Read: Matthew 6:9-13

When Christ taught His disciples to pray, He told them to call God “Our Father” when communicating with Him. Jesus often addressed God as “My Father,” but now they, too, shared in that privileged family relationship. All of us who’ve been born again are part of the household of God and have this same right.

Consider some of the ways our heavenly Father cares for His children. He …

Loves. God’s love is unconditional, since it’s based on His nature rather than our performance
(1 John 4:16).

Listens. When we pray, He gives us His full attention (Psalm 55:16-17).

Provides. The Father assumes responsibility for meeting all our needs (Philippians 4:19).

Guides. He is the one who directs our path when we trust in Him (Proverbs. 3:5-6).

Protects. The Lord shields us spiritually, emotionally, and physically, sifting every experience through His sovereign fingers (Psalm 121).

Stays. He’s not an absentee parent, since He will never leave or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:8).

Disciplines. The Lord disciplines us for our good, so that we may share in His holiness
(Hebrews 12:5-11).

Though experiences with our earthly dads may have distorted our perspective of the heavenly Father, we can learn to see Him as He truly is. By viewing Him through the truth of Scripture instead of our preconceptions, we will see evidence of His loving care and discover a security we’ve never known before.

ByDr. Charles Stanley
Used by Permission

https://www.intouch.org/

FURTHER READING

Praying with Confidence

How to Pray Articles

What Should Be Included in Prayer?

The post Our Heavenly Father appeared first on Thoughts About God.

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” Romans 8:15 (The Message)

It was the early 1990’s. A room full of teachers sat at long wooden tables in a dimly lit, stuffy room. Magazines lay in disorderly piles on the tables along with glue, several pair of scissors, and large sheets of blank white paper. The instructions were simple: cut out pictures illustrating your view of the character of God and paste the pictures onto the paper, forming a collage.

After a few moments of silence, the teachers – accustomed, of course, to totalitarian-induced obedience – began the project and within thirty minutes, several large posters were complete.

Although the project organizers suspected what might be the general direction of the participants’ choices, they were amazed at the volatility expressed. No cute baby pictures, no frothy clouds, no pastoral scenes. Instead, the formerly blank sheets had overlapping cut outs of atomic explosions, mutilated bodies, storm-ravaged houses, bloody slaughterhouse scenes.

These were people who had not yet heard of the “tender mercy of our God“. (Luke 1:78), or “the kindnesses of the Lord” (Psalm 63:7). They didn’t know that God longed to be known as a tender, loving “Abba,” or “Papa” as Eugene Peterson translates in the word  The Message.

What pictures would you have cut out of the magazines? In Abba’ Child, Brennan Manning writes that we who are Christians have the same relationship with God as Jesus had. “He invites and calls us to share the same intimate and liberating relationship”.

How magnetic our lives could be if we only reflected to the world God’s radical and tender love.

I sometimes forget that the all-wise, all-knowing God is also my “Papa“, a God who longs for me to develop an intimate relationship. Help me, God, to express my love for you and increasingly feel your love for me.

By Marilyn Ehle
used by permission

RELATED READING

• Thanks Papa
• Alphabet of the Father Heart of God
• Never Leave or Forsake You

The post Papa appeared first on Thoughts About God.

Be blessed to know your identity as your Father’s beloved son or daughter. “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

Be blessed with fully realizing the life-changing truth of the Spirit living in you, so that you can know you are the beloved of your Father, and He is yours. Be blessed with His exquisite fathering and receive it as His special child. Be blessed to know His Spirit speaking to you that you are a delight to Him.

Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. Your Father wants to bless you with growth that is mental, spiritual, emotional, and relational. Receive from your Father the love and acceptance you have been seeking. Your Father’s heart is passionate for your full identity as His child, based purely on relationship, not performance.

Be blessed as He calls you to fully live as the son or daughter you are. You do not have to work for it. You can’t earn that relationship. Be blessed with perfect love that casts out fear that you aren’t enough or you don’t have what it takes.

Be blessed to know without doubt that your Father is extending His favor toward you. This is the time of your Father’s favor, a time to receive His gift to you of security in His house.

Be blessed with knowing this new grace place with your heavenly Father. He wants you to receive it. Be blessed as He calls you to life, nurture, and enlargement. Be blessed with a rich gold mine of identity and legitimacy from which to live confidently and purposefully in God’s design of you and His purposes for you.

Be blessed to be released into the full rights of your true identity and legitimacy in your Father.

By Sylvia Gunter
Used by Permission

FURTHER READING

• Be Blessed, Beloved Child – by Sylvia Gunter

• Seven-fold Blessing – by Sylvia Gunter

• Blessing of the Fruit of the Spirit – by Sylvia Gunter

The post Blessing of Identity appeared first on Thoughts About God.

Soak in this portrait of your heavenly Father.

Your Father is perfectly faithful.

Deuteronomy 31:8   “The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

Your Father is a generous provider.

Matthew 7:11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Your Father is loving and compassionate.

John 17:23 (Jesus speaking to His Father) “You have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Psalm 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.

Your Father is forgiving and accepting.

Psalm 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Your Father is a patient teacher.

Isaiah 30:20-21  Your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. (NASB)

Your Father is an understanding counselor.

Isaiah 9:6 He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Your Father is a wise communicator.

James 1:5  If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

James 3:17 The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Your Father gives good gifts.

James 1:17  Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Your Father is attentive to your needs.

Matthew 6:26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

Your Father is strong yet personal.

Isaiah 40:26 He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing

Matthew 10:30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

And so much more. He is more wonderful than our mind can comprehend. He is there, even if we feel that He has left or that He ought to leave, and even when we turn our backs on Him. Our Father is love, pure love, and He does not change.

By Sylvia Gunter
Used by Permission

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“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”  1 John 3:1

Thought

Some gifts are too precious for words and too wonderful to fully appreciate. The greatest of these gifts is that we are God’s children! We have been adopted into the Father’s family! Jesus claims us as his younger siblings! Even though the world may not acknowledge this, that condition doesn’t make it any less true. After all, the world didn’t recognize its Creator when he became flesh and lived among the people he had made. God’s Word, however, still proclaims the truth; we ARE the children of God!

Prayer

Thank you, dear Heavenly Father, for the incredible blessing of being your child. I know that I haven’t begun to understand all the glorious things this gift means. However, dear Father, I look forward to what I can learn now about what it means, and I joyously anticipate the day when I can see you face to face and fully know the meaning of this joy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

By Phil Ware

used with permission.
Phil’s daily devotionals on https://www.verseoftheday.com

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The post The Love of the Father appeared first on Thoughts About God.