Look to Please Your Father
Look to please God. Guilt can not fit in the mind that is full of the positive desire to please the Lord instead of the negative response of unhelpful guilt. Wake up every day like a child looking to make his father happy. How can I please my Dad today that I might be bathed in his smile on me.
No father expects perfection, he looks at his child trying, trying to please his father and his heart is made warm. Any father would be so upset to think that their child, who is earnestly trying to please them, did not know how proud they were of them, how much they love them, how much joy they bring to him.
God gave a gift to fathers, the gift of fatherhood, through fatherhood he gives us a shadow of his relationship to us his children with a power that can not come from simply reading. It must be felt. The ways that man is greater than the angels is in our increased capacity to know our Father in heaven. He gives us marriage that we may know Christ’s union to his church. He gives us not only the relationship of parent to child but also the capacity for incredible love so that we might understand a shadow of the love of our God.
We broken sinners deeply and sincerely love our imperfect children and are proud of them, hopefully we make that clear to them, God certainly does through his Word when Jesus over and over again tells us how much the father Loves us. This God, this Father of ours loves more perfectly, more sincerely and more deeply than we could ever come close to imagine. Yet we don’t believe him. We selfishly look inward, feeling guilty for our past sins and seeing only failure in our imperfect good works. How could a Father love a sinner like me. Could you imagine your child thinking that of you, his parents, through tears any parent would hold them so tightly and they would not let go until they knew how loved they are.
Our Father in heaven would love to hold us tightly too. He is waiting with open arms but the prodigal son is far away. Come to the Father! Come close to him and let him hold you! You are his child, he loves you and accepts your efforts to please him, we know he does because He is the one working in us to do that very thing.
Go, run to the Father, feel his smile upon you that you would be encouraged to please him further, keep your mind fixed on pleasing your father knowing one day you will see him in fullness and hear him say “well done, good and faithful servant.”