The Perfect Father
“You have also given me the shield of your salvation;
your gentleness has made me great.”
2nd Samuel 22:36
"Your gentleness…"
Many of us grew up under a harsh or hateful father. When a father humiliates a child, or is harsh toward him, or puts too much pressure on him/her, oftentimes it will cause the child to rebel and to live in resentment and hatred. Then that rebellion will be the source of all kinds of troubles down the road, and can end in destruction.
Not so the Lord. He is the perfect father. When a person surrenders his life to him, the Lord begins a work in him of transformation. Sometimes that will seem hard, but there’s never anything hard without a reason meant to bring one to spiritual health. A harsh human father never brings health, but God our Father knows exactly how to reach a person. He knows exactly how to heal, and how to bring him/her to health.
Our whole concept of God is oftentimes formed from the image we have of our human father because to a growing child, his father is as God to him. If our human father was harsh and rejecting, then we expect God to be that way. If all he has known is hardness, then that’s what he will expect from God. In fact, sometimes a person will stay away from God for this reason, because of a faulty idea of what God is like, harsh and unrelenting, only interested in judging, and destroying rather than nurturing.
From the beginning of one’s walk with the Lord, he will marvel at God’s gentleness. When a person realizes his sin, his own warped personality, and then encounters the love of the Lord, it’s very surprising, because he is used to expecting rejection and harshness. It can take many years to unlearn the traits we developed in the past, and to feel and know and accept the love of God. It can take a long time to understand that he truly does love us, and to trust him even when he applies discipline.
The Lord does not spare his people from the sorrows of the world, but he walks through them with us, and he actually uses them to mature us and to lead us to discover the great love he has for each one. It has to be experienced to be understood. An unbeliever has no idea of the love of the Father, and goes on in his own “wisdom,” demanding to “do it MY way.” And that is sad, because it will never bring him happiness. Momentary pleasure is all he can expect.
On the other hand, the one who has surrendered his life to the Lord will be continually led upwards and will find the very desires of his heart realized – not from his efforts, but from the goodwill of the perfect Father whose plan for his child includes all that fosters health and goodness. He knows each one, he is the One who has made each one unique, and will bring him to the potential he has placed within him, for he is the One who has put within us even the natural desires of our hearts. He will satisfy those desires the right way, in the way that will bring true satisfaction and wholeness.
If you have been crushed by life, if you grew up under the harshness of a human father, come to the real Father who brought you into the world and surrender your life to him. You will find him to be the perfect Father who truly, truly loves you and knows how to nurture you and bring you to health.
“‘For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,’ says the Lord,
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.'”
Jeremiah 29:11
Glad God made me have time for this. It’s been a while and your writing is always a joy to read. And edifying.
Your piece today really touched me. I was nominally that kind of child. As I read it, however, the Lord showed me that my father had been that kind of child as well. He never rebelled though. He was just very asocial and had no idea about how people related to each other. I became the same kind of man. But I rebelled, tuned in, dropped out, and turned on with LSD and a wide assortment of drugs along with the occult.
My fairly normal fifties family was basically destroyed in the late fifties when the Lord spoke to my Dad as he drove home from work one day. He radically changed in his late forties. He was one of the first Episcopalian charismatics in the very early 60s. My mother couldn't handle it and divorced him because "he had become a religious fanatic". I was the eldest son and very close to my mother. She pulled me out of basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio. So, I testified in court that what my mother said was true. But I had no idea what was really going on. I was only 19.
After the Air Force graciously decided that the military and I were not compatible, my father worked at starting a relationship with me. By this time, I was almost overcome with rage. But he kept at it. When the arguments became too strong, he cut them off—after he made me promise that I would never give up until I knew I had found the Truth.
By the time the Lord touched me at thirty years old in 1974, I was nearly destroyed. But the Lord had changed my father to the place where he was the perfect mentor for me. Everything that he had gone through worked well for me also. I am truly grateful for how the Lord can redeem fathers. I was so screwed up that I never had a child, which is probably a good thing. I had stepdaughters, and they were good.