Engaging God, the FATHER
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God… there was Perfect relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Also, Wisdom was there very early on: Prov 8:22 “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. 23 “From everlasting I was established, 27 “When He established the heavens, I was there… 30 Then I was beside Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him,
Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness … 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over
From the beginning everything was about engaging God in relationship. God and Adam walked together in fellowship.
Gen 3:8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
When Adam sinned God did not say what did you do.? But where are you? Adam fell from the realm where he could walk with God in Eden, God’s heavenly garden.
God had to come to earth himself as a man Jesus, to restore that walking relationship. It was a walking relationship not working relationship. Relationship with God always comes before working with Him. working with Him not for Him.
We are sons not slaves or servants, coheirs with Jesus for the establishing of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That is why Jesus came to restore our relationship with the Father. John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.
We have a law, a piece of legislation that authorizes us to be a place and where Fatherhood and sonship can be restored and experienced. Where reconciliation and restoration of relationship can take place and destiny can be discovered and fulfilled. I decree the law of fatherhood and sonship. I call forth the spirit that turns the hearts of the children back to their Father. I call forth a new dimension of intimacy and relationship in sonship. I call forth the alignment in the spirit with the 4 faces of God.
We all begin separated from God and carry rejection within our soul. We all have that situation exacerbated (to make an already bad or problematic situation worse) during our lives by the damage caused by other relationships. Often the root causes of many of our problems lie in our childhood.
We are all affected in some way by our upbringing. We are all influenced by the parenting of those who brought us up. This can be severely affecting how we view and live life now. This has affected all of us to one degree or another
Restoration of our relationship with God is the central feature of history.
1 Thes 5: 23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. With a reconciled and restored relationship with God a process of healing of spirit, soul and body can begin to take place.
John 1:12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
1 John 3:1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God;
Rom 8:14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 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.
Rom 8:15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ ….
Rom 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Jesus life is the perfect example of sonship and His relationship with the Father reveals true Fatherhood
John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 20 In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. John 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.
Along with rights of being adopted as sons come the responsibilities. We are born again into a royal family. We have the responsibility to be a representative on earth so that others can see what God is like through our relationship with Him.
Rom 8:19 for the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
Being part of a royal family gives us access to the palace and that in our case means heaven where God dwells.
Heb 4:16 Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. That means that we have all the resources of heaven available to us just like Jesus God’s son.
John 5:19 “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. We have a destiny to fulfill that, and it involves us seeing what the Father is doing
Eph 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.
Eph 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Adoption means we are chosen. The Spirit of adoption enables us to call God Abba, father or daddy. God wants us to know Him as our Father but the biggest obstacle to that happening is often our own parents, fathers who probably have not been the best examples of fatherhood.
The law of fatherhood gives us the opportunity to be restored and reconciled as sons. We cannot really be a son or child of God without having a relationship with the Father. God does not want us to feel like an orphan.
Even with God as our Father we may still feel like an orphan if our earthly father was not there for us physically or emotionally. our past experiences will affect our present and our future if they are not dealt with and healed.
Col 1:19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, 20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
We can all be set free and restored to know our true identity as children of God. We can have that God shaped hole in us filled with a relationship with God himself as a loving Father.
We may have tried to fill the emptiness and pain of the rejection we have in our emotions with substitute relationships or painkillers of various description or prescription.
Some of the things the world offers us are other relationships, success, money, power, position, work.
We use these things to fill the hole but they often make the pain worse. We can self-medicate with many things to ease the pain to take the edge off our emptiness: Alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, pornography, power, work, exercise, food, shopping etc.
These things all offer false hope and often leave us broken, damaged, hurting, angry, rejected, addicted. Often we feel empty, hollow, hopeless and disillusioned with life . Still not finding the answers to what we are really looking for
We all have our personal stories. We may never had a father or mother. We may have had many substitute fathers. We may have feelings of anger, bitter and resentment towards your parents. We may have rationalized our life and have no surface emotion.
There is hope, many have us have discovered healing, reconciliation and restoration of relationship. That hope is Jesus who came to restore relationship with the Father. Most of us are still in that process of learning what it is to be fathered properly
I want to share my personal journey with you of how my relationship with God as Father was restored.
We have to overcome the obstacles in our life that will stop us from experiencing intimacy. There were many levels of issues in me, but the root was father issues. Everything was connected to my woundedness in fatherhood and sonship.
Our previous hurts and past experience can cause us to protect ourselves, which will prevent us from fully entering into what God has for us. There may be many things that highlight or reveal these issues operating in us. You may find it difficult, to be open. You may be be prickly to keep people at arm’s length . You may reject people first
You may find you struggle in our praise times with the more intimate songs . You may find you can’t relate to songs about meeting God face to face or going deeper or drawing closer or dancing with Him, being in intimate relationship with Him . Indicators of still being wounded.
Worship opened my heart to a new dimension of intimacy and desire. Love was unveiled at another level that changed my heart
‘We may not met the Father’ and I knew inside that it was true. I had not met the Father in heaven.
“It is because you have a father wound” the Father will come to and say the same words over and over again:’ I love you… I love you… I love you… I love you.
Each word of love He spoke healed my heart. I looked down and the scar was gone. I have continued to have such wonderful times of intimacy with the Father. It’s what He wants with every one of His children.
By virtue of being adopted back into God’s family, we have been given: A new name -son no longer slave . A new legal standing/status – accepted no longer alienated or condemned . A new family-relationship with access to God’s presence within and in heaven . A new image, the image of Christ,
The enemy can stop your sonship if he can stop your father relationship . We can’t be revealed as sons if we don’t have a Father
God wants you to know Him as your heavenly Father . Will you let God father you today?
There is a wonderful story in the bible called the prodigal son. Where the father representing God is waiting for his son to return even though he messed up his life . God is waiting for us to come to Him to be reconciled, healed, restored and made whole emotionally .