A talk for Tabor Combined Chapel 18th September 2019

Introduction

There are a couple of parts to this chapel talk.  I am going to begin by telling you something about myself before I consider the theology behind some recent events.  At the end I am going to give you an opportunity to repent.

In order for you to make sense of what happened to me this year, you need to know what kind of person I am.  I am a very goal oriented person.  I have a deep need for achievement in my life.  Prior to this year, I would say that I have never been satisfied with any of the achievements in my life.  In fact, it all seems woefully inadequate.  Let me put that in perspective for those of you who have not known me a long time.  I have five degrees, including a doctorate; I have had four books published and have self-published four others.  I am in various stages of writing three new books.  Yet I would say that in my life I have accomplished nothing at all.  To be clear, if I had ten degrees and fifty bestselling books, I would have felt the same.  I need to work harder because there is nothing successful about my life.

At the end of last year, I was upset by the fact that I did not get on the preaching roster at church more than twice in three months.  I frankly felt unwanted and hurt.  I spoke to my mentor about this and he said that I have been measuring myself by my gifts.  He suggested, somewhat firmly, that I go to prayer counselling.  I rejected that idea because it seemed too scary.  But as the months progressed I became increasingly depressed and had trouble sleeping.  Eventually I gave in and went.  They asked me a lot of questions to see what would come out of my mouth.  One of the things that did come out was the statement, “If I don’t do things, then who am I?”

I suspect that many of you think that it would help me if I had greater self-esteem or saw what I do as an accomplishment or some other such remedy.  But that is not the answer to my problem.  The prayer counsellors did nothing like that.  They asked me to repent.  I needed to repent because I did not believe what God says about me.  I in fact believed lies about myself.  I did repent and I have slept better this year than I have in years.  God has also blessed me with many speaking opportunities, but that is a digression.

Why did I believe these lies about myself?  Why am I so addicted to achievement and driven to work towards a never ending series of goals that never satisfy me?  The answer is because of my father.  My father was a strange man for sure.  I cannot remember my father ever telling me he loved me or that he was proud of anything I ever did.  I have consequently spent my whole life trying to get that approval from my father.  Now logically, you would think that I would have stopped doing that after he died, but that is not true.  My father has been dead for more than thirteen years and up until this year I was still unconsciously trying to make him proud of me.  Worse still, I have been trying to get God to be proud of me.

I told you this story because it illustrates something that is a problem for many people, if not everyone.  Since humans were made to relate to God as Father in heaven, and human parents, especially fathers, act in the place God for us in childhood, we take on board the idea that the Father in heaven is just like our earthly parents.  I was projecting my father’s lack of affirmation of me onto God as if God the Father expects me to work harder and achieve more things so that he might eventually be proud of me.  But that is utterly false.  Sadly, we all project the characteristics of our fathers, and often mothers, onto God.  We say we believe the Bible and yet still believe that God is like our parents.

We must repent of these false beliefs because the lie affects our relationship with God as Father, our relationships with others and our understanding of ourselves and what we do in this world.  But how can we come to a place of true repentance?  I believe that the most important step is to discover what the Bible says about our Father in heaven so we can see that he is not like our earthly parents.

So what kind of Father is God?

Jesus spoke about the goodness of God often, referring to him as “your heavenly Father” or “your Father in heaven”.  Every human being has an earthly father.  But God is contrasted with our earthly fathers first of all by the fact that he is a heavenly Father.  This sets him apart from every earthly father.  It should not come as a surprise, then, that God is not like earthly fathers in that he is far greater and his goodness far exceeds even that of the best father.  Our Father in heaven is a perfect father (Matt 5:48).

God is a generous Father who gives good gifts to everyone.  The Father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Matt 5:45).  God is good to all people regardless of whether they believe in Jesus or not.  God the Father knows the needs of his children.  We are more valuable than the birds of the air, which he feeds, and more valuable than the flowers of the field, which are clothed in splendour.  If he takes care of these lesser created beings, how much more will he care for the needs of his human children (Matt 6:25-34)?  Even earthly fathers do not give a child a stone instead of bread or a snake instead of fish (as a rule) (Matt 7:9-10).  God is far greater than these.  “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt 7:11 ESV).

The goodness of God as Father extends beyond merely meeting material needs.  He gives eschatological (end times) gifts also.  The Holy Spirit is the “the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4), who the Father gives to those who ask him (Luke 11:13).  Not only does the Father give this good gift but he gives the kingdom of God.  “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32 ESV).  Far from humans having to persuade God to usher in his kingdom, he is pleased to give the kingdom.  We must stop thinking of our heavenly Father as a stingy God who must be manipulated into giving us these good gifts.  He desires to give them and only waits for us to come to him and ask.  God is a generous Father.

The story of the prodigal son shows both that God is merciful to sinners and that he is good and generous.  The prodigal son spent all of his father’s money and came home only because he was starving.  He was prepared to ask his father if he could be a servant just so he could get fed.  “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son’” (Luke 15:21 ESV).  But the father in the parable does not make the prodigal his hired hand.  Instead, he runs to him and calls him a son.  Such is God’s mercy that he longs to have his children return to him and he longs to restore our status as sons, despite our rebellion.  But often we are like the older brother in the story, who believed that the father was too stingy to give him anything (Luke 15:28-31).

When we have the Spirit of the Father living in us we are never alone.  Jesus promised “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18 ESV), and “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23 ESV).  The gift of the Father is to be ever present with us, to never leave us alone.  He is never an absent Father but he is a Father who is as close as it is possible to be.  We can always be with him, he will always hear us.  He will always spend time with us, his children.

God is emotionally present to us.  He is concerned with the minutiae of our lives.  “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt 10:30 ESV).  If God knows the number of hairs on your head, then he is interested in the details of your existence: what you had for breakfast, the little things that you need to get done today, the annoying things which are getting your goat, the fact that you are 50 cents short of something who want to buy.  Our heavenly Father is interested in the everyday aspects of your life, not just the really big things which relate to the kingdom of God or grand ministries.

He listens to his children and is concerned with our needs.  “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:6-8 ESV).  The Father knows the needs of his children; he pays attention to the lives of his children.  The pagans babble a lot trying to get his attention.  This is not necessary.  As soon as you call out to the heavenly Father, he is attentive.

Father God delights in our company.  God was pleased to bring us into his family (Eph 1:5); he is pleased to be our Father.  The psalmist similar says, “but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Ps 147:11 ESV).  God does not regret bringing believers into his family since it was done intentionally and purposefully.  He never spurns his children or sees us as an inconvenience or an annoyance.  It was the love of God which prompted him to adopt people and he wants to be with us.

Many people have had abusive fathers but Father God is not abusive.  Abusive fathers seek something for themselves at the expense of their children.  But God the Father loves us so much that he gave up what is most precious to him for our sakes.  “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32 ESV).  If Father God was willing to give up his most precious Son for you, then there is no limit to what he is willing to do for you.  On this basis, T.F. Torrance makes the powerful statement that God “loves us more than he loves himself”.[1]  This is the complete opposite of abuse.  He is the kind of Father that many of us lacked growing up and God is the kind of Father who we can therefore trust and surrender to.

Many earthly fathers have impossible expectations of their children.  But Father God has accomplished for his sons what they cannot accomplish for themselves, and then he has freely counted these achievements as if they belonged to his sons.  We are by nature sinners who continue to sin and fail to do what is right.  Yet in sending his Son, Jesus, into the world the Father has given those who trust him free access to heaven (Eph 2:6) and counts believers as children of God.  We cannot be righteous but God has made his sons righteous in Christ (1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 5:21).  We cannot be holy and yet God has made Christians holy in Christ and calls us saints (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2).  The list of these accomplishments is long.  We did not achieve these things but for followers of Christ the Father counts these accomplishments as ours.  Father God does not place a burden on us to come up to scratch before he loves us.  His love is unconditional and his love enables us to grow from glory to glory.

Conclusion

I know that my father was not like God the Father.  I expect that yours is not either.  The question now is: who we are going to believe?  For years I let myself be ruled by the lies that I believed because I thought God was like my father and therefore could not truly accept me unless I worked harder and accomplished more.  I needed to repent and I am willing to bet good money that so do many of you.  I want to give you some time now to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you about what you believe about God.  If he reveals something to you, do not be slow in repenting and seeking forgiveness.