Chapter 2

Relationship with the Father

            How is (or was) your relationship with your earthly father? Some people say that our relationship with our earthly father can give us an indication of how we feel towards our Heavenly Father. If we had a warm, trusting relationship with our earthly father, we will have the same with our Heavenly one. If we had a hard, unloving earthly father, that is how we look at our Heavenly Father. No matter how bad a relationship we had with our earthly father, we can have a good one with our Heavenly one. We should of course try to make amends with our earthly one if the relationship wasn’t the way it should have been. That can be hard or even impossible in some cases without a miracle from God.

How we come to the Father:

            Gives us understanding that we might know Him:

1 John 5:20

20 And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

Hebrews 8:10-12

10 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel

After those days, says the Lord:

I will put My laws into their minds,

And I will write them on their hearts.

And I will be their God,

And they shall be My people.

11 “And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,

And everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’

For all will know Me,

From the least to the greatest of them.

12 “For I will be merciful to their iniquities,

And I will remember their sins no more.”

            Many Christians talk about “finding” God. In actuality, He leads us into finding Him. He wants to be found by us, but it is not our own doing but His. When we are unbelievers, we have no understanding of what it is to be a Christian or how to come to God. He Himself gives us that understanding when we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. Then we “know that we know, that we know” we are in the Father and in His Son. This is truly what eternal life is all about … knowing Him. In Hebrews it says He writes His laws into our minds and hearts. We “know” when something is pleasing or not to Him. We may still do the wrong thing in spite of knowing, but we can know whether or not it’s wrong. Now this does not come about automatically. We have to train our senses to discern between right and wrong. We grew up with our senses trained to do whatever we were taught by our earthly guardians said was right (at least most of us did what we were taught). Sometimes they were right and sometimes they were wrong. We need to retrain our senses through His Law embedded in our hearts and minds.

If you could hear God speak to you, I believe this is what He would say:

            "You are not ignorant, My children. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If you know Me, then you know the Truth. If you follow Me, that Truth will set you free; but only if you follow Me. Truth that is not applied will do no one any good. If you apply that Truth, you will be set free to help others become free. You gain understanding of Me and My Kingdom when you are willing to walk in the Truth of that Kingdom. You cannot know Me apart from that Truth. You cannot experience My Life apart from walking in that Truth. It is in walking in that Truth that you shall be a success and not turn aside to the things of this world. There are things even harder to resist that are coming into the world. But you must resist them and teach your children how to resist them. These are things that the untaught will not be able to resist; so arm yourselves in order to resist and train others to do so also.”

            9. I have been given understanding by the Father of who I am and what I am in Him and in His Son, Jesus. It has been written in my heart and in my mind all that I am in Him and all that I have through Him.