Reflection on Intimacy with the Father Part 1-3. Based on Allen Hood's Ignite Notes

There are different views of our Abba Father, and most of the views is affected by our earthly fathers. We have lost the ability to see God's heart and motives for us because of our brokenness and fallenness. Some of us might think God does not care, He's the powerful one, and He's so harsh. Israelites see God as the transcendent Creator, they don't really see Him as the compassionate one, so when Jesus came, they were offended.

Let's see what the OT says about the Father. To Israelites, God has been their Father, He says, “When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son...” (Hosea 11:1) He also says, “Don't you know that I carried you, just as a man carries his son?” (Deut. 1:31, rephrase) Israelites didn't know, and we don't know. What's your picture when you hear this sentence? It's as if I see a picture of fireman rescue a wounded child from fire and he will protect the child no matter how big the fire is, that's how God carried the Israelites out of Egypt. Not only this, He will take care of us (Ps. 27:10), and He's the Father of the fatherless. When Jesus came, He reveals the Father. The tender one, the compassionate one, the gracious one, the one who enjoys our sincere heart even when we're still in our weaknesses.

All of these I know, but hard to receive. I'm still working on to be confident in His love.

God's desire in creating human being is so He can form a family. We can see this simply from the Trinity of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit likes to fellowship with each other and He desires us to join their family and have our earthly functional family. From this I realized why our generation is called the fatherless generation, whether the culture influence or because of the family, there are distances between people and people tend to be very independent, we have lost the ability to connect with people and with God. We do not know our needs, and more and more we don't appreciate relationship with people esp. with family (functional ones too)

I'll stop babbling now. :P