My Father CHOSE Me

On Father’s Day this year I taught my Sunday School class a lesson I wrote called, “You Can Call Him Dad”. This is typically a difficult lesson to write because the situations of the kids in my class vary on how they view fathers based on their experiences with their own dads--or lack thereof. As I was thinking and praying about it I found myself pondering my own view of my Heavenly Father in light of my earthly father.

Romans 8:15 says, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” This verse is close to me because not only do I understand the concept of adoption by my Heavenly Father, I understood it by my earthly father as well.

Having been raised for the first part of my life by a physically and emotionally abusive man, I did not have a proper view of God when it came to looking at Him as my Father. In my teen years and as a young adult I struggled with this concept because I was sure that God was up in Heaven just waiting for me to mess up and that as soon as I did He would be gone from my life in the blink of an eye. Oh, how many times I believed God had walked out on me. Until, that is, I came to an understanding of how much God loves us.

I was taken in by my pastor when I was older and he became the man in my life whom I called my dad. He wasn’t like my biological father, though. No, this man actually had the love of Christ in his life and he spread it to people. Over time I began to see what Romans 8:15 really meant. God doesn’t have to love us or care for us, just as my pastor and his wife never had to love or care for me--and yet, somehow the love in His heart and in their hearts was strong enough that they did so anyway. Sure, there were times when I was scared because I messed up and thought they were going to abandon me, too, just as I had thought of God. But thinking about them this Father’s Day, I’ve seen how that is not true. Neither God nor my parents have left me, despite my not being perfect.

God doesn’t leave His children. Hebrews 13:5 states that God “will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” You cannot fall so far that God cannot reach down and pick you back up. Remember that God didn’t have to love us or adopt us as His children but He CHOSE to do so. He loved you so much that He CHOSE to call you His child. He loved you so much that He CHOSE to save you. This Father’s Day, realize that Jesus is the perfect Father and He is waiting there for you, arms wide open, in both your times of success and in your times of failing.