Friday, November 03, 2006

How Much Does a Father-Figure Figure?

A.W. Tozar said, “The most important thing about you is what that person thinks about when they think about God.”

If you have the wrong picture/concept of God, then you will spend your whole life responding to God in the wrong way.

People’s Pictures of God:
Faceless, nameless force—a thing, a mysterious force, distant
“On Star” God—means God is your GPS satellite technology
Grandpa God—he’s old, but there is you need him; gives you candy
Score Keeper God—He’s keeping score of your right and wrong actions
Stain Glass God—he lives at the church
Average Joe God—just like us, the man upstairs
Ebay God—Go to get stuff that you can’t get stuff anywhere else & where you get rid of stuff
The No God—I don’t believe in God
PC God—politically correct, non absolute, non offensive

How do you know what God is like?

Jesus taught us that though God is eternal, powerful, creator, and that He is our FATHER. We are the children of God. 1 John 3:1-2 says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Do you see it? Are you tuned into the fact that God has poured out an amazing amount of love on you? Lavished means a lot of it!!! This is a big, big deal! We need to know Him as a perfect Father.

The desire of probably every kid is to have a blessing from their dad. In many cases, hearing that God is a father is not that great of news. If you have the wrong picture/concept of God, then you will spend your whole life responding to God in the wrong way. Sometimes we judge God by our earthly father. Maybe your father left you. Maybe you were victimized by your father. Maybe your father doesn’t notice you. How do you picture your heavenly Father? If you don’t know His character, you’ll judge Him by your circumstances. Get to know your heavenly Father....You are loved by a perfect heavenly Father.

Sarah Bragg

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is one of the hardest things in my life, realizing God is my father, and he loves me. I have not had good fatherly figures in my life, so finding out that God is a father to us, sort of made me upset for awhile. Slowly I am learning that this is a good thing though.

Thanks for your post, it was a good thing for me to hear right now.

Sarah Bragg said...

Hi Nicole....

Thank you for commenting! I am so glad that this was timely. I hate that you have not had a good earthy father to point you to your heavenly father. As I read your comment, I thought about Zeph. 3:17... “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." (NIV)

much love,
sarah b.

Anonymous said...

Zeph 3:17 has been on my mind the past week too! :) an amazing verse.. yes, it's amazing and mindblowing to think that we have a perfect Father who takes delight in us, especially if we have never experienced it ourselves.. but then again it makes u really appreciate and not take it for granted! God bless you! :)