Finding Your Father

Friday, January 31, 2003

Our friend - we'll call her Diane - shocked her family years ago when she announced at the age of 17 that she was pregnant. Even with some folks urging her to have an abortion, she made the choice to have that child - a son. When her son was seven, Diane met a guy we'll call Gary - and she knew they were falling in love. With some fear and trembling, she told him about her son. Gary said, "Let's go meet him." Diane's boy took to Gary immediately. Diane and Gary were married, and the boy grew up with a wonderful relationship with Gary. But something happened when he turned 17 - this unexplainable rebellion that ultimately made him decide to go live with his biological father. A few months later, he returned to the home he'd grown up in. He had made a powerful discovery in the intervening months. He said to Gary, "You know, you're the one I walk like, you're the one I talk like, and I do things the way you taught me. You are my father!"

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Finding Your Father."

In that emotional, unforgettable moment, a young man decided who his father really was, who would be the anchor for his identity as a son. It may be that someone listening today needs to make a choice like that - about the One the Bible actually calls the "father to the fatherless." (Psalm 68:5) There's a reason that God chose, out of all the names He could have asked us to call Him, the name "Heavenly Father."

In my lifetime, I've known many people who have come from a very rough background ... sometimes a fatherless background - either because they never knew their father or the one they had never acted like on. I've known people who have come from a background where they never really felt like they belonged - and they still don't. Maybe I've just described you in some way.

I have to tell you that so many people who have lived emotionally unanchored and painful lives have found something amazing when they found Jesus Christ - they found the Father their heart had yearned for so long. There is so much hope for hurting people in our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 10:14. It says, "But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; You consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless."

But like that young man who made the choice that Gary was his father, you have to come to the place where you make that deliberate choice about the God who made you ... about Jesus Christ, who loved you enough to come all the way from His throne in heaven to an old rugged cross to die to get you back. Nobody can love you like He does. But you have to decide that you will no longer define yourself as "the victim" ... that you will no longer define yourself by some other relationship that can never be what you really need - and that you will, from this day forward, say, "I know who I am. I belong to Jesus Christ. I am totally His, for now and forever!"

That's coming home to the identity you were made for. You've been away, trying to get other people and other things to do for you what only Jesus can do. Let this be the day you come home to Him and say, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You died for me, and I'm yours." If you want to begin this anchor relationship with Jesus Christ, I want to send you the booklet I wrote about it called "Yours For Life" if you'll just let me know you want it.

Let Him be the one you follow. Do things the way He teaches you. And live with that sense of worth and security that belongs only to those who belong to Jesus Christ.