Category: Eternity

Dad?


During our lifetimes we have all started a conversation, or a question with “Dad? Can I….” It is not a bad way of starting a conversation actually, because it shows that you want Dad’s input or his permission in some area of your life or for something that you would like to do or even as a preamble to asking for something like a gift, whether it is for your birthday or Christmas (if you celebrate it).

What I like to hear from my son is that he would like to do something with me. It doesn’t matter what it is. If I can do it, I will go anywhere and do anything with him as long as I feel that I am wanted…needed in his young life. The reason that I say this is because there are so many father/son relationships which are strained or even broken for whatever reason.

Kids need their fathers. They need them to be in their lives, maybe not 24/7 but they need them nonetheless. It doesn’t matter for what reason, it can be for any reason but children, boys and girls, need their Dad. I barely had one when I was growing up because of a divorce that happened when I was only five years old. Of course, I thought it was something that I did, and something that I could fix. I found out later that wasn’t the reason, that I was not even part of the reason for it. I grew up angry and resentful because of it, mainly because I was so young that nobody thought it was a good idea to tell me exactly why this had happened when I got old enough to understand. Dad’s usually are good at helping kids understand things, especially when they are around.

My point in this is that our father, our Dads are important and should be in our lives, not only when we are young but when we get older as well. I know of many who are taking care of their Dad now because he is older, because he needs his children. Is it too much to ask of us as children to be there for the man who was there for us? If your Dad wasn’t around while you were growing up, maybe you can get together now. Try not to hold a grudge against him, there usually was a good reason for his absence.

Our Father, the One in Heaven, would also like to be in your life. The difference between our Heavenly Father and our Dad that we have here on earth is that we must choose to have a relationship with Him. In some kids lives, they may need to choose to have a relationship with their earthly father as well, but that relationship is important too. God wants a relationship with each of us and He is always with us. His presence in your life can be felt and known at any time regardless of where you are. The reason behind His presence in your life is because He wants to be, but you have to choose to allow Him into your life.

In order for us to have a real relationship with God, we have to come to Him through Jesus. When we do that, we can have a relationship with God forever, not just while we are alive here but when our body dies, we will wake up in His presence. Isn’t that awesome!

That doesn’t mean that we will be in “church” forever. We will be worshiping Him but in other ways, we will be serving Him in whatever ways that we can. The difference in Heaven will be that we have the knowledge to do what needs to be done and we will have eternity to do whatever there is that needs doing.

By choosing to have a relationship with Jesus, you get a relationship with the Father too. He has loved each of us from the beginning, not of our life but the beginning of time itself. He has known you from long before you were ever born or even before the world, earth, was created for us to live on. His love, His compassion for us is so far beyond our comprehension that it is hard to explain. As the Scripture says, “my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts”, God is simply saying that He is perfect in His knowledge of all things above and beyond what we can know. He is not bragging, it is just the truth!

This Father’s Day, think about your father, your Dad and then really think about having or starting a relationship with God, your Father in Heaven. Life is too short to waste it on stuff, our relationship with our family, both here on earth and the family that we have in Heaven, is far more important than is given credit in our culture today. Give both of your Fathers your attention so your relationship with them doesn’t have to end. Think about it.

 

Your life, my life, any difference?


This is not a post to brag or one to belittle anyone. It is more of a confession of circumstances, things which have happened to me and the choices that were made because of them. Some of those choices were good and some were not so good and eventually the results turned out pretty good, but not because of anything that I did on my own.

As I stated in another article (Memories) I have had some interesting jobs in the past and I have seen many things that most people never think about unless they have been in a war zone. Before I worked at those jobs, I was a “normal” teenager. At least as normal as possible in the late ’70’s.

I was the product of a divorce that happened when I was five, so of course I never did understand why my parents split up. For most of my young life, I was angry. I was angry at my parents, and my grandparents for not stopping them from breaking up. I thought that everything could be fixed if they would just get back together somehow.

As I got older, my anger and frustration got turned inside. I was angry with myself. Why? I have no idea. I was just angry, so I started smoking pot then I started drinking alcohol. I didn’t start off with beer though, there was a man in town who would sell it to anyone as long as they had the money, so I started off with whiskey.

I am not going to go through my entire life story here because my life is not interesting enough for that. The only things in my life that were interesting might be the ways that God kept me from killing myself. I don’t know how He did it, but I know that my grandmother was praying for me while I was growing up so that is the reason why I survived I suppose.

To get past my teen years, there are many other things which have happened during the eighties that were the kind of things that most people like to forget, so I will not bring them up here. My life, the one that I have been happy with began in ’91 when I met my wife and my Lord (not in that order, Jesus came first 🙂 ).

When He came into my life I realized that I had been trying to get away from Him during the eighties. I had known about Him while I was growing up but knowing about Jesus and knowing Him are entirely different relationships. Yes, it is relationship that God has wanted all along!

Remember, if you have read the Bible at all, in the beginning after God had created Adam He would come down to the garden and walk with him and talk with him. That is the kind of relationship that God desires from us and for each of us today! The Creator of everything wants to know you as a friend, not as a creature or a pet but as a friend! Isn’t that awesome?

I know that our lives may be different culturally and all, but the Creator, God Himself wants to know you and me personally! I don’t know about you but that is just too awesome not to tell someone! God loves you, all of you, every one of you personally and deeply because He had a part in creating you. He knew us individually before we were born, because He exists outside of time’s constraints. He can see the future and the beginning. He knows when you were born and when you will die.

God is real and He is there because He is. We are here because He wanted us to be. There is no chance or accidental way to explain this universe nor is there a way to explain each of us. We are here, our planet is where it is because He placed it in its place. Exactly at the right distance. There are too many cosmological and mathematically precise formulas in our universe to explain it away by “it just happened”!

Creation doesn’t “just happen”! Complexity doesn’t just happen. Can you take a bunch of sticks or lumber and toss them together and form a house? Even the scientists which discovered our building blocks couldn’t take a replica of what they thought would be the “ooze that existed on the early earth” and zap it with electricity and come up with proteins, let alone a single-celled organism!

Natural processes don’t go from simple to complex, naturally, there has to be an intelligence or a Creator behind it. You can go from complex to simple because eventually everything returns to the elements that it is made from, but nature doesn’t move in the opposite direction.

I have gotten completely off into another topic entirely, but the point is that God is our Creator and He wants to know each of us. All that we have to do is accept His friendship and ask Him to help us to be His friend. We cannot do it on our own, but if we ask Him to come into our lives, He will. Then all of the junk that was in your life and the anger and frustration that was there, it won’t go away but it will be easier to bear simply because you won’t be alone!

He wanted me to come to know Him and He brought me to a place where we could meet and get to know one another. There is no hidden agenda with God, He loves you and the grace that He gives each of us daily should be enough to make you want to love Him too! It is usually our own pride that won’t allow us to admit that we need Him and yet we will allow that to come between us and the most glorious friendship that we could ever have.

Don’t put off something like this because we are only here for a short while and we are not guaranteed tomorrow, none of us are! I may not wake up in the morning in my mortal body, but if I don’t I will wake up…with my Savior forever!