He's Emotionally Attached
Theme of the Week: Why We Call Him Father
Bryan Davis
Monday, July 31, 2006
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Key Bible Verse: I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself (Jeremiah 31:3). Bonus Reading:Hosea 11:1-4
When I worked away from home, I occasionally received a note in the mail to encourage me and lighten my day. It was always from my daughter, Arianna. My wife, Susie, and our daughters are heaven-sent gifts of life to me, and our emotional attachment is ever growing stronger, a mutual stimulus to fulfill the roles God has given us.
Fathers, if you don't display an emotional attachment with your children, you're painting a false picture of their heavenly Father. Tragically, some view God as the great clockmaker who wound up the cosmic clock called the universe and now just lets it tick. People who think this way can't pray, because, to them, God doesn't really care. They can't worship, because God isn't around to receive it. They can't be saved, because God is powerless and has left no one in charge of the cosmos.
I wonder if they had fathers who gave them life and then abandoned them emotionally, skewing their perception. While surviving because of physical provision, they haven't thrived, being emotionally starved by men who couldn't or wouldn't rejoice over them with shouts of joy.
—Bryan Davis in the The Image of a Father
My Response: If I've viewed God as remote or impersonal, how can I correct this perception?
Adapted from The Image of a Father (AMG Publishers, 2004) by permission.
Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
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Thank You, Lord, that You are not a distant deity, but a personal God who reaches out to relate to us as Your sons and daughters.
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