Learning on The Way
The great theologian J. I. Packer writes, “You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God. Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.” Do you agree with this statement? Why?
Did your parents prepare you to trust God and see him as our good father? If so, how? If you are a parent now, how are you preparing your children to trust God and see him as their good father?
Where do you have a hard time reconciling God as our Father? How has your earthly father helped or limited your view of God as Father? How has societies view of outgrowing your need for a father impacted your relationship with your heavenly father?
How does the acceptance of your heavenly Father make it possible to move beyond your sins, and have hope that all is not lost for you? How does a relationship with you heavenly Father help you become the person “we are supposed to be in Him” and the person God sees?