2024-09-15 The Faithful Father

Well, we are going to start a new series this week called / / Increasing Faithfulness. Of course we are continuing our journey through the / / Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7 and we are in Chapter 7 now of the book of Matthew. And I mentioned last week that chapter 7 is really broken down into shorter chunks. You can’t call them sermons, it’s almost like, you know how on YouTube they have what we would call long-form videos, and now they have what they call “shorts”. Their idea of competing against TikTok, or Instagram stories. It’s just these short little clips, often times a clip of a longer video. Well, chapter 7 of the Sermon on the Mount is kind of like that. There is this whole grand scheme of Jesus’ mission of introducing people and inviting them into the Kingdom of Heaven, his overall message. And then Chapter 7 of Matthew is like these short little thoughts on, “What is kingdom living?”

Jesus came preaching, / / “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

And to understand this kingdom that he’s talking about, we have to understand the greater story.

Psalm 24:1 says, / / The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.

So, is the coming of this kingdom, or the kingdom being “at hand” have something to do with God taking the earth from someone else? Some might think that the devil has the world in it’s grasp, and so we have to fight back the enemy and take ground for the kingdom of God. But if God created the world, and owns the whole world, what are we fighting to get back? I have not seen in the bible where God signed over a lease agreement to the devil.

So, what we have to understand is that we’re not talking about physical ground. We’re not talking about location. What we are really talking about here is hearts and minds.

Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV) says, / / And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience [NLT - those who refuse to obey God] - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Ok, if you notice there’s no mention of land, or ownership, but there is a sense of control and influence based on obedience in regard to the body and the mind.

I heard Bill Johnson say it like this, If God has all authority, which he does, and he gives us that authority, which Scripture says, then the authority is ours, in the same way God gives it to us, for us to give it to someone else. And by our actions, our words, our submission, we give our God given authority over to the world, the devil and the flesh. That’s what Paul is saying here in Ephesians - you were following the prince of the power of the air, which meant you were given over to his authority, causing in you disobedience.

Why and how? Paul says in Romans 6:16, / / Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

So, the battle is not to take back land, the battle is to reclaim authority. And let me tell you very clearly, the best way to do that is not to battle the enemy to try and reclaim “your” authority, the best way to do that is to submit once again to the authority of Christ in your life, and whatever authority he then gives back to you, take it with all reverence and fear and honor to the one who we serve, the God of Heaven and Earth!

/ / Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. (1 Peter 5:6 ESV)

Proper time…what’s that mean? His time.

Exalt you means to lift up. So, as we humble ourselves under God’s authority, in due time, when we are ready, by his timeline, he is willing and able to teach us how to walk in that authority - that is ultimately His.

This is why Paul says what he says. You become a slave to what you obey.

We are either a slave to sin, the world, the devil because we have been obedient to it’s desires, and therefore are subject to it’s authority causing all kinds of turmoil in our lives. The wages of sin is still death.

OR, we become a slave to Christ, obedient to His will, and as such are continually placing ourselves under HIS authority to rule and reign in our lives as the prince of peace, the healer, the counselor the redeemer.

Jesus does not lose his authority by giving us permission to operate in it. But in doing so, in giving us free will, in creating humanity in the way he has, we have been given the ability to subject ourselves to His authority, or the devil, and it is all through obedience. So this is not a reclaiming of land, but a reclaiming of hearts and minds to be obedient to Christ!

So, Jesus invites humanity, / / “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

And we’ve read it in our previous series this year, Matthew 6:33, / / Seek the kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

Seeking the kingdom, living righteously, that means the way God invites us to, what is Right by God’s standard, not our own. That is the posture of submitting to his authority through obedience.

/ / Submitting to authority is not just recognition of authority, it is being obedient to that authority. Saying someone has authority, and not listening to that authority says you do not respect the authority.

When Jesus is on trial before Pilate, who was the Roman governor of that region, he asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He’s trying to find out if Jesus is some sort of revolutionary and should be put to death for inciting violence - he needs to know if he’s a threat. And Jesus says, “I feel like this isn’t actually your question, who told you to ask me that?” And Pilate says in John 18:35, / / “Your own people and their leading priests brought you to me for trial. Why? What have you done?”

And Jesus’ answer shows us the true intent of this message of the kingdom…

Jesus answered, / / “My kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.” (v 36)

So Pilate responds to Jesus comment, “So you are a king?”

And Jesus says, / / “You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.” (v 37)

Jesus came to testify to the truth. To give us the truth. The truth to live by. The truth of salvation. The truth of the state of the world. The truth about our souls. The truth about sin, about righteousness, about judgment. The truth about his Father, about God. About the one who the world was so quick to reject. The one who Israel didn’t even realize they were rejecting.

Truth is a funny thing.

When we believe we are right, we tend to fight for that, don’t we? Whether we are right or not.

When we believe that we know the truth, and someone comes in and says something different, what do we do? We push back, right? We don’t want to be deceived. We want to know that we are doing what is right, we want to know that we are living by the truth, so we reject what we believe to be a lie.

This is why it takes such humility to see the way of Jesus.

It takes humility to recognize we are under an authority of our own making, or even the authority of this world, or the devil, by way of obedience, and making that switch of allegiance to the kingdom of God, to the authority of Christ, forsaking all else and being obedient to Him and His ways.

So, this process we are in, this year, where we are looking at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ way of the kingdom, his invitation to live a different way than society, let me just say, if you are with me in embracing this life, I want to say to you, Well done. This takes courage. This is not for the faint of heart.

I said this pretty strongly last week, the world doesn’t understand the way of Jesus. He warned his disciples 2000 years ago, and things haven’t changed. I’ve been thinking about that recently. I am actually convinced that in the season that we are in, we are very much like the early church.

The early church had been Jewish believers in God for their whole lives, and suddenly it’s also for the Gentiles, and they are inviting people who do NOT understand their way of life, or their religion, their history, the God they have been serving for thousands of years - and don’t have any clue about this Jesus, the Jewish Messiah that was prophesied TO THEM that has now opened up a way for all of humanity…. of course they have no clue.

How is that different form today? I don’t think it is. We live in what is sometimes called a “post-christian” society, meaning, where America may have been founded on Christian beliefs, it is no longer the established normality for the people to believe so. You see it all around. We have come a far way from true biblical practice in our society. I mean, come on, there’s enough of the church that doesn’t know how to live in true biblical practice. And it’s reflected all across society, both in and out of the church.

We are in a season where every person who says they are a Christian has to make a decision about whether they are actually a disciple of Jesus, which is what it really means to be a Christian. Are we about following the way of Jesus Christ toward true spiritual formation and transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit as we learn to live out of the love of and security of the Heavenly Father?

Or are we just happy to say we believe in Jesus and hope that gets us to heaven when we die? And we feel guilty enough to show up to church once and a while, maybe throw a few bucks in the offering. And I’m just talking western church in general here, ok.

It’s a big question. To have our whole paradigm shifted to understand the truth of what Jesus was saying, we have to all the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and change our perspective.

What we believe shapes how we live.

So, we are going to, for the next couple weeks tackle a core fundamental belief of the Christian faith that we must understand if we are going to truly see transformation in our lives. We’ve talked about it before, we are going to talk about it again and we will talk about it in the future because it is one of the most, and Jesus might even argue THE most important topics of the Christian faith.

Let’s read Matthew 7:7-11 and get a big gulp of truth this morning:

/ / “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give goof things to those who ask him.”

Now, for this we are going to flip this around, and look at the last couple verses this week and then going back to vs 7 - 8 either next week or the week after. But for this week we want to look at something that, like I said, we have talked about before, but it is such a foundational issue that we must look at it again, and again, and again… Because the way of the enemy is to constantly try and get us to live by something that is contrary to the truth that Jesus teaches us.

The truth that we are looking at today is that / / Jesus has a Father, and that Father is OUR Father as well. Again, we looked at the reality of God the Father back in July when we were in our series on prayer. Jesus says in Matthew 6:9, / / “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…” so we have to understand, when we pray, we are praying to God the Father. Not that we can’t pray to Jesus or the Holy Spirit - it would have obviously been weird for Jesus to say, “And when you pray, pray to me…” when he is standing there in the flesh, not confirmed as the God of the universe by his resurrection.

Also, just to expand that a little so that we don’t fall into some sort of false understanding of who we can and cannot pray to within the trinity. First of all, we believe that, that God is a Trinity, three in one, He is ONE God, in THREE persons…God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and as difficult as that is for our brains to comprehend, they are not separate entities, or different modes of the same person, or masks that God puts on at different times. They are ONE God, equal in representation, in complete unity within themself, and has been for all eternity past, present, and future.

So, Jesus says, when you pray, pray this way, “Our Father”… ok, so we know to pray to God the Father.

But He also says in John 14:13-14, / / “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!”

Now, there’s no verse that says, pray to the Holy Spirit, but Jesus talks continually about a communal relationship with the Spirit of God, that he will lead us and guide us, that he will teach us, that he will tell us what he has heard from the Father, so on and so forth, and of course Paul talks a lot about that in his epistles.

So, as my professors would say, here at Cutler Bay Worship Center you are standing on solid ground if you pray to God, and that can be God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

And these things are important, because:

/ / What we believe about God will determine what we pursue in God which will impact what we receive from God.

How do I know that to be true? Well, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

What comes first? Seeking & Righteousness.

Hebrews 11:6, / / And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

So, having read from Matthew 7, and talking a bit here about the Trinity, the question I want to ask this morning is this, / / Why is it important to pursue both the truth of God being a Father, but also, the revelation that God is our Father?

Truth and Revelation are two different things.

You can have a lot of knowledge in your head while living out a completely different reality.

In my charismatic circles we would call this the 18” journey, from the head to the heart. Do you understand that God is your Father in your head? That’s great, but if you don’t understand that God is your Father in the heart, you’ll continue to live as an one who is fatherless.

And this is our belief here at this church, that we are a Word & Spirit church. That means we believe in the truth as expressed by the Word of God, Scripture - we believe the Bible, we also believe that Jesus is the Word of God as John 1 says, while also relying on and pursuing the experience of God through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The Holy Spirit reveals to us the Father, Son & Himself, the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a benchmark for the love of God…

Romans 5:5, / / …we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.

There is a knowing, and there is a receiving. That word, God, is the greek word theos, it represents what we would call the “Godhead”, or what we say when we say, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The Oneness of the Trinity.

The Love of God, the Godhead, the fullness of God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit is poured into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit who has been given to us by God the Father & God the Son.

So, that’s the split here ok, we have the truth, scripture, doctrine, and we have revelation, transformation, spiritual formation, and both are essential for the Christian life.

So, again, the question, why is it important to not just know of, but to experience the Father specifically?

Can’t we just pray to “God” and can’t we just believe in “God” and direct our lives toward “God” and isn’t that good enough? Why differentiate? Even if it’s true, why differentiate between Father, Son & Holy Spirit?

And that’s a good question, so we’ll look at three things here that give this reason to pursue God in this way.

/ / 1. Jesus Tells us There is a Father, and We are His Children

Ok, if Jesus said it, it must be important, right?

/ / 2. The Gift of the Holy Spirit is a Gift From the Father

Listen, anyone who wants to give me gifts, is good in my books!

/ / 3. The Father Represents the Greatest Sense of Love & Acceptance in the Trinity

And we’ll break that one down as well.

/ / 1. Jesus tells us there is a Father, and We are His Children

Now, this is going to be a short point because we will see this all throughout scripture as we also talk about the other two points. But, to start, I think the most important thing Jesus says about God the Father is this:

John 14:6, Jesus says, / / “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

What does this mean? First, this implies that the journey we are on in this life is one that ends, or culminates, reaches it’s fullness where? At the Father!

Now, we’ll look a little more at that verse in a bit, but this is probably the most direct statement Jesus makes about our connection to the Father. He talks a lot about being in the Father, the Father in him. He says if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. and all sorts of really wonderful things about the Father, but in this verse Jesus is saying, in a very straight forward way, there is a destination, a journey, a place where I want to take you. I am the way to this place. I am the truth expressed about this place. I am the life that you need to live in this place. I want to show you the Father, but to do that you must believe, and believe so fully that you are willing to lay down your life to receive mine, because the only way to get there is through my life.

So, Jesus talks about the Father. And he promises that if we believe, he will take us to the Father, and the Father wants to mark us, or identifies us as His own!

/ / 2. The Gift of the Holy Spirit is a Gift From the Father

Let’s go back now to Matthew 7:9-11 and read what it says specifically about this:

/ / “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

One of the things I love about this verse is that that is NOT a question.

It sounds like a question, but it’s not, it’s a true statement made by Jesus. But we need to break it down a bit.

/ / If you who are evil…, not nice Jesus, not nice at all… Let’s define that as human, ok, born into sin as Paul would describe later in his letters.

The word for evil here is / / ponēros, and yes, means evil, but it means evil in effect or influence. And in explaining that definition it has two other words it makes reference to that it says this word is NOT. That’s / / kakos, also translated as evil, but it is defined as an essential character, and the other word is / / sapros and it refers to degeneracy from original virtue.

Those two words would be like saying, “You’re evil to the core. You always have been. You always will be.”

So Jesus isn’t saying you’re evil by nature or birth or substance, but he’s saying, “You who are prone to evil, who can do evil, who have the choice of right and wrong and don’t always choose right…” (how many can identify???) if YOU who are that, can figure out how to give your children good gifts…

And then he continues:

/ / …how much more will your Father who is in heaven…

Ok, two important words there:

YOUR - Jesus isn’t saying My Father, but YOUR Father…Remember how we looked at that when we were talking about the Lord’s prayer, the pronoun matters… OUR Father in heaven, hallowed be your name… Jesus is teaching us not just that He has a Father but that WE have a Father.

HEAVEN - Your Father who is in heaven..or let’s say, who is perfect, who is not prone to choosing evil, in fact, does not EVER choose wrong or ill or evil…

So, what’s he defining? / / His Father is YOUR Father and He is Perfect…

And he finishes, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

First thing to notice, it’s not a question. Now, for clarity, ok, most modern translations have this as either a period or an exclamation mark. Even the NKJV has an exclamation mark, but some, like the original KJV have a question mark.

And this is interesting because Jesus says this exact same thing in Luke 11:13, but it’s not considered a parallel verse - meaning Luke is writing about the same event as Matthew. And I’ve said that before, right? Jesus is most likely preaching the same thing more than once, of course he is. He has a powerful message and sometimes when we read what looks like something we have read somewhere else it is not that another person recorded the same time he said it, but sometimes it’s another instance where he preached the same thing. But, here’s the point from Luke 11:13, Just as in Matthew 7, most of the translations have an exclamation mark, not a question mark. So I am going to trust that reading of scripture, and I think you should, too.

So, when we hear that sentence, listen to it again, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” We have to hear that as a statement, not a question.

Now, one distinction I do want to make from Matthew’s account and Luke’s account. Listen to what Luke says, and this is absolutely beautiful.

/ / “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the HOLY SPIRIT to those who ask him!”

Again, a statement, not a question.

James would later write in James 1:17, / / every good and perfect gift comes from the Father…

And I said this a couple months ago, I had never thought of it this way, but listening to Bill Johnson, he pointed out that when Jesus says in John 16:7, / / “But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate [Holy Spirit] won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you.”

Jesus is saying best case scenario for the disciples is that he leaves so that the Holy Spirit can come.

How does that even make sense? He’s Jesus. He’s God. He said if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s nature, the very character of God in bodily form. And yet it’s better that he goes away? Do you see how great the gift of the Holy Spirit is?

And that gift is from the Father. How much more will your Heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit when you ask!

/ / 3. The Father Represents the Greatest Sense of Love & Acceptance in the Trinity

Now, this is a bold statement, but it’s important.

We are asking the question this morning: / / Why is recognizing the person of God the Father in the Trinity important? Or we could ask, why differentiate between any one of the persons of the Trinity? And that is because each one plays a significant role in the life of humanity. So why the Father? / / Because Fathers are important. THE Father is important. To humanity, not just to Jesus in scripture, not just Christians, or Jews, but to all of humanity, the Father is important.

I read an article this week that said, social problems correlate more strongly with fatherlessness than with any other factor, surpassing race, social class and poverty, and so they said, / / “father absence may be the most critical social issue of our time.”

The article goes on to say that a report from the University of Birmingham stated, / / “The need for a Father is on an epidemic scale, and ‘father deficit’ should be treated as a public health issue.”

And the “F” in Father was actually capital in the article. And as Bob Ross would say, I think that’s just a happy accident…speaking truth!

So, can we hear Jesus saying, “If you earthly fathers, who are evil, know how important it is to be present in your children’s lives, HOW MUCH MORE is it important for your HEAVENLY FATHER to be present in your life!” statement, not question.

Two things I want to point out that makes this so important.

First, and we already read this. Jesus says in a pivotal statement about his purpose on this earth. John 14:6, / / “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

Come on… the way, the truth, the life. That’s what we are all looking for, isn’t it? Yet, Jesus says, Yes, I am those things, but more important than that, I am those things SO I CAN lead you to the Father. And it’s just a few verses later that Jesus says, / / If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. (John 14:15-17)

Jesus, our everything, bringing us to the heart of the Father, who in turn gives us the Holy Spirit.

So, that’s the first thought here. Jesus says very specifically he has come to lead us to the Father. Now, so that we aren’t confused that he’s just talking about HIS Father. Like you have a good friend who has a good Father and they want you to meet him. Right, because that’s a thing. When my parents come down to visit I want y’all to meet my dad, my dad is amazing. I love my dad. He’s such a wonderful, lovely human being. Everyone would be better in their life for meeting my dad, I truly believe that. Get to know him. He’s wonderful.

BUT, that is NOT what Jesus is saying here. He’s not saying, “I have a good dad, you should meet him.” He’s saying, “YOU have a Father in heaven.” How should you pray? “Our Father in heaven…”

Jesus is being clear here and Scripture very specifically calls us the Children of God.

This is why I’m so confident in saying that the Father is the greatest sense of love and acceptance, because we are defined for all eternity, Old Testament and New Testament as the children of God.

Romans 8:15-17, says, / / So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory…

Now, so that the word adoption here isn’t confusing. Paul is not saying God took pity on you and adopted you because you didn’t have parents or your parents were bad. For this we have to understand context. Children, or specifically boys - who the inheritance would eventually go to, were not considered sons until a certain age. Before that point they were looked after by what is called a paedagogue, or a tutor, a guardian, let’s say. But when they would come of age they would become sons, and as such, become heirs. This word “adoption” talks to this process, a coming of age.

Why is that important? It’s important because the son has always been a son, you aren’t taken in out of pity, you’re already a son, but when you accept Christ you receive the Holy Spirit who confirms to you, YOU ARE A SON… Son being son and daughter. A Child of God.

John talks about this in 1 John 3:1, / / See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.

So, that’s the differences, right? Those who KNOW God as Father, and those who do not YET know God as Father. And what does John say about the Father… / / how very much our Father loves us…

The NIV says, / / See what great love the Father has lavished on us…

This is an immense amount of love.

And what have we been continually going back to in this year of the Sermon on the Mount - What does Paul say we are? 2 Corinthians 5:20, / / So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

God is making his appeal through us, those who know He is our Father! So we can say with confidence, “Let me introduce you to YOUR FATHER… you don’t know him yet, but he loves you.” We’ve listened to it before, but a friend of ours did this amazing walk through scripture called the Father’s Love Letter, and it starts with, “You may not know me, but I know everything about you…”

That is the state of the world. And that is the heart of God. They may not know God as Father, but He has known who they are from the very beginning.

And so I want to say that to you this morning, even though you may know who God is, you may know mentally, in your brain that Jesus called God a Father and that so that means you can call him Father, but I appeal to your heart this morning, and I pray for you this morning that you would experience the tangible love of your Heavenly Father who has loved you since before you were even born.

So, to close this morning I want to pray for you, but I am also going to read over your life and your heart the Father’s love letter that our friend Barry Adams put together. And I am truly hoping, praying, believing that the Holy Spirit, who transforms lives, will be present in this room and make that connection or that 18” journey from just having knowledge in our head, to having an experience, a deep connection in the heart. In the core of our being.

If you’re here, or if you’re watching online, I have to ask, have you taken Jesus up on his offer to show you the way, the truth and the life through his death and resurrection? Because that is the pre-requisite here. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ. And to know the Father we must know the Son. And to be transformed by the Love of the Father we must receive the Holy Spirit, by whom God pours out his love into our hearts.

Have you received the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the only means by which you can be made right with God? Nobody, not even God, is looking for perfect. All we have to do is recognize that we aren’t… And sometimes that comes through what we call the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and all that means is, that you feel inside of you that there has just got to be something more to life, there gotta be a higher purpose, there’s gotta be something all of this is for. How could life be so complex if there is nothing else after this?

That’s the Holy Spirit. I believe the Holy Spirit leads us to these moments. And He is leading you, guiding you toward the Son, Jesus Christ, who gave his life to save you, so that he could lead you to the Father, who has loved you from the foundation of the world, before creation even began.

If that is you, if you’re sitting in your living room, or bedroom this morning, or you’re driving in your car, this is an invitation to simply say, “Jesus, would you be the way, the truth and the life for me? I admit I can’t do this on my own. I admit I’m not perfect. I admit I need love. I admit I want love, I want acceptance, I want to feel ok, to feel good, to feel right with you, God of the Universe.” You can say that however you want, there’s no magic words to use, just a confession of the heart and lips that says, “I accept Jesus as the Savior of humanity, and of my life.”

And if and when you pray that, in that moment, scripture says the Father has sealed you with the Holy Spirit as His child. You have crossed that threshold of not knowing, to knowing. And so I pray this morning, whether you just prayed that for the first time, whether you are sitting here and have been saved your whole life, or you’re somewhere in between, I am asking that the Father, through the leading of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit would pour out His love on you. That you would feel his overwhelming presence.

So, if you want, you can sit in silence, close your eyes, do your human best to focus on the God of the Universe as I read this over you. Every line of this is scripture from the pages of the bible. It is the word of God. It is the truth of God’s love for you as your eternal Father.

I pray you hear these words as coming from the Father this morning: If you want to just close your eyes, breath in, give yourself permission to connect with the presence and love of God…

Scripture says of God the Father:

You may not know me, but I know everything about you.

I know when you sit down and when you rise up.

I am familiar with all your ways.

Even the very hairs on your head are numbered

For you were made in my image.

In me you live and move and have your being.

For you are my offspring.

I knew you even before you were conceived.

I chose you when I planned creation.

You were not a mistake, for all your days are written in my book.

I determined the exact time of your birth and where you would live.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

I knit you together in your mother’s womb.

And brought you forth on the day you were born.

[I know] I have been misrepresented by those who don’t know me.

[But] I am not distant and angry, but am the complete expression of love.

And it is my desire to lavish my love on you.

Simply because you are my child, and I am your Father.

I offer you more than your earthly father ever could.

For I am the perfect father.

Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand.

For I am your provider and I meet all your needs.

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope.

Because I love you with an everlasting love.

My thoughts toward you are countless as the sand on the seashore.

And I rejoice over you with singing.

I will never stop doing good to you.

For you are my treasured possession.

I desire to establish you with all my heart and all my soul.

And I want to show you great and marvelous things.

If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me.

Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart.

For it is I who gave you those desires.

I am able to do more for you than you could possibly imagine.

For I am your greatest encourager.

I am also the Father who comforts you in all your troubles.

When you are brokenhearted, I am close to you.

As a shepherd carries a lamb, I have carried you close to my heart.

One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes.

And I’ll take away all the pain you have suffered on this earth.

I am your Father, and I love you even as I love my son, Jesus.

For in Jesus, my love for you is revealed.

He is the exact representation of my being.

He came to demonstrate that I am for you, not against you.

And to tell you that I am not counting your sins.

Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled.

His death was the ultimate expression of my love for you.

I gave you everything I loved that I might have your love.

If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, You receive me.

And nothing will ever separate you from my love again.

Come home and I’ll throw the biggest party heaven has ever seen.

/ / I have always been Father, and will always be Father.

My question is, will you be my child and let me Father you…