The Heart of a Father

This past weekend was a trying ordeal. I have three little boys and my two oldest along with my wife and myself caught some sort of virus that knocked us out for a couple of days. In our boys case it was a little more sever in that they were so sick they became severly dehydrated and needed medical attention. It was during one of our many visits to the hospital that I achieved a certain level of clarity and insight on a certain issue that has really touched my life. This insight came through an experience with my oldest son. He was sick and the doctors decided it would be best to get him on an I.V. So they had me carry him to another room where there were three more doctors and they had me lay him on this cold brown table. During this my oldest son didn't cry or anything, he completely trusted me as his father. Then the doctors asked me to leave for a few minutes while they hooked him up with an I.V. I nodded my consent and took a step back from the table through the doorway. My oldest son's eyes never left me, until the sliding door into the room was all of the sudden closed, and I was left standing outside listening to my son start to cry as the doctors grabbed him and held him down and started to insert the needle and put on the brace. He started crying out, "PAPA, PAPA!" It was the most heart wrenching sound! I wanted to tear the sliding door off of its hinges and charge in and rescue my son, but I didn't because I knew that what was being done was for his benefit, and would ultimately result in restoring him to perfect health. It was one of the toughest things I have had to endure as a parent. Sure, It was tough taking care of a couple of sick boys, but I had a level of control. To resign myself to allowing my son to experience pain in anyway, even knowing it was for his betterment, was something that taxed my self sontrol and in a way strengthened my love as I had to love him enough to let go of my control of him knowing this momentary pain was going to restore my son to me. And as I am sitting contemplating this I realized something, There was another Father who endured this, but on a much greater scale. We see this recorded for us in the Bible. In Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19 we can see a recording of the most historically difficult, painful, bloody, anguishing, heart-wrenching account of the death of Jesus Christ and more importantly, the measure of the HEART OF HIS FATHER! Jesus who was innocent, kind, and pure, was beaten with rods, stripped, whipped with a cat of nine tails whip which had lead tips, tortured by brutal bloodthirsty soldiers, spit on by priests and commoners alike, and then hung up on a cross by large railroad spikes which were driven through his hands and feet. He was hung naked between criminals, mocked by the very people he had worked for for years, he had a crown of inch and half long thorns shoved deep into his skull, and to top it all off he was thirsty and was given a mixture of vinegar and spit to soften his dusty, parched throat. Jesus went through all of this for you and me. He was making a way for us so that we could become adopted sons of God and not have to experience hopelessness in death. It truly was the ultimate sacrifice! And personally I am so thankful and grateful for the sacrifice that Christ made, but until recently I had never observed the sacrifice that God the father made as a father for Christ and for us as His adopted sons. You see there came a time when Christ was on the cross that he started to cry out for his father. We can see this clearly in Matthew 27:46, and Mark 15:34. In Essence Christ was calling out, "PAPA, PAPA!" And it is here that I always assumed (until recently) that God the Father turned his face away from his Son because all the sin of the world was being laid on him and He did this because He can't look upon sin, but boy, was I wrong (to a certain extent!). You see, a little while earlier that day - when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus and bring him to trial, Christ made an interesting statement. He said that if he just asked His Father, His Father would send 72,000 mighty angelic warriors in an instant to rescue Him. God the Father loves His Son. In the most famous bible verse in the world (John 3:16) everyone says it, but until recently I never fully took it to heart, the part that reads "His one and only son...". God Loved Christ, time and again God continually was sending affirmations of his love to his son both verbally and miraculously. He isn't this cold, detached being sitting on a cloud playing out his plan with Christ without feelings. No! In fact, it's the exact opposite, we see multiple times in scripture where God acknowledges Christ as His Beloved Son in whom God the Father is well pleased. So, as Christ is hanging on the cross bloody and bruised, he cries out to his father, and his Father -who loves Christ beyond anything we can imagine - has to make a sacrifice of enormous proportions. To use myself as an imperfect analogy, God the Father was like me standing outside of the hospital door listening to my son's cries for me and wanting to rip the door off of it's hinges and rush in and save my son, but instead making the difficult decision to restrain myself for the betterment of my son. God could have ripped back the curtain of time and space in an instant and sent more than 72,000 mighty warrior angels to surround Christ as God the Father comforts his son and heals his momentary pain, but he doesn't. Instead He loves his son enough to allow him to suffer the momentary pain of death, for christ's betterment, for it was through that momentary pain of death, the Christ was able to conquer death and it is because of his sacrifice and conquest that God was able to bring Christ to his rightful position as King of Kings, and Lord of Lord's, with everything subject to him. And it is God the Father's pleasure to see his son receiving that glory as any father is proud of seeing his own children suceed. But the sacrifice of God the Father was equal to the sacrifice of Christ in that God had to restrain himself and allow his Son to experience the pain for his betterment and for ours as it was necessary for Christ to die so that we could achieve adoption status into God's family. And it was through that restaint that we see God's love not just for Christ but also for us. This act of love was not an easy thing for God. In the following verses we see the very elements of this world responding as a visual sign to us of the restraint of power God was exercising in not rescuing son. We see that while Christ was suffering on the cross there was a great darkness all across the land. The sky itself was depicting the anguish and emotion of God the father, and then when Christ finally looks up to heaven like a son looking up to his father, and says in essence, "OK Dad I am going to trust you completely that things will turn out the way you said they would turn out," and then let's go of life, the earth was moved . In that very moment of trust, release, and acceptance the earth itself shook massively in response to the last final moments of restraint that God the father was enduring in order to ensure our adoption, and Christ's Lordship over everything. God the father was by no means a passive observer or simply a being of tremendous knowledge void of compassion. No, He ,as a father, who loved his son and us enough to endure the toughest thing a father has to endure (the pain and suffering of one's own child), was doing it all in order to guarantee us a future and a hope. God, who created everything, subjegated himself to agony and suffering both through the body of Christ and the restraint of God the father all to make a way for a future of hope for his creations. We are greatly LOVED! And this is why believers should boldly approach God and cry Daddy!



(C.) Copyrighted January 2009
Outward Thinking: The Heart of a Father
by Michael Wogsland