In fact, I'd like you to meet the whole family.
Seriously, you need to meet God and get to know Him. He wants very much to meet you. God's in a position to help you, to open doors for you, to give your life real meaning. What can I say? He's the answer to all your prayers!
The other day I read about a sad thing: kids with no dads. As of now, more than half the babies born in America (50.6 percent) don't have real dads; their moms are unwed. It's terrible how so few today have a real dad who is there for them, a dad who loves them, helps them, provides for them, who roots for them and gives them the strength and guidance to succeed. Perhaps you are one of those who don't know their dad or who have little contact or support from their biological father.
So please, let me introduce you to God. If you don't have a real dad—or even if you do—God is willing, waiting and happy to be your ultimate Father. Believe me—you're going to love Him!
Who God really is
Hardly anybody in the world today knows the true God. That's odd because He reveals who He actually is in the world's most widely owned book, the Bible.
Since the Garden of Eden, where God placed the first man and woman, people have tried to make their own gods in their own images. Paganism has plagued most cultures throughout history. People have had many gods and goddesses—all figments of their imaginations. None of these so-called deities existed. It's a pity that all these billions of people had religion but had no idea about who God really is.
This may seem shocking. But the same is true about the world's modern religions. Even modern Christianity misses most of the point about the true God of the Bible.
What about today's intellectuals who don't even think there is a God? Those who have some religion at least have some sense of the divine. Those who reject God's existence have no such sense. That way of thinking has no underpinnings of moral authority, no spiritual clue.
But that doesn't have to apply to you. Think vertically; you can know God.
Spirit, truth and love
First we can know that God is spirit and that He deals only in truth (John 4:24). Spirit is invisible to our five senses, but it's there. Spirit and "powerful" go together. God is eternal. He has always existed and will always exist (sorry, atheistic evolutionists!). He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-hearing—even knowing our thoughts and intents—so we need to consider what we think, say and do all the time.
We can also know that God is love. To comprehend this point requires that we love God back and care for other people as much as we care for ourselves. "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8).
God is family
Theologians (academics who specialize in the study of God) today don't tend to think of God as a family, but then again, some modern theologians don't consider the Bible to be a theological book. How exactly do you study God without studying the Bible?
God inspired the apostle Paul to write in the Bible, "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named" (Ephesians 3:14-15). Like I said, I want you to meet the whole family!
God the Father and God the Son (Jesus Christ) presently constitute the one God, the God family. Jesus said, "I and My Father are one" (John 10:30). The Father and Son as the eternal family form a unity that pales the closest bonds of the strongest familial friendship among human beings to infinitesimal insignificance!
They are one, but They are also distinct persons in the divine family. From the beginning of human history it was so. Note Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.'"
And so it was even before that—from eternity: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Jesus is the Word (verse 14), the Father is God, and both are God as family.
Father, Son and us
Jesus said, "Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him" (Matthew 11:27). Part of Christ's mission, which began at His first coming 2,000 years ago, was to reveal the Father to His disciples—including us. Here's a quick summary to help us better understand God the Father and God the Son:
• The name "God" can apply to the Father or Son or both together depending on the context in the Bible.
• Christ did the active creating of all things (Colossians 1:16).
• The "Lord God" who revealed Himself to people in the Old Testament was the One who came as Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4).
• Jesus died for our sins so that we may live forever (John 3:16; Romans 6:23).
• The Holy Spirit is the power, mind, life and essence of God, which we receive when we repent of our sins and come under Christ's forgiving sacrifice (Acts 1:8; 2:38).
• Jesus is the Head of the biblical Church of God (Colossians 1:18).
• We pray directly to the Father (Matthew 6:6).
• We pray those prayers in Christ's name—by His authority (John 14:13).
• The Father has always loved the Son, and the Son has always loved the Father (John 17:4, 20-26).
Part of the family
Wouldn't it be great to be part of a family that always and forever loved each other? A family whose members care for and implicitly trust each other? A family with a real father—in fact the real Father?
Such a tragedy: kids without dads. People have too often chosen the painful, lonely route of the unwed-mother family. The world is full of lustful losers who father children and then leave to seek their own miserable, egotistic desires. In the wake of such selfish sexual immorality wander legions of fatherless, perpetually disappointed, sad-eyed children—who statistically tend to do what their "parents" did.
If only they had a real father! If only we had a real Father—and indeed we do—a Father who is there to love us, to pick us up when we fall down, to teach us His loving ways, to scold us in love when we need it, to hear and answer our prayers.
We don't have to be part of that sad-eyed, disappointed world.
"'Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.' 'I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters'" (2 Corinthians 6:17-18).
Sons and daughters of God—our destiny is to be divine children in the God family! How great is that?
You've just been introduced to God and the whole family. Stay and visit. Life is so much brighter—now you've got a prayer! VT
