What kind of Father is God?

Dear Crosswalkers,

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

- Ephesians 1:4-5 (NLT)

In his book Invitation to a Journey, author M. Robert Mulholland Jr. tells the story of a woman he knew who was troubled by the fact that her birth was the result of an unwanted pregnancy.  She agonized over the identity of her father.  Who was he?  What was he like?  As a follower of Jesus, she had a hard time believing that God purposed her into being even before He made the world, as the verse above indicates.  He writes:

Her mother was a prostitute, and she was the accidental byproduct of her mother’s occupation. Although her life’s pilgrimage had brought her to faith in Christ, blessed her with a deeply Christian husband and beautiful children, and given her a life of love and stability, she was obsessed with the need to find out who her father was. This obsession was affecting her marriage, her family, and her life. She told how one day she was standing at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes, with tears of anguish and frustration running down her face into the dishwater. In her agony she cried out, “Oh, God, who is my father?” Then, she said, she heard a voice saying to her, “I am your father.” The voice was so real she turned to see who had come into the kitchen, but there was no one there. Again the voice came, “I am your father, and I have always been your father.” In that moment she knew the profound reality of which Paul [speaks in the verse above]. She came to know that deeper than the “accident” of her conception was the eternal purpose of a loving God, who had spoken her forth into being before the foundation of the world.

What a story!  God’s eternal Fatherhood lies behind the circumstances of your conception, birth, and life.  This Sunday we will close out our Mythbusters series by looking at “Myths about God the Father.” Father’s Day is always a big day at Crosswalk!  We will have a gift for all men in attendance, as well as a special gift for all Dads.  Please invite the men in your life to church this Sunday!

Yours in Christ,

Pastor John