Of the Father's Love Begotten

Isaiah 40:11 says, "He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young. "

Sounds a lot like John 10, doesn't it?

As a child growing up in the church, I tended to think of God as having two modes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Old Testament and God the Father who sent us his only begotten Son, Jesus, in the New Testament.

The more I studied the Old Testament, the more I discovered that everything found there points to Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah in the New Testament.

Just as Isaiah 40 is remarkably similar to what we find in John 10, when Jesus is calling himself the Good Shepherd, we also find in Isaiah 40 the prophecy of the voice crying out in the wilderness, which we learn in the Gospels belongs to John the Baptizer.

God's plan to send Jesus, his only Son, for our salvation, was something that He had planned from the beginning. God loved us so much that He sent his only Son ... but it wasn't God "in New Testament mode" who loved us, it was God the great "I AM" as described in all of Scripture. That is, God, way back in the Old Testament, loved us so much that He knew He would be sending his Son for our salvation. And it's clear throughout the Old Testament that God loves us. There's never any doubt.

God is unchanging. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I think about how much I, as a father, love my children. And I think about how much my own father loves me.

God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to die for us -- for me -- so that I may be with him eternally. And because God is unchanging, I know I can rely on this, I can count on it. John 3:16 will always be with me.

How do I apply this to being a dad? Maybe it's like this.

Do my kids know that I love them and have loved them ever since Day One? Even in those times when they see me as the Disciplinarian, the Enforcer, the one who has to punish disobedience, do they still know that I love them?

One of my goals is that my children should be so secure in their awareness of my love for them that when I do have to discipline them, they have no doubt as to where my heart is. My children do know that if they are disobedient they are going to have to pay the fiddler. But I also want them to realize, deep down inside, how much I love them.

What do I do to demonstrate that? Do I spend time with them? Do I listen to what they're saying when I'm engrossed in a project and they come to me with, "Hey Dad, want to hear what I did today?"

How would you like it if you knelt and bowed your head and sincerely began a dialogue of prayer, only to have God say, "Hey, can we talk about this in the morning? I'm kinda busy now."

That would hurt.

When was the last time you did that to a child? I'll bet that hurt them too.

The next point is that God is unchanging, but He can afford to be unchanging because He is already perfect. We mere mortals don't dare lock into an "unchanging mode" because we are far from perfect and there's some junk in each of us that needs to be removed or changed.

We're changing everyday ... the question is, are we changing for the better or the worse? Simply put, spending time with God is how we get better; not spending time with God is how we get worse.

How did you do today? Yesterday? This week? This year? Tell your kids you love them before Valentine's Day, before Easter, before Christmas. Tell them that every day.

And spend time with God. After all, He sent his only Son so that you and I would not perish but would have eternal life with Him.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.