(I Am) The Father

Our Father, our Heavenly Father—the one whose love is written about in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."

     While we know God is our Father because it is written in scripture, He is also known to be our Father because He is the Creator and Father of Adam and Eve.  Thus, because our ancestry is traced back to Adam and Eve, God is our Father.  So, it can be said that He is our Heavenly Father and our Father through lineage.  He breathed life into Adam and Eve, and He does so today in every new life in the mother's womb.

     For much of my adult Christian life, I considered God the Father an authoritarian who set down the rules I was to follow and that He would be around when He felt I had made all the proper preparations to be good enough for Him to come to me.  I never considered Him a loving, caring Father who wanted the best for me.  I heard the words taught from the pulpit and read the words in the Bible, but I did not believe them.  I was convinced I had to be better and do better for Him to allow me into His presence.  I heard the words that we come boldly into His presence and that He gave us the power to become the “sons of God;” I just did not believe them.  I thought He was always disappointed or angry at me and that Jesus was there to forgive me, so I could bow in or crawl into His presence. I felt Jesus' forgiveness but always sensed that God the Father was displeased with me.  I was not good enough, holy enough, or righteous enough.  He accepted me through His love for His Son Jesus but never loved me Himself.  And I so wanted a relationship with Him.  I wanted His love, care, and protection.  I wanted to be accepted, but I just could not accomplish this.  I always had to look to Jesus or the Holy Spirit; God the Father was just too mean, so I thought.

     I have read the Old Testament; I know about His anger and wrath and His displeasure with Israel, Judah, and mankind in the last days.  I could not understand how a God of love could be so unloving.  How could He punish the humans He created so severely and yet say that He loved us?  This was impossible to reconcile in my mind.

     Past events had caused me to seek God expressly to gain a deeper understanding of His love.  My intensity and dedication to the subject of love caused me to only read 1 Corinthians 13 every day and no other Scripture for an entire year.  To me, love is an action, not a feeling.  I had heard the words "I love you" many times, but to me, the actions I perceived from both God and those with whom I had fellowship did not reflect these words.  I confess that I am an extremely introverted thinker, so I do not work well with feelings; I never have, so when I would perceive that God said a lot of loving words but did not see evidence of love, I became perplexed and frustrated.  I did not recognize why He was angry.  I did not focus on the cause of His anger. How He hated what men were doing to each other.  He hated that fathers and mothers killed their children in sacrifice to false gods and demons.  How He hated the lies of the judges and leaders who had authority over their citizens.  How He hated the injustice and greed of the wealthy, who robbed the poor for gain.  I looked only at His anger and never at the evil that caused the Creator's anger.  I never looked at His patience for those who did such evil.  I never perceived the prayers of the victims of such crimes as being answered.  I never realized His love for the unjust was expressed through His patience in allowing their sin to continue because He knew some would repent.  I never saw that He rescued the persecuted who prayed for His help.  I focused only on His anger and not His love.

     Because I misperceived who The Father was, I did not care for Him.  I had the wrong idea that I let Him down and could not measure up to His expectations.  Thus, I had a guarded and distant relationship with Him. I was protecting myself from Him.  While I was misperceiving Him, He never misperceived me.  He was so good to me, and I did not even know it!  He simply continued to keep a relationship with me that would later develop into a more mature understanding of Him.  He expressed Himself to me in a kind, gentle manner and spoke to me in a language I could understand.  He did this through His Holy Spirit!

     While living through the past events that caused so much confusion, I never gave up my desire to know God.  He saved me from a life of drugs, crime, and pain. I wanted to live in His love and forgiveness, yet since I thought the Father was mean, I sought the Holy Spirit for comfort.  I felt His presence; He taught and showed me excellent illumination in prayer and scripture.  I told Him I loved Him and developed a satisfying relationship with Him.  He never condemned nor judged me.  Thus, while I considered the Holy Spirit my gentle, kind teacher, the Father was something else to me altogether.  Doesn't that sound stupid and ridiculous?  Don't you have the desire to immediately set me straight?  I know, it sounds absurd to me, too, in retrospect.  Now, I marvel at my guarded behavior toward the Father.  I learned that giving His only begotten Son to die on the cross was the only way He could genuinely show His love to me. God the Father has loved me all along.  I just could not see it.

     Our Heavenly Father is Spirit, therefore could never give His life for us.  But if fact, He did—through His Son Jesus!  God (Elohim) hung on the cross that day in the body of Jesus!  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are "I Am, Who I Am!"  They can never be separated!  Never!

     We read in John 16:32, "Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me."  Where the Father is, the Son and Holy Spirit are; where the Son is, the Father and Holy Spirit are, and where the Holy Spirit is, the Father and Son are also!  Always and forever, One God!  We all receive love, salvation, teaching and guidance from God.  One God.

     At one time, I just could not understand how this could be.  I did not realize the Holy Spirit's love and teaching were from the Father and that I was feeling and receiving everything the Father is through His Holy Spirit.  They are one.  My earlier feeling was wrong!

     You see, before the beginnings of the heavens and the earth, "I Am, Who I Am" knew He would be a Father to us.  He would love us as a Father and protect us as a Father.  He would guide us and teach us His ways and His life.  Then He created us and said, "It is good."

     He knew that all men and women would be born from a man and a woman; thus, they would have human fathers and mothers.  He knew He would be reflected through our relationship with our human father.  Through the example of our human father, we would understand Him as our Heavenly Father.

     As you read these words, you may reflect on your relationship with your father, and to many, it is not or was not good.  You may have been abandoned, abused, neglected, or worse.  For this reason, you struggle in your relationship with your Heavenly Father, or it may not exist at all.  Like I did, you may look to Jesus or the Holy Spirit more than to the Father for a relationship with the one God.  It is okay to do so; there is no jealousy in God.  You can pray to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit—they are the same God.  Remember, they are all divine and complete, individual expressions of "I Am, Who I Am."

     Some of you had wonderful fathers and did not struggle with a misconception of God the Father, and that is how "I Am, Who I Am" intended it to be.  But unfortunately, man disobeyed God and fell.  God wanted every human father to reflect His Fatherhood to their children from the beginning.  Can you imagine what family life would have been like if we had never fallen?  What would our fathers and mothers have been like if they were not raised by fallen fathers or mothers?  They would have been like Adam and Eve before the fall, living under God's perfect will and creation.  What examples of the Father we would have seen if we lived in that environment!  I believe that we would have seen a perfect reflection of love, joy, and peace. There would have been no ugly feelings about our Heavenly Father because we would have seen nothing of the fallen man from generation to generation.  We would be living a much different life from that of today.

     The Father is an individual formless expression of "I Am, Who I Am."  He is unseen to creation but is proved to be the authority of the Trinity, mankind, and all creation.  Jesus is His Son; the Holy Spirit is His Spirit.  He is the Father of mankind and all the heavens and the earth.  The Father commands and directs all things created by God (Elohim), as He wishes.  The Heavenly Father is the final authority of all His creation.

     The Father’s authority directs the Holy Spirit.  The Father sent the Holy Spirit to Earth, as we read in John 16:13: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come."

     We read that Jesus is under His authority and prayed to His Father in John 5:19: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does." And it is written in other scripture that Jesus submitted to the authority of the Father. As in Mark 14:35  "He went on a little further and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting Him might pass Him by. "Abba Father" He cried out, "everything is possible for you, please take this cup from of suffering from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine."

     In times past, I had asked God who gave Him the absolute and final authority.  And why does He have it?  I love Him for answering me, and the answer was unexpected; the Holy Spirit said that "no one gave Him the final authority.  He is the truth!  There is nothing in Him or about Him that is not the truth, and truth gives Him final authority!"  We can argue against the truth.  We can rebel against it, but the truth is always the final word.  We can put off or deny the truth, but the truth always wins.  Truth is the final authority in all judgment!  The Father is true; thus, He is the final authority.  There is no lie in Him.  Therefore, when humans manipulate the truth, it is no longer truth but a lie.  There are no shades with God—there is the truth, and there is the lie.

     Our Heavenly Father is the truth; He can never be deceived by our manipulations, arguments, or lies.  He never deceives; however, we become deceived and deceive ourselves.  We are not given the final authority over ourselves.  The Father alone is qualified to have authority over us because He created us for His good pleasure and is the only one capable of judging us.  Truth can feel harsh to humans because there are no gray areas, and we like our gray areas.  Truth sets us free and is just!  Truth liberates the sinner and restores him to his Creator.

     If you are fatherless or come from a dysfunctional family where your father was absent or abusive, you can boldly seek your Heavenly Father using prayer and scripture.  When you find God the Father, you will discover love, joy, and peace expressed differently than that of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  We are meant to experience the fullness of God through the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

     As you read further, you will discover that the Father does not judge us at all!  His love for us and the comfort He gives us are overwhelming when we look to know Him.