The Love of a Father

Dad,

You are a spiritual person, you believe in a spiritual reality, and you believe there is love, and that there is a deepness that exists. Yet there is there more, more than the imaginations of our hearts and minds. Most of us who believe in the concept of a god, or gods, or a force, want to include that love and these forces go together. But what does this mean?

There is a fundamental truth, God is love. But the implications of this reality are staggering and will overwhelm us if we realize the beauty of this statement. For love to be real it requires a God who actively loves us and pursues us both in reality and in history, not just our imaginations.

You are writing your memoirs. I look forward to reading them. It is a way to get to know you better and to know how much you have loved us. I see you with my children and how much you love Ariana and Kaelyn. I see your desire to know them and for them to know you, and it is a beautiful desire. Love desires to know and to be known, not with a mere acknowledgment of existence, but relationally and intimately. God who is love desires to be known and to know us and to have a relationship with us, as well.

 God is not looking for a mere casual acknowledgment of his existence, but an intimate, close, bonding relationship with his children. Is it enough for you for my children to acknowledge you are their grandfather, but never talk with you or spend time with you? Or is it your desire for them to experience a relationship with you as their grandfather? No, you have loving and actively pursued my children. And my kids know that you love them because of this. They talk about their Poppop and Yayah, even when y’all are not around. God’s desire for us is so much more than my love for my children or your love for me and my kids. Just like us, God desires more than a casual acknowledgment of some force or being, he desires to be a lover, a father, a husband, and to be our God.

So, one of the things I have heard you say often is that you cannot understand Jesus being the only way. Well, there is only one God to know and therefore there is only one God to have a relationship with. As such if he genuinely loves us and desires to have a relationship with us, He is only going to call us to himself. If God is a God of the kind of love that is relational, he would pursue to make himself known, just as we do those we love. A lover pursues the one he loves; a father pursues his children. Love does not stand by and let things happen but takes action. If we believe in a God of love, we ought to expect him to pursue us and to call us to himself, in these intimate terms. He is not calling us to other gods or philosophies or to our imaginations, He is calling us to himself alone. I call my kids to love me and to be in a relationship with me as their father. A god or force that does not desire close and personal intimacy with us may be comfortable, but they are not a god of love. Your desire to be in a relationship with your children and grandchildren does not come from an unrelational force. These kind of gods cannot satisfy the deep longings for intimacy we have within us. They will only leave us parched and thirsty, withering away.

God beckons to us, “But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

Our rejection of the one and only true God, and our search for other gods, can only bring death because we have abandoned the fountain of Life.

Love is not just a quality of God’s character. It flows from the very essence of who he is. God is the source of love. He is the fountain of love. Only the Christian God can claim to be a God whose very essence is love, for he is the only God that has existed eternally in relationship. The Christian God is one god in three persons. This is not just a statement of belief but is the very heart of the statement, “God is love”. Love can only exist if it is outward and relationally directed. God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have loved one another in relationship from all eternity. If there is only one God, one person or a force, then before something is created love is only a concept because until something is created there is no one to love. This kind of god has not always loved, because creation must happen before love is a reality. If you believe in multiple gods, there may be relationship, but love is not the essence of one individually god, but only as a group. Both of these concepts require something other than the god for love to exist. The Christian God alone can claim that at his very essence, without anything beyond him, He is Love. And being so, he is also the source of Love. And it is through this love, he created us. So yes, I believe there is only one God, who can truly make the claim, “God is love.”

And if he is a God of love, like a grandfather, father, or lover, he is also actively calling us to a relationship with himself. He is not a grandfather in the sky, whom we can’t really know. Like a real grandfather, He comes near to us and He is calling us to intimately know him. The distinction of a Trinitarian God, who from all eternity loved and was in relationship is that life is not about the things we do, but life is about being in relationship with God. We are to come to know him the fountain of living waters. All the supposed greatness of our actions will not bring life, nor will the depth of our depravity keep us from life. What matters is will we come to him. . . . or will we continue to reject him in search of cisterns that cannot hold water?

As I make myself known to my children and you make yourself known to your grandchildren, a God of love will make himself known and he has made himself known . . . but will we reject him, for gods of our own making, gods who fit our concepts of love? Our gods our comfortable, they are made by us. They are tamed. But God will not settle for you to have other gods, who are no gods at all, gods that cannot love us, any more than a fairytale. God is jealous for us as husband is jealous for his wife, wanting her as a lover for himself alone, to experience what we call “True Love”. So yes, there is only one way to God, if God is love there can only be one way, for love drives us into a relationship to one and only God, who is real and active.

We are given the freedom to reject God, but if we do, we are left to ourselves and the gods of our own making, who will fade away and leave us thirsting, poor, and empty. God is begging, pleading with us not to go that way. This way is wide, for there are as many ideas of false gods as there are people. God calls us to abandon these false gods and acknowledge that a God of love has made himself known through Jesus, God the Son. Jesus is not the only way, because God is being restrictive. He is the only way, because, he is the only God. And to have a relationship with God we must stop rejecting God and holding on to our imagination and come to Him and place ourselves in His loving embrace. There may be only one way, but he is not exclusive, His arms are open wide to all those who willing to come.

Do you believe in a god who is out there somewhere, a force we cannot quite get a hold of or do you believe in a God who, like you have done as a grandfather, has actively in real history and in love pursued us, and in whose real and loving embrace we can run into . . .

Jesus is not an imagination. Whether you believe he is God or not. He historically existed. We would expect a God who actively pursues us to show up in real history (not just our imagination) . . .

Jesus was born, he dwelt with us. God became flesh because He loved humanity and desired to bring us into relationship with Himself. He lived, died, and rose to life to make a way for us to be reconciled to God – to be forgiven and restored.

We have sinned and rejected God. Yet in our rejection of Him, God has made a way for us to come back to him. Love has conquered the effects of sin and has broken down the walls that keep us from God. All our works are nailed at the cross, for they are of no avail. What matters is God’s love for us. As we have faith in the work and worth of Jesus, we die to our self, and our works no longer matter in the immense presence and beauty of being known and loved by God. We die to ourselves, only to gain everything and more. And in this relationship and love, we truly live.

For me, this is vital, for I don’t love as I ought. I don’t love my wife and kids as I ought. I don’t love my family as I ought. Nor do I love you as I ought. But it is not about me being perfect. It is about me realizing my works cannot save me good or bad. But I come to a God who loves me and desires to know me. And I find my life in Him, not in myself.

We can trust in our works to save us or we can let them go. We can trust in gods of our own making or we can come to what is real. Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Our hope is not in the things we have done, but in having a relationship with the true and living God who loves us and went beyond our imaginations, to pursue us in reality. We can follow all the forces, gods, and imaginations of men. Or we can come to a God, who like a grandfather, father, and a lover has made himself known. No, it should not surprise us that Jesus is the only way. Love can only call us to Himself, there is no other place the fountain of Love can be found.

Because of your example of love to me as your son and your love for your grandchildren, I wouldn’t expect anything less from a God of love. Think on this, as a father and grandfather in your love and pursuit of us, would you expect anything less from Love. . . Jesus said that the love a father has for his children, though it is grand, is so small that it cannot possibly be compared to the magnitude of God’s love for us. We can know Him and be known by Him.

The distinction of a Trinitarian God, who from all eternity loved and was in relationship is that life is not about the things we do, but about being in relationship with God. All the supposed greatness of our actions will not bring life, nor will the depth of our depravity keep us from life. The devastation of sin, our rejection of God, for gods of our own making, is a broken relationship with God and separation from the source of life and love.

And so, the God who came as a babe, cries out, “Come to me, I am the Way the Truth and the Life.”! In God alone can we have life.