June is the month in which we celebrate Father’s Day. Years of being a Marriage and Family therapist have taught me that there are no perfect human fathers.
In fact David and I used to tell our children that there was a fund set apart specifically for them. It was designated for future therapy because two therapists had raised them. We figured that if you can’t laugh at yourself, you are in big trouble.
Regardless of how you would describe your father, he is still influencing your life today.
Many of my clients have only experienced abuse, abandonment and anger from their fathers. That tragic legacy leads to challenges with every man who enters into their life from childhood on.
Thank goodness there is one truly good father. God the Father is our only good father. As children of earthly imperfect fathers we can’t do anything but hold our earthly fathers accountable for the impact that they have had on our life. We honor what they did that was honorable and we are realistic about what was not honorable. That we must deal with.
When our earthly fathers allow themselves to be loved by their Heavenly Father, when they imitate His love in the way they love their wife and their children and when they are swift to admit to their family when they have failed to love well, those closest to them are blessed. They have been mentored well and loved well. That modeling will reverberate through the self- esteem of their children, the security that their wife feels, and the future relationships of all.
How Does God The Father Love?
Even though God the Father’s love is beyond anything that we can imagine humans keep attempting to describe His love. Since God refuses to be known intellectually and can only be known through love, it would seem that understanding God’s love is extraordinarily important.
Years ago Dick Dickinson paraphrased 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 in his attempt to describe how God the Father loves. I have always found it both comforting and challenging. I hope that it blesses you as it has me.
Because God loves me, He is slow to lose patience with me.
Because God loves me, He takes the circumstances of my life and uses them in a constructive way for my growth.
Because God loves me, He does not treat me as an object to be possessed and manipulated.
Because God loves me, He has no need to impress me with how great and powerful He is because He is God. Nor does He belittle me as His child in order to show me how important He is.
Because God loves me, He is for me. He wants to see me mature and develop in His love.
Because God loves me, He doesn’t send His wrath down on every little mistake I make of which there are many.
Because God loves me, He does not keep score of all my sins and then beat me over the head with them whenever He gets the chance.
Because God loves me, He is deeply grieved when I do not walk in the ways that please Him because He sees this as evidence that I don’t trust Him and love Him.
Because God loves me, He rejoices when I experience His power and strength and stand up under the pressure of life for His name’s sake.
Because God loves me, He works patiently with me even when I feel like giving up and can’t see why He doesn’t give up on me, too.
Because God loves me, He trusts me when at times I don’t even trust myself.
Because God loves me, He never says there is no hope for me, rather, He works patiently with me, loves me, and disciplines me, in such a way that it is hard for me to understand the depth of His concern for me.
Because God loves me, He never forsakes me though many of my friends might.
Dick Dickinson, “Because God Loves Me” in Improving Your Self Image (Harvest House Publishers).
Dads what if your prayer as you raise your children was that God transforms you into that kind of a father…a good, good father?
Wives what if this description of God’s love, became a prayer that we pray for our husbands and even for ourselves?
Until our next Conscious Lover’s Blog…
