Generous Father

"What we must see and know and have planted deep within us is the love and kindness and gentle character of a generous Father."

IT WAS THE Father’s plan, the Father’s rescue. It was His work, done in His presence, speaking His words. It is His salvation given to us. Jesus, His Son, said, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life (John 5:24).” This is so moving to me. Jesus was sent by the Father because the Father SO LOVED the world that He would give to that extent. Yet, it is Jesus who we honor, on who we focus our worship for His sacrifice, and the Father has set it so.

Jesus said the Father was greater than Him and only the Father knows the time of His return. Jesus also called Himself meek and lowly at heart, and He got that from His Father. The Spirit of Christ that conceived Him is the Spirit of His Father. Jesus is the Christ, so it is also His Spirit. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, is not just a tie between them, but a third member of the Trinity or Godhead. Upon salvation, we have within us the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. We have the Holy Spirit or, as the King James Version says, the Holy Ghost, but this is a mistranslation. He is a spirit, not a ghost. He is also THE Holy Spirit. The article is needed, though some, for the right reasons, have removed it. To say “God” has become too bland. It leaves out their nature, their character, and their personalities.

I love the Remedy translation of the Bible for this reason. The translator, Dr. Timothy R. Jennings, has taken the time to include all parts of who they are in nature, character, personality, methods, and principles. He uses these terms on repeat, and after a while, it begins to sink in. This is the nature of the Word of God, written and spoken. It contains the life of the Father. Jesus said in John 5:26, “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.” Jesus is the Word of God made human flesh. He is the complete image of the Father and the Spirit shown to us. Colossians 1 is beautiful in this portrait.

“Jesus is the physical manifestation of the invisible God—the first being to leave infinity and manifest in physical form, and the conduit from which all creation flowed. (16) For he created everything: the entire universe, the heavens and all galaxies, angels and all intelligent life, things visible and invisible. All authority and power stem from him, and everything that exists was created by him. (17) He existed before anything, and it is he who holds all things together. (18) And among the body of believers—the church—Christ is supreme: He is the model of true perfection, the only rightful leader who by love, voluntarily sacrificed himself, destroying selfishness and death in his body on the cross, and thus is the very source of life—God’s rightful heir arisen from the dead—so that he is supreme in all things. (19) For it was God’s pleasure to have his entire identity, character—the fullness of his essence—live in Christ (20) and through Christ to destroy the infection of selfishness in his body, to obliterate the lies of Satan, to close the breach of distrust, and to reconcile the entire universe back into unity with God by revealing God’s true character and the nature of sin through Christ’s voluntary self-sacrifice on the cross.” (Colossians 1:15-20, Remedy)

What we must see and know and have planted deep within us is the love and kindness and gentle character of a generous Father. John 5 is an excellent passage to study in this regard. It begins with the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda, a work of the Father. It ends with Jesus saying He came in His Father’s name. Jesus is the name of the Father. It is a hallowed name (Matthew 6:9), which is above every other name, “everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever (Ephesians 3:21 MSG).”

When we call on Jesus, we call on the Father and we call on the Spirit to hear, to answer, and to fulfill. They are one – Father, Son, and Spirit. They have never been separated and can never be separated. From before time, when the plan of redemption was set in place, to the cross, the grave, hell, and the Resurrection, they have always been united. Jesus did not die in spirit. He died in flesh as the sacrifice FOR sin and not as a sinner. He has never had sin and cannot sin. He is holy, called “the Holy One” in the Scriptures. The Father is holy. The Son is holy. The Spirit of God is holy. All that they do is done in righteousness and holiness, and through salvation, they have made us holy. No action they do is ever outside of holiness or purity of justice. All evil is seen by them, all evil is known, nothing is hidden from them, so we can know justice is forever complete.

They are truth, so we can know there is no lying to it, no deception. This is our trust. Dr. Jennings chose to not use the word “faith” in his translation, and this was of the Spirit, as the Spirit has spoken that no translation of His Word, for they are His Words, has ever been made outside of His presence. This is not to say there have not been some errors and misunderstandings by those men who undertook such a great task, but the essence of them is sanctioned by Him. Where we need clarity, He is who we seek. Our faith is a trust in God’s trustworthiness, it is belief in His faithfulness. I have chosen in my writings to focus on the God we are trusting rather than to present our belief in Him as a money exchange or a balance which we must level or a height we must reach. This makes it self-effort and the feeling of it futile. Jesus Himself spoke to me and said He was THE MEASURE OF FAITH. He is all of it, and we each child of God have all of Him. What we desire instead is strength of faith, and that comes through relationship. I have had to endure something traumatic, and it was developing a strong relationship with my loving Father, with my gentle Savior, and the Holy Spirit of God that rescued me. What man could not do and did not do, God did. I cannot love them more.

We have within us love and joy and peace, the complete nature of the Father. They are presented to us for study as fruit, and we are branches connected to the Vine which holds our life. “Who He is” is who we have become. How He thinks, how He reacts or responds, is how we must think, react, and respond. We are no longer controlled by the flesh and the carnal mind but by the Spirit, as all He is lives within us. His perspective is now ours. Where we cannot see things well, we seek Him, we seek His wisdom and point-of-view, and we choose to let go of our own. It was selfish men consumed by selfishness that put Jesus on the cross. It was forgiveness that raised His body back to life.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

Selfishness is the focus of the devil’s kingdom. I refuse to give them any podium at all. We are made fearless, and as fearless children of God, we need only speak the Word over them and to them. What does not appear to change in that instant begins to change in that instant. God’s patience is needed, and He’s given that to us, an endurance beyond compare. Endurance with joy and contentment, our every need met, our future secure. The devil wants us to give up. But, no! Why would we, when the God of the universe, the Almighty Jehovah, is our heavenly Father, and He adores us?

Jesus adores us. The Spirit is in love with us. He would have all men see Jesus, the work of the Father and the Spirit, and have all men come to them for love and forgiveness. For men to fall away breaks their heart. To choose the work of the devil as if it is real and true breaks their heart. There is only one Word of God, and Jesus is it. They are all of truth, which cannot be rewritten, and they would be seen by all. They will be seen by all, both believers and unbelievers, the living and the dead. And for those who mourn, who wail as John’s Revelation says, at sight of Him, there will be an ending forever. Such is the mercy of the Father who will eliminate all sorrow and mourning, all death, and even hell itself.

“The old me who lived for self—who sought to get instead of give, the me who lived on the survival-of-the-fittest principle—died when I recognized the true significance of all that Christ has done. That old me no longer lives, but Christ—with his character of self-sacrificing love—now lives in me. The life I now live in this body I live by trust in the Son of God, who loved me and freely gave himself to win me back to trust and to purge humanity from selfishness and death.” (Galatians 2:20, Remedy)

“For Christ himself is the Remedy that heals the species and brings peace. He has removed fear and selfishness that cause division, mistrust, prejudice, and hostility. He did this by partaking of our human condition, and—via the exercise of his human brain —he loved perfectly, thereby destroying in his flesh (in the humanity he partook) the selfish survival-of-the-fittest drive along with the lies of Satan. In this way, he destroyed the need for the law (with all its regulations) to expose Satan’s lies and methods. His purpose was to be the template of a new humanity born out of the unification of the two—our selfish, infected condition merged with his sinless state—thereby purging selfishness from the human heart, and transforming, healing, renewing, regenerating and recreating humanity back to God’s original ideal; and in this new being, to reconcile the human race—regardless of ethnic background—into loving unity with God and each other through the revelation of truth at the cross, by which he destroyed the lies of Satan, reestablished trust, and removed fear, selfishness, and hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14-16, Remedy)


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com