LOVE IS REAL
On his sixteenth birthday a son approached his father and said, "Dad, I’m sixteen now. When I get my license, can I drive the family car?" His dad looked at him and said, "Son, driving the car takes maturity, and first, you must prove that you are responsible enough. And one way you must do that is to bring up your grades. They are not acceptable. Second, you must read the Bible every day. And finally, you must get that hair cut; it looks outrageous." The son began the task of fulfilling his father’s requirements, knowing that the last might be impossible.
When his grades came out he went to his dad with a big smile. "Look, Dad, all A’s and B’s on my report card. Now can I drive the family car?" "Very good, son. You are one-third of the way there, but have you been reading the Bible?" the father replied. "Yes, Dad, every day," said the son. "Very good son. You are two-thirds of the way there. Now when are you going to get that hair cut?"
The son, thinking that he could out smart the father, responded, "Well, I don’t see why I should get my hair cut to drive the car. Jesus had long hair, didn’t he?" The father looked at his boy and said, "That’s right, son and Jesus walked everywhere he went."
Happy Father’s Day! It is proud day for me, because I am one of the millions of dads that are put on the pedestal for “one day”. What’s the deal here? Just one day for all the days we bend over backwards to food on the table? (Ha, ha)
After having children for a while, I am pretty sure that God made me a father to teach about love and grace. To learn what it means to love at all costs, to be inconvenienced when a child gets sick, to leave everything to attend to a child’s need, to be others before you, to have hope for a child bouncing off the walls and not hearing a thing you say, teach a kid to ride a bike, to not know what to say as kids ask you the most profound questions such as “Where does God come from?” I really believe God gave me kids to teach me and give me a picture of what he is like. This father’s day I want you to know today that LOVE IS real…
At a time when I was doubting myself, feel like a failure, feel like giving up. God came and spoke to me through my daughter. She wrote this
Dear Dad, I love you. I’m glad you are a paster dad. Becaues I don’t like you to be eny thing els I like you to be yourself love your doder Kaylene.
You give me a leder back when you are reded you have to.
I didn’t think I was any good to anyone but God loved me…affirmed my calling. Love is real!
Just a few days ago I emailed a picture of my kids to one of my old pals. He hasn’t seen them for a couple of years and his response when he viewed the picture was, they are like junior versions of me and my wife. There is a likeness in them, that reflects me. I think that is what Jesus wanted people to know about God the father…
I believe He wants to pass on to us a message that love is real, that intimacy is not 2 hour long Hollywood production, but something that is true, real and worthwhile. It is not made up, not some sugary sentiment borne out of wishing on a star. But something that is alive, worth waking up each day for, better than a cup of Starbucks, like an encore after a commanding performance from a polished artist.
Author, Philip Yancey, has a story to tell about his father. I want to share with you his story:
One holiday I was visiting my mother, who lives 700 miles away. We reminisced about times long past, as mothers and sons tend to do. Inevitably, the large box of old photos came down from the closet shelf, spilling out a jumbled pile of thin rectangles that mark my progression through childhood and adolescence: the cowboy and Indian getups, the Peter Cottontail suit in the first grade play, my childhood pets, endless piano recitals, the graduations from grade school and high school and finally college.
Among those photos I found one of an infant, with my name written on the back. The portrait itself was not unusual. I looked like any baby: fat-cheeked, half-bald, with a wild, unfocused look to my eyes. But the photo was crumpled and mangled, as if one of those childhood pets had got hold of it. I asked my mother why she had hung onto such an abused photo when she had so many other undamaged ones.
There is something you should know about my family: when I was 10 months old, my father contracted spinal lumbar polio. He died 3 months later, just after my first birthday. My father was totally paralysed at age 24, his muscles so weakened that he had to live inside a large steel cylinder that did his breathing for him. He had few visitors –people had as much hysteria about polio in 1950 as they do about AIDS today. The one visitor who came faithfully, my mother would sit in a certain place so that he could see her in a mirror bolted to the side of the iron lung.
My mother explained to me that she kept the photo as a memento, because during my father’s illness it has been fastened to his iron lung. He had asked for pictures of her and of his two sons, and, my mother had had to jam the pictures in between some metal knobs. Thus, the crumpled condition of my baby photo.
I rarely saw my father after he entered the hospital, since children were not allowed in polio wards. Besides, I was so young that, even if I had been allowed in, I would not now retain those memories.
When my mother told me the story of the crumpled photo, I had a strange and powerful reaction. It seemed odd to imagine someone caring about me whom, in a sense I had never met…
I had often thought of that crumpled photo, for it is one of the few links connecting me to the stranger who was my father… Someone I have no memory of, no sensory knowledge of, spent all day everyday thinking of me, devoting himself to me, loving me as well as he could.
Love is real! When I read that story, I was moved. I found I have similar feelings when I think about God my father. I certainly did not grow up knowing God. I did not have a Christian upbringing. My family embraced Buddhism/Atheism. Went to a Roman Catholic school Grades K-11 and did not know much about Jesus except for a few stories here and there. But there in an old rugged cross, much like that old crumpled photo of Yancey’s, it tells me the story of God my father who thought of me, cared for me. That is the link for me to God the Father. The cross of Jesus. And it is Jesus who shows me who the Father is. The Bible in Jn.8 tells story of a time when Jesus was teaching around the temple area, challenged regarding his personal character and he appealed to them that his word is true and can be collaborated with the testimony of another, .i.e. God, the father. Jewish law demanded at least 2 or 3 witnesses. So the crowd demanded a witness…
19Then they asked him, "Where is your father?"
20"You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also."
John 8:19-20
What Jesus is basically saying, if you want to see the Father, all you have to do is look at the Son, Jesus.
Jesus wanted them to know God’s love is real and available, forgiveness of sins, hope and restoration is all there to be received by God’s favor. Look at the Son, see the cross! He wanted to reveal God’s love. But the people could not see past their prejudices. And anyone who receives what Jesus reveals, gets to know love is real! Jesus says in the Bible:
27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all ; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30I and the Father are one." John 10:27-30
Got to remember Jesus spoke this at great risk. He risked getting stoned, and I don’t mean being drugged. he risked his life, stake his life on the the fact that God wants to hold you close. God wants you close. No one snatches you out of his hand. And when Jesus spoke about this, He is saying it to tell us that the father and the son are one and the same holding us in love. Romans 8:38-39 says:
38I’m absolutely convinced that nothing--nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, 39high or low, thinkable or unthinkable--absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
Love is real. Our Master has embraced us. He will not let us go! Get the picture. See that rugged cross! In the day when Jesus was crucified, the cross was ugly but to us who are saved. Jesus has come to tell us there is a Father who enjoys Father’s day, who enjoys having people with Him.
Went and prayed for a lady this past week. I recounted the message I shared with you last Sunday. She just broke when I mentioned that God is like a loving papa, who responds to the cry of his baby. She said later that she felt alone, discouraged, and just was at the end of her rope. Then the prayer, the sharing in the word, on that particularly low day, she felt the embrace of God. God knew where she was at and He sent me and my wife there! She experienced God!
44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. John 12:44-46
Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ’Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. John 14:9-12
Intimacy… love is real! Relationship… love is real.
B. Charles Francis Adams, the 19th century political figure and diplomat, kept a diary. One day he entered: "Went fishing with my son today--a day wasted." His son, Brook Adams, also kept a diary, which is still in existence. On that same day, Brook Adams made this entry: "Went fishing with my father--the most wonderful day of my life!" The father thought he was wasting his time while fishing with his son, but his son saw it as an investment of time.
Contributed by: Davon Huss (www.sermoncentral.com)
There is nothing wasted when Jesus came to reveal the Father’s love to us through the cross, an investment in blood, as he entered our time and space to be like us to help us to move away from fairy tales to real love.
Some time ago as a mother was tucking her little girl into bed when the young daughter asked, “Mother, can you tell me the greatest day of your life?”
The mother thought for just a second and then said, “Honey, I can tell you the greatest day in my life. As you know, my father was a man who fought in the Civil War. I remember it as though it was just yesterday. My mother and I were sitting on the porch one warm day. My dad had fought in the war and several months earlier we had gotten word that he had been killed in battle. I was playing with my kitten as my mother and I where sitting in the swing. Ever since Mother lost Father, she had missed him very much.
But that day, we saw someone coming down the long, dusty road that ran in front of our small house. My mother said, ‘Oh, there’s a man coming down the road.’
A moment later she said to me, ‘Sweetheart, I declare that man kind of favors your father.’
After another moment, she said, ‘Darling, I really do think that is your Father.’
At that she burst from the porch, across the front yard, through the picket fence gate, and down the road toward the open arms of my father. I was right behind my mother and jumped for my father’s arm as I often did as a little girl and he would swing me. However, all I found was an empty coat sleeve. I saw the scars of battle on my Daddy’s face and I saw that his body was bruised from the war. I knew that he was missing an arm because of the warfare.
My mother said to me, ‘Little girl, the greatest day in my life was when my Daddy came back home.’
The greatest day of our lives will be when our Commander in Chief, the Lord Jesus, comes back for us. We’ll look into the face of Jesus and see the scars of battle he suffered for us. The only man-made things in heaven will be the scars on the Lord’s body. We will recognize that He fought a terrible battle to save us from our sins. He fought that battle for you and me. Contributed by: James O. Davis, Co-Founder/President Global Pastors Network (www.sermoncentral.com)
The greatest day of our life is yet to come when Jesus comes back to take us home to be with Him! LOVE is real!
Come today and trust God the Father, experience Love is REAL through Jesus who battled, who risked, who died to tell us God is loving us even today!
