Our adoption story, part three

In the book of Jeremiah, chapter three, in the Old Testament, God speaks these words to a people He loves, to a people He has pursued and wooed, to a people He calls His own:
"I thought you would call me, 'my father', and not turn away from me.."

And today He speaks to us. He has never stopped speaking about His longing that we should call Him Father. Of course, it's not just about using the word Father, but rather that the word Father would denote a heart attitude. In ancient Israel, the name you bore was very important. A name given at birth was a prophetic pronouncement of who you would become. So, in asking us to call Him Father, God is giving us an invitation into a father/child relationship. Not because we deserve it, have worked hard for it; not because of our qualifications, education or spirituality. No. Because of LOVE.

So, what is this father like, the one who adopts us into His family, and calls us sons and daughters? In the Bible, we are told that Jesus is the EXACT representation of the Father.

In John’s gospel, Jesus says 'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father' (John 14.9), and 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30). In an earlier blog, we made a mental list of fatherly attributes. Could we apply those to Jesus? Kind, good, accepting, providing, protecting, someone to turn to in a time of need. Yes, we could. 'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father', Jesus says.  I can't imagine that there are many people, anywhere on this earth who would describe Jesus as cruel, or distant, stern and demanding. Do you think Jesus is impatient with you or angry, controlling or insensitive to your needs? Yes, some say He was only a teacher, a prophet, a good man. Others, that He never existed. But I have never heard anyone say that Jesus is condemning or hard hearted, unkind or a killjoy? So why do we think and say these very same things about God, our Heavenly Father when, as we have seen, Jesus and the Father are one?

Of course, often, we wouldn't dare say them, or hardly think them, but they are there, prohibiting us from living freely as sons or daughters. The writer to the Hebrews said that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father (Heb. 1:3) and Jesus stated that He only did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). Consider what that looks like: healing the sick, loving the outcast, forgiving the sinner, honouring women, touching the leper, setting the captives free from emotional and spiritual bondage, weeping at the death of a friend, feeding the poor, bringing peace in a storm, standing up to injustice and corruption and oppression. This then is the Father.

And it was Jesus that said, 'I will not leave you as orphans, but I will come to you'. 

We love Phoebe imperfectly. We have parented her as well as we possibly can and we try to be the best parents we can be for her. But we do not do a perfect job. We make mistakes. We carry baggage from our own childhoods because our parents were not able to parent us perfectly either, and nor were theirs able to be perfect for them. And so it goes, back and back. But God carries no baggage. His ways are perfect. In fact the description He gives of Himself is that He IS love. Not that He loves, but that He IS love. He cannot do anything else except love us. His nature is such, that it is impossible for Him to relate to us in any other way.

If the picture of God that we have in our heads is not the correct one, then everything else is also skewed.

When Phoebe first came to live with us, she brought her little orphan ways with her. She would wait in her cot until we came to get her, she would not call out. She just waited. She would have waited all day. She did not know that it was ok to cry out, to seek attention, to ask for comfort. She kept her toe nails and finger nails short by nibbling on them - she did not know that we would have cut them for her. At twenty one months she could dress herself, was potty trained, and always did exactly as she was told. This sounds impressive, but these are orphan ways - they are not the ways of a daughter who feels safe and secure enough to challenge and test and push boundaries, and demand that needs be met. But it was early days, she was only little, and she did not know the nature of her adopted mum and dad.

For me, the understanding and realisation that I can truly trust the nature of God, as a loving father, has come gradually and quietly over a number of years. I have chosen to believe that He is who He says He is. I do not want my life and faith to be dictated by mere feelings or to be defined by past experiences or intellectual assent.

He says that I am His beloved child - that He sees me and knows me - that He has good plans for me, to give me a hope and a future - that I am His dwelling place and that He values me. Choosing to believe these truths has transformed my life. Today, I rest in Him. I now live with a deep sense of peace and contentment. Every day I see His hand of kindness in my life. I see it and I expect it. He is my daddy, after all, and I am only very small. In fact, I don't ever want to grow up and become sophisticated or independent.

To know that I am loved by God is really all that I have ever needed. My exhausting orphan ways are diminishing - the internal condemnatory dialogue is now much weaker, as I hang on to what He says. I don't have to prove myself to Him or to anyone anymore, I don't have to fight to be heard, I don't have to do stuff and be busy to be significant. I don't have to be considered intelligent or spiritual. I can just be me. He loves me, and He has proved it to me over and over again.

Never before has there been such fatherlessness across our world - millions of abandoned babies in China alone, with no fathers; millions of street children in South America with no one to call father; thousands upon thousands of girls trafficked across the continents with no daddy to protect them. So many, many people with no father figure in their lives. I believe it is NOT a coincidence that God, in this epoch of church history, is revealing Himself afresh to His people as their Heavenly Father.

The questions I want to leave with you now, at the end of this, our adoption story, are these:

• Will you call Him Father?
• Will you take Him at His word?
• Will you take a risk and allow Him to prove to you that He will father you well, even as a fully grown adult?
• Do you think that He is big enough to take you as you are, with your pain and your wounds, with your questions and your doubts, to love you unconditionally, to shelter you in the storms of life and to raise you up when you fall down?