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
For us men and fathers, this last part needs to be our #1 priority in our lives. We must lead our family to the feet of God. We accomplish this by us being in His Word daily and in return showering them with the Word. We must love them as Jesus loved the church, "give ourselves up!" I mean, your desires and pleasure must come last, their needs and desires come first.
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