Never look for your worth in the eyes of a man who you know does evil. Even if, even if you were deserving of evil, you wouldn’t find truth in the eyes of the kind of man who perpetrates it. A man who does evil is always going to find a way to blame his own malicious desires and actions on the victim, and when that victim is a child, it is a relatively easy thing to do. It’s called conditioning, and its why we normalize what we know — even when what we know is an obvious lie.
If you want to know your true worth, you have to get to know the true character of our Heavenly Father, step by step — because until we understand His character, His integrity, and His love at a basic level, we will keep superimposing the evils we grew up with upon Him, like a defiled sort of mask. And I will be honest, it will probably take more courage to get to know Him than you think you have — but by simply surviving what you have survived, you’ve proven that you are more courageous than you were led to believe.
I want to talk about two things that Yeshua (Jesus) said about the Father that are just bedrock foundational.
John 7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
Matt 7:9 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Some people were raised in such a way as to never know that to expect from their earthly fathers. Their lives were chaotic, and a gift wasn’t always a gift and might have been offered with some pretty distasteful strings attached. Maybe they weren’t sure if their father was going to be drunk or sober, or happy or angry, or violent or calm — or maybe they weren’t ever sure how to act around him, because anything could set him off. Maybe he wandered in and out of their lives or never showed up at all — but I will cover that another time. Right now I want to cover the chaotic father.
Now I want for you to imagine reading the Bible with that mindset of that type of father. If we come into the faith with that sort of paradigm as to what fathers are like, it will color every single verse, every single law, the tone of voice of every single prophet — in short, one would not read what was really written there because it would not make sense to the brain conditioned to believe lies. When one comes to the New Testament, however, we are reading about Yeshua — and we treat it as though we are reading about someone entirely different from God the Father. But yesterday, as I pointed out, Father and Son are echad, united, in perfect eternal agreement. So we must explore what we believe about Yeshua, find out if our beliefs are Biblically supportable, and then reconcile that with our beliefs about the Father.
A lot of us have hidden from the Father, behind the Son, as though the Son struck down a cruel tyrant, destroyed His unfair system of bondage, and delivered us into absolute freedom from any sort of obligation we deemed unnecessary. But that doesn’t line up with Yeshua being One with the Father, and it certainly doesn’t line up with Yeshua preaching His Father’s doctrine, and not simply His own. Yeshua’s message was the Father’s message, just think about that. Yeshua didn’t preach a kinder gentler message towards the Father, dying so that He would “lighten up.” Yeshua preached His Father’s message to the first century Jews, telling them that it was the Father’s will that they add justice, compassion and mercy to their commandment keeping. He didn’t die so that His Father would take a chill pill and start being reasonable, He died because His Father already was reasonable – more reasonable than we can imagine. He died because the Father was so full of love that He was willing to renew the broken Covenant in His own blood. You need to understand that the scriptures tell us that the Father is Spirit, and so the only sacrifice he could make was His own Son. Can you imagine being so intimately connected to someone, throughout all eternity, loving someone as a part of you because they are a part of you — and yet having such pity and compassion upon a literal stranger that you were willing to send that beloved someone to them, who would them suffer and die in order that that stranger could live, and come into that intimacy as well? I don’t love anyone with that sort of love, I doubt if I am even capable of ever loving a stranger enough to offer myself, much less offer someone I love.
Yeshua didn’t come here of His own accord to make things right out of a situation the Father made a mess of. This was a joint operation, it was the only thing that love could do. They were making a remedy for the evil works of men, not a remedy for a bad system. It was our willful history of evil that was being addressed, not simply sins here and there.
Yeshua’s character proves that the Father is trustworthy, or Yeshua would never have preached His doctrine.
Yeshua taught us to pray to the Father — for our needs, for our forgiveness, for our protection. Yeshua would not send us to a tyrant.
Yeshua said that what we receive from the Father is going to be good.
Yeshua claimed that the Father is a good judge.
Yeshua taught that the Father is greater than He is, so anything we believe about Yeshua, we must give even more credit to God the Father.
John 14:7-11 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.
Yeshua boldly claimed that the works he committed were proof that the Father is in Him. What did He do?
Healed the sick, the blind, the lepers. Cast out demons. Raised the dead on multiple occasions. Preached to, and touched the people no one wanted to preach to or touch — both Jew and Gentile alike. Had mercy on sinners, showed grace to the humble, gave counsel to the proud, and showed his wrath towards those who sin in the name of His Father, and misrepresented His Father’s character. And then He died for us.
He did those things because He was the living embodiment of the character of the Father. And so when He says that the Father gives good gifts, we have to reread the scriptures in a new light, and see the absolute good in everything the Father ever gave His people. We have to stop looking at Him through glasses that were discolored and even shattered by the failings of those men we grew up with. We need to realize that they aren’t glasses at all, they are hindering, not helping our sight. They need to be stripped away and thrown away, and we need to ask the Holy Spirit to show us the Father in truth, through the Word and through the conforming of our mind to the mind of Messiah — so that we can see the Father as He does.
To put it in modern terms, we need to start looking at the Father through Yeshua-colored glasses.
Copyright Darlene Dine, reproduction without permission is prohibited
So true and beautifully expressed. Somewhere down the line the enemy (through false doctrine and experiences) has distorted the truth about Our Father. He has long since demonstrated His love for us, now it is our turn to show Him the respect He deserves and love Him in return. I love the YaHshua colored glasses.
Thank you for this… parts 1 & 2. There is so much to unlearn from false doctrines of the past and this is probably the best starting place. When we understand that God the Father would never give us anything harmful or burdensome like the Scriptures actually state, that is a first step in softening our rebellious attitude towards Him. Looking forward to catching up on parts 3, 4 and onward.
I love the last line, “We need to look at the Father through Yeshua-colored glasses”. I remember growing up hearing that the Father looks at us through the blood of His Son because otherwise He would see our sin and destroy us. But it’s we who look through Yeshua to the grace, mercy and love of the Father.
I love that Suzie, great way to put it.