Fatherhood 101

Have you ever read Proverbs 8:22-31? If not, you should…right now, then come back.

I am struck in particular with verses 30-31. In this passage, we see wisdom personified as the person of Jesus before the creation of the world. It’s like a narrative from His journal in which He describes His inception at the beginning of all things. He describes how He helped His Father create and establish the world, beside Him as a “master craftsman” (v. 30). When I read it, I feel like I’m getting an inside look, a sneak peek, at the creation from the Director Himself. It’s so intimate and profound and awe-inspiring. What especially moves my heart is the revealing of the relationship and interaction between the Father and the Son.

We’re granted permission to sit in the midst of their conversation as they draw the circle of the earth, as they assign the seas their boundaries, as they tell the clouds where to dwell. They have let us in their inner circle and invite us into the intimacy of their fellowship. And you know what the first thing is they say about what they’re like when they’re together? They tell about the delight of their hearts. They reveal the things that delight their heart the most.

Before I get to the subject of their delight, I have to stop and dwell upon the significance of their choice to reveal this emotion as the overriding description of the experience. As we look at the way they experienced the event, we see who they are at the innermost place. In the depth and riches and infinite abundance of their being, they feel joy. Really? The stoic, serious, all-powerful, just judge of the universe felt joy when He created? That doesn’t exactly fit my mental image of God, or the images of artists and historians past, does it? However, that’s what He says He feels. The Father and the Son together felt delight when they created. And not only is it at the forefront of how they reveal themselves in this passage, but they actually invite us into the middle of it. We can take this passage and pray over it and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it to our hearts in a deeper way and actually experience that fellowship of delight, unto actually believing it. That is amazing to me. They have openly invited me into the intimacy of their fellowship, and what I find when I get there is unsurpassed joy and delight, originating in the very heart of God. Wow. What humility and vulnerability and generosity…towards me. That is incredible.

As I read on, I am taken back even more when I discover that the source of their delight is each other and, get this…me. Jesus was “daily His delight.” The Father delighted in Jesus, daily and regularly and continually. He took pleasure in His Son and thoroughly enjoyed His presence so much so that He let Him create the universe with Him. The desire originates in the Father, yet He willingly and joyfully invites His Son to do it with Him and for Him. Really, that’s what the Father is like? Wasn’t this project really important to Him? Yes, not only the product but the process.

And what was Jesus’ response? He was “rejoicing always before Him.” The Son rejoiced before His Father. I picture the innocence of a four-year-old playing with his dad in the backyard, the two running around and laughing and giggling at each other. There is such purity and innocence in their relationship that it almost makes me blush that they’re so unashamed of it. That’s how fallen and corrupt I am, that purity and innocence is embarrassing. Yet it’s so freeing at the same time at the thought of being a part of that. No hindrances or walls keeping me from being all that I am before them. What must that be like? Yet that’s exactly what they’ve invited me into.

Not only do they take tremendous delight in each other, but it spills over onto me. With the joy they experience in each other, they incredibly declare it over me. Jesus was “rejoicing in His inhabited world, and [His] delight was with the sons of men.” I think that bears repeating. Jesus took great joy in the inhabited earth, and He delighted Himself as He watched me and interacted with me. That’s so bizarre to me to think about that I almost can’t believe it. But oh how I want to. He doesn’t just tolerate me or bear with me or begrudgingly respond to my nagging requests. He doesn’t look at me with apathy or boredom or disappointment at how I’ve turned out. The Father and Son who sit in heaven with all power and wealth and honor and glory at their fingertips are distracted from it all by me. Like a new father with his newborn daughter, he is consumed with her every blink and expression and movement and sound. He’s so easily pleased by the slightest settling of her gaze on his face or the smallest squeeze of her hand on his forefinger. It’s sheer delight, pleasure, appreciation, and enjoyment. That’s the heart of the Father—the heart of His Son—toward me. This is a miracle of miracles. I’m overcome, really. It’s just not who I understood my Father to be…

This is the picture of fatherhood that God models for His children. How did we fall so short? It breaks my heart at what fatherhood has come to in this day and time. What happened? How did we miss it by so great a length? I think about men willingly sending their girlfriends and fiancées and wives and daughters to clinics to have their own flesh and blood children taken out of the womb and thrown into the trashcan. I think about abused and battered and neglected children in the foster care system and on the streets. I think about tribes of people in Africa where the dads as practice have absolutely zero contact with their children as they grow up. I think about workaholic dads who don’t know anything about their children’s personal lives or only see them on the weekends. It’s no wonder we don’t trust God. It’s no wonder we’re afraid of Him. This is a travesty of immeasurable proportion that is having consequences on our generation of which we will never begin to understand. Rather, we only see its fruit and irreversible damage. Only God can set things in motion for change.

It sets in context Malachi 4:5-6 a little more clearly. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.” Oh, I see why this is so significant now. I see why this is so important, yea necessary. For the final generation to understand the heart of the Judge, we have to understand the heart of the lovesick Father. Our understanding of His nature is so twisted that He has declared beforehand the necessity of restoring the father-child relationship as a remedy. He initiates it, and He restores it. It must be that important to Him. I pray this prayer with fervor as I stand on the Life Lines in the prayer room. The Life Lines are the place where we stand to pray for a culture of life in our nation, beginning with the ending of the practice of and demand for abortion.

Father, reveal your heart of delight and joy over your children in this nation and on the whole earth. Show us your jealousy for us. Let us feel your affections toward us. Let us believe and trust the intentions of your heart. Let us give ourselves wholly into your hands in perfect trust and submission because we know who you are. Father, give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. Open up our understanding to receive the truth of who He is. Let it excite our hearts. Let it birth love in us for Him. Cause our hearts to grow in love for you. Give us understanding of the perfect love that exists in the Godhead, that joy and affection and generosity would be our inheritance because we find it in you. Turn the hearts of the fathers in this nation toward their children as an expression of the love in your heart toward your children. Let our hearts be turned to our fathers and to our Heavenly Father. Restore us, God. Restore our relationship with you to your original intent. Show your mercy, God, and give us yourself. Amen.

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