March 17
Our Father, in heaven… Matthew 6:9
These words are too familiar to modern Bible readers to convey the audacity of this statement. The concept of God as a loving, caring Father is foreign to most religions, but it is the foundation of the Christian gospel that God invites us to become His sons. This sonship is even more astonishing than God’s Fatherhood. God may be considered a Father, but to call Him our actual Father is to claim a kinship, a bond, a likeness. This is Jesus’ goal – to bring us to be sons of the Father and enter into all the wonder of sonship. Jesus alone among human beings enjoyed this true Sonship, and He died to make us sons of God, so that we might call God ‘Father’. This is not a sentimental form of words. This is to be the fact of our beings as regenerated people, that we are like God in nature, and born of His Spirit, bearing oneness with Him in our hearts. Also, our Father is in heaven. In other words, we have an origin in heaven through new birth. New birth interrupts our life at a point in time, and it plants our lives in eternity with God in heaven. The loving, heavenly Father is MY Father. My soul is linked to God like a kite is drawn to the skies by strong winds. Call Him Father, and do so with the delight and wonder of all that this adoption means to us.
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Hearing God’s Heart is a daily devotional written by Les Wheeldon. Bursting with encouragement and inspiration, each daily reading draws the reader into a closer walk with God, helping you reflect, meditate and move into the presence of God.