Our Father

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He said, ‘Pray after this manner, Our Father who is in heaven…’ {Matthew 6:9}  This is huge.  This is foundational.  God is your Father.  That’s how you and I are supposed to relate to Him.  As a loving Father.

Let me try to unpack this for you a little bit to show you how revolutionary it was for Jesus to teach His disciples to relate to God in this way.  In ancient Israel, the name of God was never spoken.  In fact, God’s name was so revered and so honored and was considered so Holy that when the Scribes of the day who were transcribing the bible for us would come to the name of God, they would take a ceremonial bath, then they would grab a new quill and use new ink, and then as they would write out the name of God they would only write the consonants which are YHVH.  That’s why to this day, we don’t know the correct pronunciation of the name of God.  Some say it’s Yehway and others say is Jehova.  I mean, that’s a lot of baths.  The name LORD shows up 7,970 times in the Bible.  But I think that helps give us a sense for how much these people respected and revered the name of the Lord.  Now with that understanding, take what Jesus says and place it within that context and you can begin to get a sense for how radical what Jesus was saying was.  He was saying, God is your Father.  He’s not distant, He’s close.  He’s not impersonal, He’s personal.  He’s not unloving, He’s loving. 

And I love this because its something that each of us can relate to.  We all have families.  All of us have a dad. Some of them were really amazing.  I thank God for my dad.  But some of us had dads that weren’t so amazing.  And I think that that’s one of the reasons a lot of people struggle to relate to God because they had a really crummy father growing up.  He was never around.  He was abusive.  He was emotionally checked out.  And so, what a lot of people do is they take their earthly Father and judge their heavenly father by their earthly dad.  And so a lot of people have this really warped view of God.  If that’s you, I would encourage you to go to the Bible and instead of judging God by your earthly father, judge your earthly father by your heavenly Father.  He’s a loving Dad.  He cares.  He listens.  He engages.  He heals.  That’s who God is.  He’s Father.

Now let me just address the dads out there for a minute.  What a wonderful privilege and opportunity we have to lead our families and mirror for them the love of their heavenly Father.  Please don't neglect that responsibility.  Your families need you.  It's time for the men in our churches to start acting like men.  Far to many churches are filled with boys who suffer from Peter Pan syndrome and refuse to grow up.  God has called us as men to lead, love, protect, and serve our families and lead them to the feet of our heavenly Father.   

--Daniel 

THE SERVANT KING

         Our society loves stories about people who rise from obscurity to achieve greatness.  We all love a good, from rags to riches tale.  Countless movies in Hollywood have been made using some variation of that theme.  There’s a movie that came out recently called the Soloist.  It’s about this Julliard student who ends up dropping out of school and he ends up homeless and then this News reporter finds him living out on the streets and its about his re-emergence.  We love that kind of thing.

       Now here’s what’s incredible about the gospel.  The gospel isn’t a from rags to riches tale.  It’s a, from riches to rags tale.  Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, ‘For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.’ {2^nd Corinthians 8:9} 

       He who sat enthroned in the glories of heaven, surrounded by throngs of angels who worshipped at His feet and lived to accomplish His will, ‘made Himself of no reputation and took upon Himself the form of a servant.’  This is perhaps, the most incomprehensible truth in the entire bible.  God became a man!  As Paul writes in 1^st Timothy, ‘And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.’   [1^st Timothy 3:16] 

       But He didn’t stop there!  ‘He took upon Himself the form of a servant coming in the likeness of men.’  Not only did He become a man, even more, He took upon Himself the form of a servant.  The creator of all that exists, came to this earth as a servant!  I mean, just think about that statement for a moment or two.

      Then, on the night before He was to be crucified, Jesus stooped down even further by getting on His hands and knees and washing the disciples feet!  Think of that!  Jesus washed the disciples dirty, stinky feet! In Middle Eastern countries, it was the slaves who washed the feet of guests; but Christ took the place of a slave. He makes this clear to His disciples: if their Lord and Teacher has washed their feet, then they should wash one another’s feet, that is, serve each other in humility. This must have been a striking rebuke to the Twelve, for just that evening they had been debating who was to be the greatest!

      Now let’s take all of that and personalize it.  How can we take Christ’s example and follow it?  I mean, should we start washing one another’s feet?  No.  I don’t think so.  But I do know that as husbands, we are called to wash our wives in the water of the word.  Guys, when’s the last time you encouraged your wife, or served her in any way?  Maybe for you this means, tomorrow evening, after dinner, you get up and instead of slipping into a coma on the couch, you clear the table and do the dishes.  Maybe it means, instead of complaining about something you don’t like about the church, you get involved and start helping.  Maybe it means you volunteer to lead a home group… or bring dinner to someone who you know is sick… or maybe it means you see someone stacking chairs and you help them…  I don't know exactly what this looks like for you.  But the big idea is this.  Jesus came to this earth as the servant king, and it is our privilege to get to serve Him by serving those He puts in front of us. 

-Daniel