This upcoming Sunday we celebrate Father’s Day. For some of us, it is a day to celebrate with our father and say thanks. For some of us, it is a day to remember our father and be thankful. And for others of us, it is just another day as we never knew him or he wasn’t worthy of celebration. I’ve been thinking about this recently. I once had a professor say to me he never prays “Heavenly Father” because he doesn’t want to bring up bad memories of bad fathers for his students. I understand the heart, but I think this keeps a side of God at arms length.
On Sunday we will be singing the song Good, Good Father by Chris Tomlin. I think it is a very appropriate song for Father’s day. Two things stand out to me in the chorus:
You’re a good good Father
It’s who You are, it’s who You are, it’s who You are
And I’m loved by You
It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am.
First, He is a good Father. And that doesn’t change. Although the character of our earthly fathers may waver and we may see their goodness change, our Heavenly Father’s goodness is always the same: good. He is never not good. It’s simply not in His character.
Romans 8:15-17 says it well:
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[a] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.
He is our Father who has adopted us and who loves us. And that brings us to the second thing that stands out to me: I, you, us, we are loved by Him. God proved He loves us by adopting us into His family through Christ. He proves that by forgiving us, never leaving us alone, knowing what we need before we say it, giving us peace, and giving us hope that is greater than our understanding.
In a world that cries out for our attention and uses busyness to distract, I think it is easy to forget our identity. We forget, as it says in Ephesians 1, we are blessed, united with Christ, loved, chosen, holy, adopted, purchased, and forgiven. It is much easier for the world to grab our attention when we forget this. It’s easy to get weighed down by the busyness of life when we forget the identity of God as well.
So this Father’s Day, no matter what your earthly father is like, as we sing remember we have a good, good Father in Heaven who is incapable of being anything but good. And He loves you more than you can know. And this is who you are: a child of God, who is loved by your Father.
