How great the Father's love for us...

My Father and Me
Easter 1950

He's a mess. His six-foot frame stretches gaunt and frail under the hospital bed's starched white sheet, his bare feet sticking out the bottom uncovered. He's badly in need of a shave and long overdue for a hair cut. The tubing that delivers oxygen through prongs in his nostrils has rubbed the skin raw where it drapes over his ears too-large for his face, and the coke-bottle lens of his glasses magnifies the fear in his eyes.

And it breaks my heart.

I'm nearly fifty when Alzheimer's plays tricks with his mind and emphysema clogs his lungs and he tells me he's afraid of the nurses - afraid they'll take his oxygen away or be mean. I help him scoot up in bed, fluff the pillows, tuck in the top sheet to cover his feet and rearrange and loosen the oxygen tubing off the raw creases behind his earlobes, but I can't convince him there's nothing to fear. 

I reach for his hand, squeeze gently, and tell him I love him, and for the first time I can remember, he says he loves me, too.  I wonder if he knows who I am. 

::

I loved my father, and I know he loved me, too - he just never knew how to show it. I was never a daddy's little princess. No bedtime stories, daddy-daughter dates, or the benefit of his counsel about boys or college. I never knew what it meant to be loved and cherished by my father - as a child or an adult.

It's no wonder the confusion of my young adult years as I bounced between the lure of feminism and the unhealthy need for a man's affection. It's only grace that drew me away and grace that protected my heart from sowing bitterness toward the father who'd neglected me when I needed him the most. But the reality is that my experience as an unloved daughter of an earthly father blocked my comprehension of what it means to be a daughter of God - the Most High King - who, as David Platt writes in Follow Me, saturates us as his children with his affection. 

In chapter 5, Platt focuses on what it means for followers of Christ to be the beloved, adopted children of God, and it is balm for the soul of this woman-child of sixty-two who still needs this assurance.

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! I John 3.1

Without question, our status before God was settled at the moment we turned from our sin and ourselves and trusted in Jesus as Savior and Lord. But our lives are based on the love relationship we enjoy and experience every moment of every day as God our Father saturates us as his children with his affection. p.99

I think of my cravings for affection as a young adult when Platt says that the trigger of sin {in Genesis 3} involved the man and and woman looking to the things of this world to satisfy them apart from their Creator, and when Jesus said, I am the bread of life, he was telling the crowds who had gathered to hear him, If you want to be fulfilled, put your faith in me.

I was raised in the church. I knew the Lord's prayer by heart, but the gap I experienced between a distant, unloving earthly father and "Our Father, which art in Heaven" created a craving for affection that I foolishly turned to the world to fulfill and a disconnect to God as father that left me vulnerable to the influence of feminism.

I understand why some women in the church, whose earthly fathers were unable to be the loving fathers God created them to be, struggle to see themselves as beloved daughters, resisting to call God Father and submit to his loving authority and pefect design, but the answer isn't to create a gender-neutral god, but to follow the Jesus of Scripture, to hide under the Father's protective wings, and to allow Him to lavish them with abundant love and heal their wounded hearts.

...amid all these pleasures we are wired to pursue, we must always remember that our deepest craving is not for something but for Someone. p.109

Unfortunately, as Platt states, the pleasures, pursuits, plaudits, and possessions of this world seem far more enticing...and the lives of professing Christians are oftentimes virtually indistinguishable from the lives of non-Christians.

As we begin to comprehend the love of God for His children, we discover that Jesus is the supreme source of satisfaction, and we want nothing apart from him, and as Platt reminds us, we begin to trust Christ to change our affections from the things of this world to Christ alone. It's this change in affections that increases our joy in Him from the inside out and is manifested in our increasing desire for God's Word, communion with Him in prayer, worship, and every other discipline of the faith.

This is the heart of following Jesus: enjoying God as Father through Christ the Son. And when this is a reality in life, then your reason for living is utterly revolutionized. p. 121

Follow Me Discussions at The High Calling

Previous Follow Me Discussion Posts on Pollywog Creek

Introduction - Chapter 3, Captivated by His Greatness - Changed by His Grace

Chapter 4, We Believe Him

We Believe Him...

Follow Me A Call to Die, A Call to Live
by David Platt
Chapters 4-5

He is Lord

He is Lord

He is risen from the dead

And He is Lord

Every knee shall bow

Every tongue confess

That Jesus Christ is Lord

Platt gets in your face and ruffles your feathers, like his concluding statement in chapter 3 - that being born again "does not mean that you are making Jesus your personal Lord and Savior". I can almost hear the collective What?!?! It's a compelling lead into chapter 4, where this week's discussion begins. 

Platt explains that to say that Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior is a true expression from those who have an "intimately personal relationship with Jesus," but to say that you are making Him Lord and Savior is an idea that he believes is a reflection of "dangerous trends in contemporary Christianity." We don't make Jesus Lord. He IS Lord, and those who follow Him submit to His Lordship - on His terms, not ours. To say that we make Him Lord promotes the idea that we can make "a personal Christ we create for ourselves."

Lest we think Platt is straining gnats, I think he has point.

Slowly, subtly, we take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into someone with whom we are a little more comfortable. We dilute what he says about the cost of following him, we disregard what he says about those who choose not to follow him, we practically ignore what he says about materialism, and we functionally miss what he says about mission. We pick and choose what we like and don't like from Jesus' teachings. In the end, we create a nice, non-offensive, politically correct, middle-class, American Jesus who looks just like us and thinks just like us.  p. 76

We've all done it, in one way or another, and I believe this trend is related to the authority {or lack of authority} God's Word holds in our lives. In chapter 3, Platt states that part of the fruit of being born again is a new creation with a new heart and a new mind. If the Bible is the final authority in our lives, it should be the source of our mind's renewal, but if we don't read and meditate on God's Word or we don't believe it is the final authority, our minds are more likely renewed by the entertainment industry, secular thought, advertisements, friends, internet content {including blogs}, twitter, facebook, and our experiences and emotions. We say we are followers of Jesus, but in reality, we are only following the Jesus who agrees with us, not the Jesus who said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." {Matthew 16.24}

So we go as disciples of Jesus who love his Word and trust his truth. We go not simply as men and women who at some point decided to make Jesus our personal Lord and Savior, but ultimately as men and women who at every point are devoted to proclaiming Jesus as the universal Lord and Savior. We believe him as his disciples; therefore, we obey him and make disciples. p. 94

{To be continued with Chapter 5 Wednesday.} 

Follow Me Discussions at The High Calling

Previous Follow Me Discussion Posts on Pollywog Creek

Introduction - Chapter 3, Captivated by His Greatness - Changed by His Grace

{Photo - Wall hangings, created by Sue Reed, in the lobby of Riverside Church in Ft. Myers, Florida}

"Captivated by His Greatness - Changed by His Grace"

Follow Me by David Platt
Introduction - Chapter 3

I'd ordered it a week before and it was already in my hands when I discovered that The High Calling would be discussing Follow Me - A Call to Die, A Call to Live, by David Platt, on Monday morning through March. 

I'm not new to the teachings of David Platt or Francis Chan, whose introduction to Platt's chapters in Follow Me is deep and rich and not to be overlooked. While some may bristle at Platt's teachings, they fan a flame for me, and I'm thrilled to be wrestling through these chapters with my friends at The High Calling.

I'm also grateful to attend a church that has embraced the mission "to make disciples who love and live like Jesus" and with core values that support that mission. These core values are re-enforced by the pastors in gospel-saturated messages and fleshed out within the church in small lifegroups where we discuss the application of those scriptures that call us to die to ourselves and to live in Christ - to be a disciple and make disciples where ever God has placed us.

From what I have read in the introduction through chapter 3, Follow Me would likely receive a hearty amen from the leaders of our church.

As Chan states in the introduction:

The life God has for us is one of abundance. It is meant to be full, not repetitive. He wants us doing things that have eternal impact. He wants us busy expanding his Kingdom in one way or another, today and every day. This doesn't mean that every Christian should quit his or her job and move to a foreign country. But it does mean that we need to figure out how to make each day count for his purposes. p. xiii

In the first few chapters, Platt reminds us of the first disciples, as well as Christians through the ages, who eagerly, willingly, and gladly lost their lives to know, follow, and proclaim Christ, and he points us to the scriptures that call each of us to die, as well - that following Jesus involves losing your life - and finding a new life in him. 

Platt wants us to consider that if our lives do not reflect the fruit of following Jesus, then we are foolish to think that we are actually followers of Jesus in the first place - and more importantly, that we are likely deceived if we point to praying a prayer or inviting Jesus into our heart as proof of our salvation.  

Platt's explanation on what it means to be adopted and to be called a child of God - to be loved by God, pursued by God, and found by God - is one of the best I've read for it's completeness, clarity and simplicity.

Chapter 3 concludes with a question that we might be tempted to think is obvious, but should be considered more deeply in the light of what he has written. Have you been born again? he asks, while reminding us that the fruit of this new birth is a new heart with a new mind, new desires, a new will, a new way of relating to people around you, and a new purpose to follow Jesus. And he warns us to not be mistaken...

 This does not mean that you are making Jesus your personal Lord and Savior. p.73

And that's where Chapter 4 begins.