The good news today is Our Father is close. He is an intimate God. God is with us. His very name reveals his Closeness. Emanuel means God with us. That’s how He chose to be known, as a God that is with us! He’s closer than our skin. He knows you, he knows your name, every hair on your head is numbered he knows them all.
He so loves you that He even knew you before you were formed in your mothers belly. He was so ready to meet you, to look upon you with joy, to experience the pleasure of being your father, of you being His own reflection, that He couldn’t even wait until you were formed to search you out and know you.
t makes me think of how I believe John, in awe of the fatherhood of God declared, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” 1st John 3:1
I want you to begin to see the nature of Abba. What’s more, a dimension of this manner of love is that it was lavished upon us FIRST. It’s deep. So deep that it redeemed you before your beginning in time and continues to carry you throughout eternity at the end of your earthly time. It’s too high to get over, to low to get under, you might say!
Being a father of 7, this fact of being loved first before we could love back really touches me. Being made in His image, loving my own children before they were even born while they were yet in their mothers belly, I can begin to understand just a small portion the manner of love this is.
When they were just a thought in my mind, I loved them. When we had yet only decided to conceive, thats when my love began. And as they were being formed, I loved them so much that I’d speak to them from outside their mommas belly before they could understand a word I said. I wanted each one of them to know my voice from their first breath. I’d even sing over them blessings while they were unaware.
Zephaniah 3:17 says He no longer rebukes us(in the sin of adam) but rejoices over us with singing! Are you getting the picture? Oh how He loves us. This reality of His fatherhood through being born again in Jesus is so important because it reveals the closeness of relationship we have obtained in Jesus.
A good father protects, provides, raises His children to be of his own nature, is pleased to fellowship with His children, always wants to be there with and for them at all times. It is his pleasure to be needed.
He takes pleasure in the written truth that He’ll never leave you or forsake you. He is blessed to be that blessing to you. It’s not a duty or just a promise, or responsibility, it’s his pleasure because that’s just who He is.
If your struggling right now with feeling God near, it’s because you’ve lost the reality of how close He keeps himself to His own.
The more we come as a child, the more we allow Him to father us. This is key. The more helpless (poor in spirit one could say) I know I am, the more I accept His fatherhood. Let me ask it this way that you might hear and see…
If my eighteen-year-old, seventeen-year-old, thirteen-year-old, twelve-year-old, nine-year-old, three-year-old, and one-year-old sons were walking with me down a high-traffic road, which sons would I keep the closest? Which sons would I carry and hold? The more needy and helpless of the group that’s who! My three-year-old in hand, and carrying my one-year-old.
See? Let’s wrap this up.
God is close. The only separation from God we’ve ever had is in our minds when we walk according the fleshly midset of Adam, a fellowship stripped man, instead of rooted in the reality of the mindset of Jesus, the mindset of a son in fellowship with his Abba.
And this is how you fight this battle and become rooted in the unshakeable truth of God’s eternal closeness through sonship, that you crucify the thoughts that are contrary to His truth. You won’t have to work hard to think like Adam, that comes naturally, you will however have to take some effort daily and put that mindset on the cross.
If you ever start to feel forsaken, declare the truth that it is written, he’ll never leave me or forsake me, Hebrews 13:5
Let me close with the revelation that my friend shared with me that lifted me up and led me to seek what the words says about my walk instead of what my mind feels.
He said, “Thomas, if you’re wondering where God is, look inside your deepest trouble, biggest storm, He’s right there in the middle!
He’s Emanuel! God is with us. He’s an intimate God amen? I bless you in the name of Jesus - Thomas & Mandi + 7 Awesome Boys @
