His Name, His powerful protection works best upon us. For He is always ready to protect, rescue and save us from temptations and troubles.
 

3. As a Father, Our God takes care of us and provides for all our needs.

Psalm 23:1 “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”

God is our good Shepherd who takes care of us like a shepherd provides everything for his sheep. Do we know why God always uses sheep and shepherd relationship to exemplify His relationship to us?
It’s because a sheep is completely depended to its Shepherd. In same way, God wants us to depend on Him. 

4. As a Father, Our God leads and guides us. 

Psalm 25:8, “The Lord is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray.”

Our God is more than willing to always help us and lead us in the rightmost path everyday. But it is up to us if we follow Him. And even though sometimes we don’t, He willingly redirects us and realign us in the right path when we go astray in our lives.

Our God forgives us, accepts us and gives us endless second chances.
The Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-24) represents what kind of father our God is to us. No matter how much we hurt him in our decisions and in ways we dishonor Him, He will still wholeheartedly forgive us, accept us and give us second chances over and over again.

These are just some ways our God makes us experience His amazing fatherhood upon us. There are a lot more that He is doing. We only need to seek and depend on Him more. But lastly I want to share one of the biggest thing God has done to us as our Father.

Our God made the greatest sacrifice for us. Our earthly fathers are commonly recognized by their sacrifices to our families. But God made the greatest and most painful sacrifice a father could ever give.
Do you know what He did? 

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) 

How painful it is for the father to sacrifice His One and Only Son to save these sinful people who does not even know Him. 

And that is a representation of the pain God had undergone in order to save people like you and me. We are the people inside the train. The only compensation the father, the train operator, asks is for these people to acknowledge and realize that they have continued living that day because his son has died instead of them. 

And that is exactly what our God asks from us – our faith that Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, died for our sake. And through Him, we can now continue to live a grace-filled earthly life and a promising everlasting life as we surrender our life to Him. What an amazing God we have! Let’s praise Him! So now that we know what Our Heavenly father had sacrificed for us through sending His Son Jesus Christ, How will you respond to this amazing love and sacrifice?