Living with Our Father / Growing in Love

There's something profound about the relationship between a father and child that transcends age, accomplishment, or maturity. No matter how old we become, how successful we are, or how wise we grow, our earthly fathers will always see us as their children. But even more significantly, our Heavenly Father views us through this same lens—and this is actually the best news we could receive.

A Special Promise for the Fatherless

For those who grew up without a father, or perhaps with a difficult or absent one, Scripture offers a beautiful promise. James 1:27 reveals that God has a special heart for orphans and widows, promising to care for them in their distress. There's an intimacy that develops between God and those who've experienced this particular kind of loss—a closeness that fills the void left by earthly absence.

The principle is simple yet powerful: where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Whatever inadequacies we experienced in our earthly family relationships, our Heavenly Father steps in to make up the difference. He doesn't just patch the holes; He fills them with a love that surpasses anything we could have known otherwise.

Three Stages of Spiritual Growth

The apostle John, in his first letter, addresses believers at three different stages of spiritual maturity: children, young men and women, and fathers and mothers. But here's what's crucial to understand—these stages aren't purely linear. We don't simply graduate from one to the next and leave the previous stage behind forever.

Life has a way of humbling us. Even when we've matured in certain areas, there are always aspects of our lives where we need to return to that childlike dependence on God. A Tuesday afternoon can bring circumstances that require us to reset, to humble ourselves, and to remember that we are fundamentally dependent on our Heavenly Father.

The Child Stage is foundational. It's where we learn our identity comes not from our accomplishments, earthly relationships, or failures, but from being God's beloved children. This is where we discover that we don't have to perform perfectly—we simply need to be open and honest about what's inside us.

The Young Adult Stage is about overcoming. This is where we take the principles we've learned and apply them to daily life. It's messy. It's difficult. We stumble, get back up, and try again. This stage requires strength—not our own strength, but strength that comes from applying God's truth even when it's hard.

The Father/Mother Stage is about multiplication. Here, we pass on wisdom—not just head knowledge, but lived experience of how to relate to God and obey Him. We help others navigate their own journeys.

The Impossible Command and Divine Provision

Scripture contains what seems like an impossible directive: "I write this to you so that you will not sin." How can this be? We've just acknowledged that we're all sinners, that we all fall short. Yet God plants this hope within us—that we can actually live in areas of our lives without missing the mark.

The key is understanding what God has provided. Second Peter 1:3-4 tells us that God's divine power has granted us everything we need for life and godliness. Through knowing Him—not just knowing about Him, but actually knowing Him in relationship—we become partakers of His divine nature. We participate in His holiness, His righteousness, His goodness.

This isn't about trying harder. It's about depending more completely.

Our Advocate Before the Father

When we do sin—and we will—we have an advocate. In the ancient legal system, an advocate was someone who stood before a judge on behalf of the accused, asking for favor and mercy. Jesus Christ serves as our advocate, but not in the way we might imagine.

There's no conversation where Jesus has to calm down an angry God, convincing Him to show mercy. Instead, Jesus and the Father are one. God Himself, through Christ, has experienced every temptation we face. He understands our weaknesses intimately. Hebrews 4 reminds us that we have a high priest who can empathize with our weaknesses because He was tempted in every way, just as we are.

This means we can approach God's throne with the confidence of little children, knowing we'll receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

The Path of Obedience

How do we know we truly know God? First John 2:3 gives us a clear answer: we know Him if we keep His commands. But this isn't about perfect performance. It's about the attempt, the continual returning, the persistent asking God to do in us what we cannot do for ourselves.

When we seek to obey God's word—even when we feel we cannot—His love is made complete, made mature in us. This is how we know we are in Him and He is in us.

The Challenge of Forgiveness

Perhaps nowhere is our dependence on God's divine nature more evident than in forgiveness. We're called to forgive those who've hurt us, not because they deserve it, but because we need to release the judgment we hold over them.

The Lord's Prayer contains a conditional statement that should give us pause: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." This isn't a suggestion—it's a requirement for experiencing God's forgiveness in our own lives.

But here's the beautiful truth: we don't have to manufacture this forgiveness on our own. We can come to God honestly, saying, "I hate what they did. I don't want to forgive them. They don't deserve it." And then we can ask God to give us His eyes to see them as He sees them, to shed His love abroad in our hearts so we can forgive as we've been forgiven.

Messy Church, Growing Love

The church isn't meant to be a place of perfect people. It's a microcosm where we practice loving imperfectly, forgiving repeatedly, and growing gradually. The hurts, frustrations, and disappointments we experience in community become the training ground for living out Christ's love in the wider world.

Messy people in messy churches—this is where Christ's love grows and matures in our hearts. Because we've called upon God to make us partakers of His divine nature, slowly but surely, we learn to sin no more in particular areas. It may take time, but the transformation is real.

At the end of each day, we return to that child's stage in some area of our lives. We climb into our Heavenly Father's lap and let Him love us, guide us, and transform us. This is how we mature. This is how we become more like Christ.

And this is very good news indeed.