How Deep the Fathers Love For Us

For anyone that spends any amount of time around me you know a couple of things.  One, I am serious about this land project.  And two, I love my kids.  Those two strands of who I am are so tightly interwoven that it's hard to tell if or when those interests diverge.  I've been pretty vocal about my reason for heading to the woods and how I see these life changes as instrumental to introducing my children to the sort of deliberate, raw and vivid fronting of life that I pray will mold and propel them into adulthood. 

This weekend we took a break from the past 7 or 8 weeks of busting butt to just camp and enjoy the fruit of our labors.  The longer than normal fall foliage season has been spectacular, treating us to a particularly vivid demonstration of the Lord's creative beauty.  Now fall is fading into the icy grip of Oklahoma winter.  This gave us the opportunity to survey our property with clearer fields of view. As I watched my children run and explore the heretofore unseen ridges and valleys with a delight and enthusiasm reserved for the young and free I found myself praying over them out loud, well out of earshot of any but my King.  I prayed that they would grow to life freely, wildly, passionately under the eyes and Lordship of Christ.  I repeated the call to my King that I've whispered so many times over the past decade, that my children would come to know Him from a young age and would follow Him all the days of their lives.  It was there, as the leaves fell around me and my children danced with delight in the trees that the Lord reminded me of His deep, Fatherly love for me and, by proxy, them.  He brought to mind that passage in Matthew 7 regarding the pleasure of the Father to give good gifts to His own.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.  Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"

Right there, right before my eyes I saw my children's lives unrolling like a tapestry embroidered by all of the experiences that they had already lived and those that they have not experienced yet but will surely come.  I felt the burning of my love for them mingled with the bitterness of my recollection of the times where I had spoken harshly, dismissed them apathetically or neglected them due to my misconceptions of trading hours I could never replace for money the family didn't really need.  In literally a matter of seconds my heart swelled with love, turned with fear and then rested in hope.  If I, who am evil, delight in and hope for the best in my children, how much more will our Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?  When I grow irritated or short, His love is patient and long suffering.  When I am distracted or aloof, He is ever watchful and actively working all things for the good of those that love Him and are called according to his purpose.  Where my parenting skills are tainted by my own sin and sullied by my nature, He is ever faithful and persistently about the business of leading His sheep with His pure heart and an unblemished mind.

Staggered and arrested by His mercy in my life...that's the best way to describe those fleeting moments that afternoon.  His mercy had brought Natalie into my life.  His kindness brought these children out of that love.  And the urgency of that responsibility, the intensity of my awareness of my own inability to shepherd their hearts appropriately drove me back to the cross where it all began.

If I, being evil, know how to give good gifts to my children, how much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!  So I asked Him.  I asked that He forgive me for allowing so many other things to take His place in my heart.  I asked Him to once again turn my heart towards my children.  I asked again that He would help me to lay down my selfishness and love their mother like He had loved me.

As we turned and headed back to our future homestead site I watched as the kids ran ahead, completely unaware of the profound theological event that had just transpired.  Their foolish father had been pulled up into the lap of his Heavenly Father and spoken to just like I had done so many times to them.  My childish heart was corrected and comforted, encouraged and emboldened.  The Lord had done for me the very thing I was praying He would do for them.

How deep the Father's love for us.  
How vast, beyond all measure.  
That He should give His only Son, to make this wretch His treasure.  
How great the pain of searing loss.
The Father turns His face away
As wounds that mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

Behold the Man upon the cross, 
my sin upon His shoulders.
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers
It was my sin that held Him there until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life.
I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in any thing:
no gifts, no pow'r, no wisdom.
But I will boast in Jesus Christ:
His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer.
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.