Knowing God as our Father

I am wondering if there are two truths more-or-less universal for us:  (1) our earthly fathers profoundly affect us; and (2) we have deep longings that a father must provide.

Some of us had fathers that chose their career over their families.  Others seemed to carry a godly balance.  Some were abusive with their words or fists.  Others worked hard to offer godly discipline and instruction.  Some seemed absorbed only in themselves and indifferent to their wives and children.  Others tried to invest time in their family.  Some seemed inept at natural conversation or encouragement in the flow of life.  Others seemed to have a word in season at key points in our lives.

All of these actions by our earthly fathers affect us.  Even if your father “succeeded” in his task as a father, he did so as a man and not as God.  His sins flavored all of his words and actions toward you.  In all of the time you had with him, he never fully escaped his sinfulness.

Connected to that are longings in each of us for love that only a father can provide.  At some level these longings are hard-wired into our souls.  At times they can spill over the edges of our lives and wreak havoc in our relationships when the longings become controlling for us.

If we can distill what it is that we long for, I think that it is the love of a father.  If we can distill what it is that an earthly father is to provide, it is a father’s love.  The problem is that both the father and the child are sinners, bringing to this profound relationship a host of idols and cravings and sins and desires that prevent the father from loving and the child from receiving the love that this father gives.  The earthly father corrupts the love that he gives; the child distorts the love they receive.

Does this mean that the situation is hopeless?  By no means!  God wants us to see that this human relationship cannot fulfill the “deep longings that a father must provide.”  They can be a great help to us in this, but ultimately, God himself is to be the Father that provides for these deep longings.   In fact, I think God himself placed those desires within us simply so that he could then fulfill them.

An earthly father is not made to do what only God can do.  The love our earthly fathers give us can create great stumbling blocks in our lives, or be a huge boon to us as we live out our lives.  In the end, however, they will do at best in part what someone else is meant to do perfectly.

That someone else is our heavenly Father.

It is stunning when we survey the love of our heavenly Father and realize how jigsaw-puzzle-piece-perfectly our typical longings for our earthly father are provided by our heavenly Father.  Notice the following:

• We crave from our earthly fathers to say…; God says as our heavenly Father…

• We crave: “I will always be here for you”    God says: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb 13:5).
• We crave: “You are special to me”              God says: “you are fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:13-16).
• We crave: “Relax, I’m here”                         God says: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden…you will find rest for your souls” (Mat 11:28-30).
• We crave: “You are gifted”    God says: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7).
• We crave: “I want to spend time with you”    God says: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (Jam 4:8).
• We crave: “You can come to me any time”    God says: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16). “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry,  ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom 8:15).
• We crave: “I know exactly what you’re going     God says: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).
• We crave: “I delight in you”    God says: “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:14-21).
• We crave: “You can never lose my love”    God says: “But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

What we realize when we consider this is that our earthly fathers are mere types, pointers to something beyond them.  They might be unusually skilled at being a father, but even as a skilled father they are unable to do in our souls what God alone can do.  They can be types, however, that point beyond themselves to the ante-type, our Father in heaven.  It is our heavenly Father that can do in our souls what we long for.

The beauty of this is that we are not projecting onto God something un-Godly.  We are not crafting God in our image, or in the image of our idols and cravings.  We are simply hearing a strain of Scriptures that seem closely akin to those father-ward longings that we have.

This doesn’t mean that God will automatically make the pain that an earthly father can cause go away.  It  also doesn’t mean that we won’t have to do some hard work to see how we have taken our Father-ward longings and sought to have those fulfilled by people and things that simply cannot provide for those: making decisions and having relationships plagued by an oppressive sense of inadequacy in us, looking to our spouse for an endless stream of affirmation, seeing our job as the place to get that respect from an authority figure, boosting up our own sense of inadequacy by over-achieving in our lives, seeking comfort in an unceasing line of obsessive relationships, etc.

We will have to do some soul-work to see God as the perfect Father that our earthly father could never be.  How encouraging, however, to realize that what we long for is available—in Christ.  God wants us to lift up our eyes and behold there a Father who loves us in those profound ways that an earthly father never could.  His promises are true.  His word contains no lies.  His love is as incredible as it sounds—and far more!

Once we grasp this it can also unlock doors of bitterness and unforgiveness toward our earthly fathers.  They were sinners—just like us—and their sins indeed hurt us.  Once we grasp that our heavenly Father provides for us perfectly, then we are able to forgive the sins of our fathers.  Perhaps it also means that certain patterns of selfishness in our lives (overly possessive relationships, etc.) or that crushing sense of inadequacy could be broken as we connect this father-ward longing to these cravings.

All of this should make us more in awe of our heavenly Father and more gracious toward our earthly ones.

Where do you start?  Maybe the start is to prayerfully consider what it is that you longed for and feel that your earthly father never provided.  Once you have distilled it down to a simple sentence—“I just wanted you to say you loved me”—then you can open up your Bible to find out where God himself communicates this very truth to you as your heavenly Father (e.g., Eph 3:14-21; Jer 31:3).  Make it a point of prayer and thanksgiving and worship as you grow in seeing God as your heavenly Father.  Perhaps it also means you need to confess sins to your earthly father or to others as you have sought to get from the creation what only the Creator can give (Rom 1:25).

If you can’t seem to connect your longings to your heavenly Father, shoot me an email, and I’ll try and help you out.