Who is God to us in this confusion and uncertainty?

Let’s pray.

‘Father, we long to know You more.  Please lead us deeper, draw us closer to Your heart.’

In difficult times, we find great comfort in the assurance that God is our Father.

But what do we mean when we call God our Father?

Some people mean that God is our Creator.  He made us, we are His idea, He fashioned us, formed us in His image (Gen 1:27).  He knows us from the inside out, He knows us better than we know ourselves (Psalm 139:1-18) .

All this is true.  But there’s more.

The Old Testament talks about God as Creator.  Jesus talks about God as His ‘Father.’

We sometimes miss the wonder of Who Jesus is – God as human – and what that means for us.

Jesus: God the Son as a human being, fully God, fully human.
The Son of God is a human being.  A human being is the Son of God…

In Jesus, Son of God by nature, each and every human being becomes a son of God, by grace.
The Father-Son relationship that Jesus has enjoyed for all eternity, we get to share.
We are not God, but we share in the fellowship between God the Father and God the Son.

Adoption is the best way to describe this.

God the Father draws up the adoption papers.  Jesus, God the Son, human, signs the papers on behalf of all humanity.
In Jesus, God the Father adopts all humanity.   Each and every human being has been adopted by God.

Yet, this is not a forced adoption.  We need to counter-sign our own individual adoption papers.
Each of us gets to choose whether we want God as our Father…

So, when Jesus says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,  No-one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6), this is what He means.  We can know something of God as Creator from His creation, and from human beings, every one of whom is created in His image.  But it is only through Jesus that we can know God as Father.

To those who have accepted the invitation to know God as our Father, John writes:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God!
And that is what we are!
(1 John 3:1)

In difficult times, this is comfort indeed.

Let’s pray.

‘Father, thank You for Who You are.  Thank You for Your amazing generosity, Your kindness to us.  Thank You that You love us so much that You have adopted us as Your sons.  Thank You! ’

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We’d love to hear from you!

Love, Mary

© Mary Jacquelin Douglas 2020