God Our Father

We are going to praise God because we were all born, including Adam.  As we sang and as we heard from the communion message, we are all sons of God.  This has nothing to do with gender.  We are children of God and it’s not a matter of being a boy or girl.

In the book of Mathew 6:9, JESUS was telling us how to pray and He started the prayer with “Our Father who art in heaven”.  JESUS’ advice is to start prayer with “Our father”.

Who is the father?  God is big, powerful and someone we fear with supernatural power but when talk about a father it is different.  JESUS told us to be like children to enter the Kingdom of God.  A child in front of a father will say, “Daddy hold me, daddy carry me, daddy I want this”.  A father can be in the middle of a meeting and the child can come in without reason and the dad will pick up the child and make sure he is safe.

God wants us to treat him like a father taking care of his children.  Do we really behave like children of God or like teenagers?  To be a child is good.  When I was a child, if I stepped on something dirty, my dad would clean my feet. Children are fed and the parents look after their children 24/7.

God is sufficient. God is Everything.  God is man and woman at the same time.  For that reason God created a human being in His image.  What is the image of God?  God has existed for eternity.  Genesis 1:7, God created Adam and Eve and then later in chapter 2 He came down and using His hands touching the dust, He then made Adam’s body.  The eternal life met with the temporary life. 

God decided to come down and meet with us and decided to create something that He will call son.  Adam and Eve were created on the same day spiritually before God created Adam and Eve physically.

If you look at our prayer that Jesus gave us in Mat 6, many people who speak Aramaic will start with Abwoon  which is a blending of Abba (Father) and Woon meaning Womb (Mother) because God is mother and father at the same time. 

When God created Adam He breathed into that body.  Eve was inside Adam.  As Adam was taking care of all creation, he saw that God created male and female animals but not human because the human being was given everything they needed in them.  God saw that Adam was lonely and bored so God decided to go down to separate Eve from Adam so that there could be companionship.  Woman was separated from Man.

Adam was the first man to give birth, from his side God took out Eve.  Adam wasn’t born and reflected that divinity and eternity.  He didn’t have mother or father.  This is another part of the image of God on earth.  When Adam woke up, he saw Eve and he said, “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh”.  He knew that he was the image of God and therefore the self-sufficient and knew God had separated from him what was inside of him.  You can only be a child of God if you reflect God’s image in you.  Jesus taught us you must be born again.

On earth, mother and fathers will teach us principles.  E.g. this is not a Kiwi way, this behaviour is unacceptable but for other families, it will be acceptable.  Families will teach you how to behaviour and what is considered normal but this might not be considered normal to other families.  When you marry, the husband will come with his own education and the wife will also have her own education.  Now they stay together, there is a battle.  What one believes is not what the other believes.  Therefore, God says, if you want the right education, read the Word of God and that is the perfect way to live, not what your mum or dad taught you.

If I go from the Word of God, I go astray.  Therefore, God wants us to be self-sufficient with Him and not separate from Him.  The day He separated Eve from Adam, Adam could not give birth anymore, he had to go to Eve.  Even if Eve wanted a child, she can’t without Adam.  They had to complete each other.  When we are trying to complete each other, there is a danger because the devil will try to destroy. 

Leah and Rebekah, they are children of Ange, who can separate that?  No one can separate it even if Angela is sick in hospital, she will still be mother of those children.  Nothing can separate them.  When satan came to meet Eve, he lied to Eve and mislead her.  Why did he mislead her?  Because God gave a big responsibility to Eve to be the one to produce life.  God said to both Adam and Eve, “You have to multiply,” but he gave Eve the capacity to hold life in her. 

You can see a very small lady can hold a baby in womb.  The baby can move around but the lady will hold that heaviness.  God has given hips to women to hold baby.  It would be a disaster if men got pregnant because we are careless.  Men can be stupid.  I’ve seen men going to jail because they have put children in a washing machine or something stupid like that. 

God trusted a woman and gave the job of giving life to women.  Satan realised by Eve having the ability to give life, he will lose.  The devil didn’t want women to conceive only life, he wanted them to also conceive sin.  Satan brought temptation.  The church is also a picture of women.  The church starts to stray from God.  We start to walk a life that we used to think was not a part of Christian life and it becomes a character of and part of our lives because we have walked away from will of God.

Adam and Eve stayed in the garden for a time but left when God put them aside.  Jesus came as a second Adam miraculously as well.  For God to produce a new woman, Jesus was pierced on the same side as the rib that was taken from Adam to create Eve.  This reflected the notion of God removing a rib from Adam and creating Eve.  By being pierced, the curtain ripped and a new woman was seen (the church) and through Christ, we have salvation.

The church treats God as God rather than our father so we don’t come close to Him and we don’t have time to come near Him.  I used to call my father sheriff because he had no jokes and if he sees you playing around, he will have a look and if you see him, you knew you would be punished.  We had rules and we weren’t allowed to do some things.

When I was around 8 years old, he asked for a cotton ball but he called it a name that I hadn’t heard of before and I had no right to ask what he meant.  If I came back without it, it will be punishment.  I couldn’t even check a dictionary.  Sometimes human beings can treat us harshly and let us down but God is telling us, you have to be born again, “You have learnt a lot of rules from your parents, you have been disappointed, come to Me and I will be your father and your mother, I will take care of you”.

Life has seasons as we all know.  In summer we wear light clothing but in winter you see people preparing for cold with warmer clothing.  Today the church doesn’t look at the seasons, we are just as we are. For example, if we have a nice top for summer, we wear it for winter because others like the top.  When the seasons are changing, we need to change and not stay in the same place just because others said we look cool.

Last year’s spring is different to this year’s spring.  Never put your trust 100% in other people but only trust in God our heavenly father.  If you put your trust in someone who is next to you like Adam put his trust in Eve, you will be misled.  How many times have you fallen into traps because you didn’t want to disappoint someone?  How many times did you sin because you didn’t want others to think you were different? 

Pride can make you become a fallen angel.  Arrogance can make you become someone who is not a child of God.  Sins come like a suggestion and you have the capacity to say no.  According to the education of God our father, you have to say no.

When Leah is at home she feels free but she won’t feel free at my place.  Leah can walk freely into Ange’s room but she won’t come into my house and go freely into my room.  Why do we limit ourselves to not access rooms of Gods Kingdom and all the corners of God’s Kingdom?   We try to reject God and consider more our friends.  Leah will have secrets she won’t tell her mum but she can tell her friends.  Friends with friends will mislead each other and do wrong things.

In 1 Cor 4:15 it says that you can have 10,000 of guardians but you don’t have many fathers.  My biological father is my guardian.  The people who surround us are just guardians and they can teach us but they are not our fathers.  We can go to church and listen to the pastor and read books, these people are guardians but not fathers.  Jesus reminded us in Mat 5, call no one your father but the one in heaven.

When there is a danger or challenge, children will go to their father but today we prefer to make our guardians our fathers and put our fathers aside.  We need to pray and ask God for direction.  If you are a child of God, you are not a boy or girl, you are self-sufficient with God because God completes you.  If you look at our blood, there is not feminine or manly blood.  A man can take a women’s blood and it won’t harm (provided they have the same blood type).  Women are not weak, in front of God, that is not true.

In the Kingdom of God we won’t have men or women in heaven.  We live like angels.  Why to make yourself look weak or think you don’t deserve because of your gender.  We need to move with God.  When you pray remember to call God your father.  Anything you wanted from your father, get it. Even when our fathers are wrong, they continue to be our fathers.  They can have rules which can be tough, they can have mistakes but they continue to be our fathers.

God our father has never made mistakes, He is sinless.  One time my father smacked my face because I didn’t notice a lady walking past and he thought I looked badly at the lady.  When he realised that I didn’t do wrong, he said sorry.  God will never punish you but encourage you not to sin.  Imagine if God could punish you like our court system, maybe every day you will be in jail and the list will be a long list of crimes.  From birth to now, how many mistakes have you made?