Skip to main content

A Father You Can Call Daddy



Abba, Father, he said, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.
Mark 14:36
Through the years of my spiritual journey, I have bumped into Scriptures that have both stunned and amazed me. The first was in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus prayed to God as, Abba or Daddy in English (Mark 14:36). It became clear to me that I can call God Daddy when I read in Romans 8:14–17, 23; Galatians 3:26; 4:6; and Ephesians 1:4–5. Jesus invites me to settle in and cuddle up to the God who invites me to call Him Daddy.
Although Daddy is the best English translation of Abba, so many people have told me that this word is foreign to them even in their human family relationships. It is so far from what Jesus is trying to teach us that really knowing God is more than knowing Him as Father; it is actually knowing Him as Daddy (or Dad, Papa, Pop). Every culture is invited to insert the name for father that signifies the closest intimacy you can imagine from a paternal figure.
God is worthy of honor and glory. Abba examines only one facet of the infinite nature of God. God is the Creator. He is holy. He is omnipotent. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is all that and more, and still He invites you to cry out Abba when you address Him. Understanding the mystery of what it means to call God Daddy is a beginning to examining His full nature.  It is the perfect place to start if you really desire to know God.
When I first read the Scriptures that told me to call God Daddy, I couldn’t even come close to comprehending what they meant. What began as abstract knowledge slowly took form and created an intimate connection to God. It happened in much the same way erosion shapes stone. Like water dripping slowly and consistently, a calm and transforming presence broke through the hard places in my soul that had never imagined God could love me like a daddy. I have a strong feeling that many other Christians have never fully comprehended that praying is actually talking to our Dad.
The most remarkable result of coming to know God as Abba-Daddy in my life is that I have begun to grasp who I really am. Knowing God as Dad has given me the strength I need to face my problems, even when God doesn’t solve them for me or take them away. When you learn to pray to God as Father, you will see yourself as God’s child too. He will stand you before the mirror of your soul and reveal your true identity. Something will radically change in the deepest recesses of your spiritual self when you learn to call Him Daddy.
Henri Nouwen describes it this way:
Calling God Abba is entering into the same intimate, fearless, trusting, and empowering relationship with God that Jesus had. That relationship is called Spirit, and that Spirit is given to us by Jesus and enables us to cry out with him, Abba, Father. . . It has nothing to do with naming God but everything to do with claiming God as the source of who we are.
 Calling God “Daddy” can be the most empowering experience of your spiritual life.

Copyright © 2017. Deborah R. Newman.  teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fifth Monday in Lent through Palm Sunday

Fifth Monday in Lent: Righteousness Needed Jesus is all about bringing us righteousness yet we are too worldly focused to think we have much of a need for righteousness. Most of us think we need healing or exciting miracles. We might try to get a little righteousness by going to church on Sunday and giving some spare change to a beggar. God sees the bigger picture and knows that there is nothing which we are more bankrupt than righteousness. He sees that we are totally incapable of getting the righteousness we need through our own actions, so He sent Jesus to give us His righteousness through His sacrificial work on the cross. Lent is a season of repentance and preparation for the Easter celebration. No matter how sacrificial your Lenten fast, it could never be enough to earn your righteousness. I have been practicing Lent for   years, and every year at the end of my fast I come face to face with how far I am from righteousness. Some of the first recorded words of Jesus in th
Post a Comment
Read more

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on
2 comments
Read more

The Missing Tribe of Dan

            The reason I love studying the Bible with a group of people is that they teach me things I don’t know.   I love it when I don’t know the answer to a question.   That is how I learn.   So when someone recounted the ugly tail of Dan’s idolatry in Judges 18 concluding with the passage in Judges 18:30-31 :   There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land.   They continued to use the idol Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true that the Danites never ever worshiped God!   How could that be?             Before I had a chance to settle that question, someone in the class read the passage from Revelation 7 where the tribe of Dan was omitted.   I never considered that!   I never realized that a whole tribe of Israel was not found in the New Testament.   What could that
2 comments
Read more