Father’s Day 2016

God is the Father we are all trying to emulate.

He is the Father we are all trying to show to our children.

He is the Father we ourselves love and want to be like.

So that brings us to a question about God’s fatherhood.

What kind of Father is God so we can model our behavior on His? (Not just human fathers, but all Christians)

1.     1. God is love – He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (1 Jn 4:8)

God’s life, God’s essence, God’s relationship with his creatures, with humankind, with his family the church, is all love.

               He gives sun, rain, food to the just and unjust – He is even handed, and loves even those not His children. That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5:45

               You want to be like God? Live a life characterized by love.

2.    2. God is faithful – Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it (1 Th 5:24).

No matter who we are. No matter how many times we fail, or fall into sin, God does not give up on His children.

I will be there for you because you belong to me.

Be there for your children, family, and others.

3.     3, God responds to prayer and is generous

Do you remember Jesus’ parable?

⁷ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

⁸ For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

⁹ Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

¹⁰ Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

¹¹ If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Fatherof lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1:17).

Little boys often say: I want to be like my dad. Christian fathers want to be like their heavenly Father. All Christians should want that.