By Pastor Daniel

Introduction
Last month, I started on the thoughts of our relationship with God.  I was talking about God as our Shepherd.  He is the Shepherd of our soul who guards and guides us.
 
In this month’s article, let us consider the fatherhood of God.  He is our Faithful Father.
 
The Name of God - Father
All along, as in other religions, God is basically transcendant.  He cannot be brought low as He is simply too high.  He was so transcendant that the Jews would not even dare to venture to pronounce the name of God lest they be struck dead.
 
The closest they could relate to God was that He is described as the God of their fathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  He can relate only to those whom He deems fit like the prophets of old. 
 
When Jesus came into this world, He brought us nearer to God in terms of a relationship as a father and son.  That is why He is called the Son of God - son as representation or reflection of who God is.  Yet at the same time, when we think of a son, we also think of a father.
 
When the disciples were curious how their master, the Lord Jesus Christ would spend time conversing with God, they could not hold back anymore.  There came a day when they asked Jesus, “Master, teach us to pray” or rather “Teach us to pray like you do.”  The way Jesus related to them about God was simply too amazing that they wanted to know.  It is not just “teach us to pray” because they would have been taught by the Rabbis already.  They were asking Jesus to teach them to pray like He did.
 
The opening of that prayer was a revelation to the disciples.  He said, “When you pray, say, “Abba in heaven, holy be your name.”  Jesus brought to them a new name for God and a new relationship.  God is now our Father, our Abba, our Daddy, whichever term we address our earthly father.
 
It was revelation because the disciples or any Jews would have ever thought of that. The concept of God was changed to the Fatherhood of God when Jesus came to his own people.
A Father who Relates.
When Jesus prayed for his disciples in John 17:6, He said, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”  What was that name?  It was the same name that He taught them in the Lord’s prayer.  God as a father relates to his children.
1.      Jesus constantly talked about oneness with the Father
2.      Jesus constantly talked about the greatness of the Father’s love in the parable of the prodigal sons.
3.      Jesus constantly talked about the joy of obeying the Father
          “I do what I see my father doing.”
          “Apart from the Fahter I can do nothing”
          “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me - who is the Father)
 
The Father who provides and empowers
Paul’s prayer in Eph 3:16-20, “according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us”
 
Everything is referred back to the Father-God.  As we think of the Father-God, it is fatherhood in his best - the one who loves, the one who provides and protects and the one who empowers us.
 
The whole discipleship and leadership program of Jesus towards his discipleship is to bring to them the love of the Father.
 
Conclusion
Have you ever thought why God specifically told the Jews to love mercy?  The tangible way of showing mercy was spelled out in caring for the widows and the orphans.  Why these two specific groups of people?  The answer lies in who God is.  He is the Father-God and such people has lost the “fathers” in their lives.  If there is any true love Christians should be showing, it is the father’s love and the father’s heart.