Our Father Forgives

Extract from our new book entitled:

My True Father

Questions?

What would it be like not to feel an orphan inside, to have no loneliness, to be at peace with yourself, to experience freedom from your surroundings and to find your true Father? What would it be like to be respected for who you are but not be dependent on others opinion of who you are? And to be told you are special, you've got value, your life is not an accident and that there is a plan for you life? The answers to these questions are found in this book.

In the Beginning...

The first humans were created by God in a perfect, sinless garden on Earth called Eden . They were called Adam and Eve and they were created to be his children and his friends. This is why he designed them in his own image. This was his eternal plan and will for us all. He designed us to be his friend. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He was eternally Father and eternally Son. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the Earth but they gave this up when they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (see Genesis, chapter 2). They gave their dominion over to Satan who now has a legal right to access human souls and to control the world we now live in ('the Spirit of this world rules over the world'; see Ephesians 2.2). Your heavenly Father is everywhere, he is just, he is holy, he cannot live with sin. Once sin entered into the souls of Adam and Eve, the Father was forced out of their hearts. What happened was this: they fell out of love with him. However, he had to clothe them because he saw their nakedness and because of his love for them he felt compassion on his beautiful children who were filled with sin. His love overflowed for them, he cried: “Adam where are you?”. His son and daughter had believed a lie. The lie of Satan came to Eve and tempted her to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by saying to her “you will be like God”. Once both of them had eaten the fruit they no longer saw their heavenly Father in the same way again, they lost their love for him. Yet, he loved them so much that he could not leave them in such a predicament. He said with love “What have you done my daughter”. But it was too late, Eve had let separation come into her heart and she heard the words in a judging tone. Already she had forgotten the intent and love in her Father's voice; the sound of it, the beautiful reassuring tone. Instead, her life experience had changed her Father's voice from one of love to one of judge in her heart.

God is always love, he can never change. His plan, founded in eternity, is an eternal plan that his son, Jesus Christ, would have brothers and sisters to enjoy forever. This plan was not to change because Satan had tempted Adam and Eve to sin. Rather, childbirth would continue but with consequence: a curse came on humanity: death and disease. The world became cursed, Satan entered into dominion over it and Adam and Eve (and consequently all of us humans) were left to sweat, work and exhaust themselves in a world they no longer had dominion over. Yet our heavenly Father loved Adam and Eve so much that he clothed them and continued to serve them, helping them through the difficult times that were to come. The eternal plan of God was to create humanity in his image. Why? Because he is love, his eternal essence is love. What is love? Power; the power that created the universe by words; the same power that rose Jesus Christ from the dead and the same power that now lives in his children today through his Holy Spirit. No one has a greater friend than one who would die for his friend. Yet this is exactly what a loving eternal God did when he came to this world as a man, Jesus Christ. He died to set his children free from the terrible mess they had got themselves into when Adam and Eve brought the curse of sin upon themselves.

We are all made in the image of our heavenly Father and we are all capable of knowing him, even if we do not know this yet. The Father sees his children as beautiful, in his eyes. He saw Moses, the prophet, as beautiful when he was born, or to put it another way: acceptable. This is love, which is not like human love, he was not thinking upon Moses as visually beautiful, otherwise this would exclude those who feel ugly from his acceptance. He loves all his children with an equal and unending love; he shows no favouritism to his children (Romans 2.11). All his children are beautiful and all are acceptable to him. This is why Jesus died, so that all his brothers and sisters would know their Father; this is to be accepted and loved by him. The Father follows the roll of our thoughts, he knows the number of hairs on our heads, he was at our birth, he put us to sleep at night as babies, he helped us take out first breath. He knows all this children, he hears their prayers and he always answers. He knows everything.

God's Family

Our Father's family is a heavenly family, coming together under one rule, the rule of the heart (love). He is love. For this reason families are special to him. His plan came through a family, Mary and Joseph – an earthly family with a heavenly gift to the world – his son, Jesus. The story started with a family – Adam and Eve with their sons, Cain and Abel, and his plan will end with a perfect family, not a dysfunctional family but rather a heavenly family – his kingdom. Jesus opened the way to a heavenly family of love. In Genesis 3.21 Adam and Eve felt naked when they sinned, they became self-aware and no longer free. This was their going from childhood to adulthood. We are like them, born into sin. However, you are no longer naked in your sin if you are with Jesus Christ. He came to restore you to the Father and he came so that you would be awesome with him. Jesus, his son, expressed the Father to the world. He left his Holy Spirit on the Earth for us. He did this so that everyone may no longer hide their faces and sins from the Father. He came so that we can be clothed spiritually by Jesus in a robe of his righteousness, as red in colour as his blood; allowing us to stand before our loving heavenly Father who does not abandon us, but opens his heavenly arms and welcomes us home. We will be forever new and forever who we were planned to be – like new and restored. The Father clothed Adam and Eve in coats of skin from an animal that was sacrificed to cover their nakedness. His son Jesus sacrificed his life to clothe us in his righteousness; blood that was shed on a cross around 2000 years ago in the Roman Province of Judea (known as the country of Israel today). Adam and Eve felt lonely, condemned and in fear after they rebelled against their Father. They had believed the voice of Satan. They replaced their Father's loving voice with other voices. The voice of fear came into their minds and they believed it, they had never worried before about who was going to provide for them. Their Father had provided everything – food, clothing, entertainment (e.g. the naming of all the animals), company, peace and contentment to name but a few. They lost that belief and believed the voice of fear, telling them to clothe themselves because they were alone. But the amazing thing is – they were not alone; their Father came and clothed them. He had never left them; he was just as close as ever. Their sin did not stop the Father's plan, which was created in eternity for his glory. Sin entered the world after Adam and Eve's sin. Sin is an absence of Father God. Their sin brought darkness; a curse of death and disease. A curse is broken by a sacrifice, all ancient cultures believed and practised this (because they carried this on from their ancestor Adam's example). Jesus brought the only effective sacrifice. A curse is an opening, an opening to a voice; in Eve's case: Satan's voice, which she believed because in her heart she desired to be like the Father. Eve believed the voice. She gave Satan access to her soul. Her soul became bound by him, shutting out her Father's voice. Her offspring inherited this curse. It could only be broken by a sacrifice. The Bible says a man who dies on a cross (tree) is cursed – Jesus became the curse of sin but it had no access to defeat him because he is God. He heard his Father's voice and his Holy Spirit raised him from the dead.

Being a warrior for Christ

A warrior is the Father's son or daughter. The Father looks for those who are willing; willing to dedicate their life to their saviour Jesus Christ. Only a ready warrior will take on the enemy-army. Only a sensible warrior will engage the enemy when he is fully prepared. We need to prepare our hearts for spiritual battle by getting to know our Father. He loves us and wants us to be prepared. His word, the Bible, is the source of all knowledge. It is the 'rock of truth' that will never disappear and it will stand from generation of humans to generation of humans; that is – forever and ever. He wants his word to be implanted into the hearts of all his warriors. So that his truth will become part of who you are. This means strengthening your inner-being (also known as your spirit/heart). Let his words in the Bible absorb into your inner-being through reading and thinking upon them. Love is the key to understanding the Father's warriors. The battle against Satan is not won by force of persuasion, or just force, but by reliance on the Holy Spirit who gives you the power to follow through the teachings of Jesus: to love your Lord your God with all your heart and to love your neighbour as yourself. You can administer love to others by his Holy Spirit. Delight in him, enjoy spending time with your Father and let him change you into the warrior he wants you to be. Most of all he wants to be your friend, so that you can spend time together, then he will lead you into new missions for him; serving him and acknowledging him and seeing his kingdom grow. His burden is light – a relationship with your heavenly Father is not to be feared but is to be grasped with all your might. He cures you of yourself and invites you into his family – a special family – a family of faith-warriors; knights of faith; princes and princesses of the King of the universe, never-ending eternal children, loved by the King; brothers and sisters of Jesus. The warrior in you is formed only in your heavenly Father's embrace.

Forgiveness from the Father

Our heavenly Father forgives (Ephesians 4.32). His forgiveness is true, he loves to forgive. His forgiveness is not measured or thought about. It has been planned before the foundation of the world. It is accessible at any time and throughout any-day. He says, his 'mercy is new every morning' and the time of salvation is always 'Now!'. Jesus died that we might live in this truth. A truth that is so reassuring and encouraging to our human hearts. He gives us access to our Father every moment of the day through Jesus, our mediator, who prays for us constantly and who sits next to our Father. How can we forgive? We can forgive like he does because we are his children, sons and daughters of the living king. The most effective way to forgive is immediately; because he has forgiven us already. He knows what we do, today or tomorrow, but he forgave it supernaturally when he died on the cross. His love brought him to us to die on the cross. Our only appropriate response is to sacrifice all to him, even our unforgiveness. This brings the freedom necessary to forgive others and to be free of others emotions and intentions; to be free in Jesus. The heavenly Father's will is always for his children. His love is for his sons and daughters, it is never against them. He is the gentle Father who gives his children peace within their hearts. This peace is beyond human understanding. It enables his children to be calm, gentle and loving to others and to themselves. It allows his children to forgive others; those that have harmed them in the past, those that spoke harsh and cruel words over them in the past, those that cursed them, those that did wrong to them without knowing they had. His peace breaks the chains that have defined his children in the past. His peace frees an individual from themselves because when you are at peace with him you are at peace with yourself and are at peace with everyone around you. The Father's forgiveness is not human forgiveness – it is eternal forgiveness. It is not measured on human understanding and it cannot be understood with human reason - but it exists! He has cast our sin away as far as the East is from the West, i.e. eternally forgiven. Jesus brought peace to his disciples (in John 20.19 and 21) when he appeared to them after his resurrection from the dead. This peace he left with them (the Holy Spirit), who allowed them the power to forgive. The disciples suffered many things; imprisonment, beatings, mockings, hunger, shipwrecks, torture, public humiliation but Jesus' peace allowed them to always forgive because they knew they were sons and daughters of the king, forgiven of their sins by Jesus and free. They were warriors, they had eternal destinies and they were part of the Father's eternal plan, which is his will. The plan was to tell all men of the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The plan was founded in eternity and is still alive today, moving us closer each day to the return of his son, Jesus, in victory at the end of time. This is his will and it never leaves his children without their Father. He is always loving them and always giving them his peace to forgive and forget, just as he forgives and forgets our sin.

Our Father's Hope

Our heavenly Father gives us hope. He loves the fact that we love his son, Jesus. From all time, i.e. eternally, his Spirit has moved and has now made known to humanity the astounding riches of the Father's love. In him there is no fear of not knowing who you are. When you first trust and believe in Jesus, the Father is very pleased with you. In fact he never stops being pleased with you. You become a part of his glory. A wonderful son or daughter, who has returned to their heavenly Father and abandoned their sinful past life. This is what he sees. Your life becomes an example to others and therefore it praises his Jesus. To live a life for him is to live a life of glory as a brother of Jesus. This is an amazing reality (see Ephesians 1.12). The Father gave Jesus for a purpose. He gave him so that you would come to him and be forever with your Father. He is holy and just; when you were in sin he looked at you and he rescued you. There is no one more worthy than him of your honour. Our hope is found in our loving heavenly Father. He is our comfort and our strength. In him we are able to live and have our existence. All is well with our souls if we trust in him at all times and at all cost. Our lives are valueless without a relationship with our Father through his son. His is the hope that everyone needs. A hope that all humanity needs to hear and to know (see Ephesians 1.14). Our hope is not in our own understanding but it should be placed in him and his word, the Bible. If we run the race of life looking at him we will be with him in glory. He loves us so much that it is his will that all people will know the glory of who he is. He has a plan and a purpose for every one of his children who believe in him. It includes freedom from themselves and trust in him and his word. We must travel with him on a journey; but he does not leave us alone he gives us our inheritance in this world, even before we die. He gives us his Holy Spirit who will lead and guide us all of our lives until we see him in heaven. No human can give us this hope – only our Father who dwells in heaven. It is for him that he made us and it is with him that we will find complete satisfaction. It is through his Spirit that he speaks and gives life.

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Love is?

Encouragement, time, self-sacrifice, patience, listening, pleading, needs, discipleship, destiny, direction, divinity, help, peace, mercy, hope, a future, surprise, mastery, powerful, joy, normal, never-ending, holiness, heaven on Earth, a hero, long-suffering/patience, kindness, gentleness, assurance, teaching, endlessness, awe, gravity, mystery, perplexity, honour, earnestness, marvel, not me and me!, thankfulness, shine!, radical, a replacement of self, no pride, hostility gone, peace, a pathway, polite, respectful, the FATHER, the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT, GOD