Tonight while at the office, I heard one of Chris Tomlin’s newest songs, “Good, Good Father,” and once again, I was wrecked by the Father’s extravagant love. From the office until I went to the mall, I was just extremely overwhelmed by the idea of God’s love that I later found myself crying while going from one store to another. I can just imagine what people though when they saw me (I hope no one recognized me.)
It’s amazing how one never grows tired of the Father-heart of God and how every encounter of it feels like love all over again. And while, there is just such an abundance of scriptures in the Bible about the love of the Father, none has really gotten into me 1 John 3:1 (ESV) does when it says:
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
The New International Version also says it wonderfully as the love of the Father being “lavished on us.” God’s love in so much excess that it is abundantly and sumptuously dumped all over us until it’s all that we can take into our system! Amazing!
What is it about the Father’s love that wrecks us incessantly as sons and daughters? It’s this thought that God made us to yearn for it, and makes it so incredibly available to us. The abundance of expression that God gives us of His love. The life we live, the air we breathe, every ounce of provision no matter how big or small just tell us about how much God loves us.
As a father, I know what it’s like to love my daughter- to go out of my way to express it and assure my daughter of it. And as the son of a wonderful earthly father, I know what it’s like to be recipient of a love so enabling and empowering.
Yet this love that I give to my daughter, and the love I receive from my earthly father do not even begin to compare to the perfect and extravagant love of our Abba Yah. What kind of love has this Father of heavenly lights so endlessly lavish upon us? Wow.
And though sometimes we just receive so much of it that we become desensitised from the love of God, when we really look into the one thousand daily expressions God gives us through everything around us, it will be as if we’re hearing His voice audibly say “I love you, my son/daughter.” I love how the song “Good, Good Father” says it-
Oh, I’ve heard a thousand stories of what they think you’re like
But I’ve heard the tender whisper of love in the dead of night
And you tell me that you’re pleased
And that I’m never alone
What makes it so much more overwhelming is this thought that we don’t really deserve this kind of love if you really think about it. The times that we have failed, maligned and abused the love of the perfect Father and the way we will continue to do so while we walk this earth, but at any point in time, God is still there to receive us with arms open wide.
What else can we do except receive this love of the Father and be overwhelmed, overcome, renewed and transformed by it? Indeed, our God is a good, good Father.
