The Good God - Father
Readings for this week July 22 - 26
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Day 1 – The Good God
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Matthew 28:18-20
The late fifth century Athanasian Creed states, “Nothing in this Trinity is before or after, nothing is greater or smaller; in their entirety the three persons are co-eternal and co-equal with each other [...] For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal.” God is One. God is Triune. Who God is matters. Saying who God is also matters, often stretching our language and concepts to breaking point. “The Good God” series will be looking at who God is and why it matters.
Our ‘Remaining’ series looked at the importance of spending time in the presence of God, where we come to know God more, experiencing a deeper understanding of him and a greater experience of his love. We gain a deeper understanding of his character and his nature. This next series takes a deep dive into who God is, as we examine the nature of God, the triune God of Father, Son and Spirit. Who is God? What is God really like? Is the Trinity important, or just a fancy phrase created by theologians that doesn’t correspond to the reality of God, but rather confuses it? What does the Triune nature of God tell us about his character, the relationships within the Godhead, and about God’s relationship with creation and with us? What does Jesus, the incarnate Son, show us about the one he called “God” and “Father”?
Question to Consider
Why is it important that God is triune/a trinity of persons? What difference does this make to how we know him and how he knows us?
Prayer
Lord God, you have graciously revealed yourself to us so that we may know you. Reveal yourself again to us, keep us from waywardness, and give us a greater knowledge of your love for your world. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – God the Father
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – John 17:24
There are many ways to think about the Trinity, some accurately based on God’s self-revelation, others more our own ideas and only partially correct. God is Triune, Three Persons in One. Lean too far in the direction of the persons and you get tritheism (three gods); go too far the other way and you end up with a God who switches between being Father, Son and Spirit, like choosing which of three masks to wear (modalism). But the clear, true way to think about God is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. God could not be love if there was not someone to love; he could not be a Father without a child. To be a Son is to have a Father and so the God revealed by Jesus the incarnate Son, is a Father. Everything he does he does as a father, in a fatherly way, in a kind and loving fatherly way.
That is why we need to remember that the Son is the eternal Son. There was never a time when he did not exist – otherwise there would be a time when the Father was not yet a Father. And so we say the Son is begotten but not created. The most foundational thing about God is that he is a Father who loves the Son. Fundamental to everything, before there even was anything, there has always been the Triune God, the Father loving his Son in and by the Spirit. One God. Three persons. No deficiencies, no remainder. All eternal, all equal. Sharing and receiving love. This is who God eternally is, this is the Triune fount from which all things originate and flow.
Questions to Consider
What does calling God ‘Father’ mean? What does this say about the nature of God? How have you experienced God as Father?
Prayer
Holy Father, thank you for the life that you have given me. Thank you for the way you sustain me. Thank you that you are love eternal and always seeking to share that love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – The Father Loves the Son
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Matthew 3:16-17
The baptism of Jesus shows us how the Father loves the Son. Once Jesus comes up out of the water, the Spirit of God descends and a voice declares, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” The way the Father makes his love known is through the giving of the Spirit. Through the person of the Spirit, the Father loves and blesses the Son. The Son goes out from the Father by the Spirit – hence Jesus’ designation as the Messiah, the (Spirit-)Anointed One. The Spirit stirs up the delight the Father takes in the Son and the delight of the Son in the Father. “Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.’” (Luke 10:21) This is what the fellowship of the Spirit looks like.
And this declaration of God’s love, this sign of his delight and pleasure, is not just limited to Jesus. Jesus in turn gives the gift of the Spirit to us, to his followers. After his final meal with them, he breathes on the disciples, giving them the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). Later, in his letter to the Romans, Paul writes of God pouring his love into our hearts by way of the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). By giving his Son the Spirit, the Father shows his love for the Son; and by extending the gift of the Spirit to us, the Son shows the love the Father has for us and invites us to share in the fellowship of love at the heart of the Triune God, a love that wants to be given so others can experience it too.
Questions to Consider
When you think of the Father’s love of the Son, what do you think of? How did this love show itself during the life of Jesus? And beyond?
Prayer
Loving Lord, I praise you for the generosity you show us in calling us to be part of your love, to share in it, and to share it with others. Your love flows outwards to others; may mine do the same. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – Our Fathers
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – 1 Corinthians 8:5-6
The designation Father is one that can cause many people a lot of trouble, tension and pain. Our experience of our human fathers is not always positive – in fact, it can be downright destructive at times, and can often distort our perspective of the true nature of the love of God the Father. We know God as Father because in Jesus we see the Father; in Jesus we see someone who knows him as Father. He is not called Father because we have seen our earthly fathers and have thought “God’s a bit like that, let’s call him Father too.” It is not because he is a bigger, better version of an earthly father, a spiritual, super version of the human fathers we know. It is the other way around: he is the true Father and human fathers are reflections of him.
He is a loving life-giving Father and has been from eternity; this is one of the most fundamental things it is possible – and necessary – to say about God. All that human fathers can be, even the best of them, is a partial imitation of this. The Father’s love is wider, deeper, stronger, more creative, more fulfilling, more sustaining than any love even the best human father could offer. Understanding fatherly love is not a case of “from the bottom up” but is a top-down affair, in which we look to God the Father and the incarnate Son and the Spirit of life in order to see what true love looks like and aspire to love others in similar fashion. The fundamental shape of Trinitarian love is the love of the Father for the Son shared in the Spirit.
Questions to Consider
What similarities and differences do you see between God the Father and our human fathers? How does this affect your view of God?
Prayer
Almighty God, may I come to know you as Father in a deeper, more profound way than before. Thank you for making me your child. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – The Creative Love of the Triune God
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – John 1:1-14
The Father is a good father. That is a key characteristic of who God is. Our human cares and concerns can often make us forget this; the heartache and sorrow of life and the perils and problems of our world sometimes make us question the true goodness of God. But God is good and God is a God of joy. This is something that would probably come as a big surprise to most people to learn that God is fundamentally good and also that God is a God of joy. That everything stems from the mutual love shared by the Father, Son and Spirit means that everything we know and experience here in creation flows from that goodness and the joy that the persons of the Trinity take in each other.
All three divine persons play a role in creation, the part of our series we move to next. From the Father making all things through the Son to the Spirit hovering over the waters, creation is an outflow of their love. And because God is good, creation is good too. And because God is a God of joy, he takes joy in his creation. He took joy in what he could see; he was filled with happiness over what he had created. All that is was made by a good God, the Father who loves the Son in and by the Spirit, a community of joyous love who reach out to create a world and a people who can share in that divine love and come to personally know the Triune God who made them for himself.
Questions to Consider
What does it mean to say that God is good? That God is a God of joy? Why do people often find it hard to believe this about God?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, you are good. You are a God who takes joy in loving and joy in what you create. Help us know that goodness and that joy so that others can see it in us and know it from you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)