This Sunday is Father’s Day, a day to remember the impact and influence our fathers, stepfathers, uncles, and other men have had on our lives. While I wish this were a day of celebration for everyone, I know that we all have different life experiences when it comes to the men in our lives. While some of us have been shaped and formed well by our fathers, others have experienced abuse, absence, or disappointment instead of love. Some of you are grieving a father you lost. Some of you are still waiting for a father who never came through. And for many of us, our experience is somewhere in the messy middle, gratitude and grief tangled up together.
Wherever you land this Sunday, I want you to hear this: no human father, however good or however absent, defines what fatherhood ultimately means. We need a Father who never fails us, and that’s exactly what we have in God.
This week, we begin a new sermon series called “You Are Because I AM,” and we start with this truth: You Are A Child Of God Because I AM The Father. Our text is Galatians 4:4-7, where Paul lays out the whole story of what God has done for us.
It starts with adoption. Paul writes that God sent his Son “born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption to sonship.” Adoption is not something we earned or were born into. It’s something God chose, at great cost, through the death and resurrection of Jesus. You didn’t need the right family, the right past, or the right father to be brought in. God chose you and adopted you.
And because we’re adopted, we receive an inheritance, eternal life, and righteousness before God himself, that is completely undeserved. Paul says it plainly: “since you are his son, God has made you also an heir.” It’s not something we worked for. It’s a gift.
And because we are children and heirs, we have access. Paul says God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” “Abba” is intimate, the language of a child who knows they’re safe enough to run straight into their parent’s arms. That access is ours too. We are invited to draw near, not as servants hoping to be noticed, but as children who already belong.
Whatever your story with fatherhood has been, you have a Father who adopts, who gives freely, and who welcomes you close. I hope you’ll join us this Sunday as we open up this series and this passage together.
God bless,
Jonathan
For Jesus. For People. For Community.