My Father, My Lord
“At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,…” Matthew 11:25
“I love how you call God Father,” I essentially told my beloved friend, “but He is also our Lord. We need to obey Him because He is Lord.” My friend, whom I lost due to a horrible tragedy, had a breathtakingly beautiful, simple faith in God as her ever loving Father. From my little perch of pride, however, I wanted to drive home my point that thinking of God as her loving Father was simply not enough. Little did I know what God wanted to teach me through her, and through us both.
Over time, as I listened to my friend say, “Father this, and Father that,” I was convicted at how wrong I was to avoid seeing God as my loving Father because of a tragic turn of events with my own earthly father. I knew this needed to change, and God used my friend to help me see it was time to trust Him as Father and not to see Him only as Lord.
So there it was. My friend needed to see God as her Father AND Lord. I needed to see Him as my Lord AND Father. Jesus, when He prayed in Matthew 11:25, made it altogether clear that God, Creator of the universe, is Father and Lord. Who are we to think of Him as anything less than all that He is?
Today, I love, honor, adore, revere, cherish, praise, worship, pray to, and serve, my loving Father and my Lord! My friend and I both had a lesson to learn, and I doubt we stand alone in this. A child who sees his parents as merely loving parents and not as his parents having authority over him lacks honor and submission to his parents in their proper role. Similarly, a child who sees his parents only as those having dominion over him is missing the untold love relationship that comes through healthy parent-child relationships. In a healthy family, children see their parents as both loving parents and as those having authority over them.
How much richer, and healthier, and robust is my blessed relationship with God now that I have the right perspective and see Him as both Father and Lord.
Do you?