If I understand him correctly, the theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind, who teaches at Stanford, contends that matter entering a black hole is preserved in the form of data. Should a black hole consume our world, all it’s information – which is in a sense what matter is – will be compressed and preserved on the surface of the black hole’s horizon.
If this is true, it leaves open the door for some advanced alien race to reconstruct everything that has ever existed, including you and me. It is a kind of eternal life that Susskind foresees, and with it, an eternal meaning for the human race.
Susskind is not the only scientist looking for an escape hatch from the heat death of the universe. Freeman Dyson suggested that humans may in the eons to come shed their physical bodies and become, for lack of a better description, thinking, communicating clouds of gas, preserving the universe from collapse.
It is possible that Dyson changed his mind about the survival of human consciousness, for he told science writer John Horgan in 2018 that his 1979 paper had become obsolete. Whether he gave up on his theory or not, one cannot help but wonder if existence as a thinking cloud of gas is all that desirable. We all know people for whom that is a fairly apt description, and no one wants to be them.
Roger Penrose has proposed a new model of the cosmos he calls “conformal cyclic cosmology.” In this model, the dying universe produces a singularity which gives birth to new universes, one after another. This is not unlike Einstein’s and Friedmann’s “oscillating universe,” only Penrose has found a way to preserve the accumulated data of previous universes in leftover cosmic microwave radiation.
David Deutsch of Oxford, a strong advocate of the “Many Universes Theory,” has written: “…unimaginably numerous environments in the universe are waiting out there … Almost any of them would, if the right knowledge ever reached it, instantly and irrevocably burst into … activity…”
Deutsch allows for no final “end of all things,” whether in the hellish heat death of the universe nor in a perfect heaven, for he rejects the idea of completion. Deutsch sees humanity forever at “the beginning of infinity,” which is the title he chose for his 2011 book.
Alan Lightman of MIT owns up to his longing for “eternal youth and constancy,” but calls himself “sentimental.” He writes, “Perhaps I could accept the fact that in a few short years, my atoms will be scattered in wind and soil, my mind and thoughts gone, my “I-ness” dissolved in an infinite cavern of nothingness. But I cannot accept that fate even though I believe it to be true.”
He accepts the fact but not the fate. Something in him, as in Penrose, Dyson, Susskind, and Deutsch – all eminently brilliant people – longs for meaning, “constancy,” eternity. “Accepting the fact” of universal futility does not exempt even a scientist from desiring something else. How odd that this desire, thought by Lightman to have no basis in reality, should be so universal. It has been experienced by people of every religion and by people of no religion throughout history.
One very old explanation for this universal longing, predating even the early theoretical “scientist” Democritus, is that the creator of the universe instilled a longing for eternity into the very fabric of humanity. Thus Solomon, nearly a millennium before Christ, wrote that God has “set eternity in the hearts of people.”
Eternity lies within us, which means that humans are bigger on the inside than on the outside. And because eternity is in our hearts, it doesn’t just call to us from “out there” but from “in here,” from the depths of our souls. We cannot escape it, not even if we are brilliant mathematicians or theoretical physicists, for we cannot escape ourselves.
The call of eternity rings within us, but it originates outside of us. It is our creator who places the call. If we will answer it and be connected to him, we will be connected to eternity, to meaning, and to the source of life itself.
This is the part of the Sermon on the Mount that people find most difficult, yet it yields great insights and real help for living the Jesus way in the world.
In ancient times, people had to decide which deity they would serve. There were many from which to choose. There was Yahweh the God of Israel, and the pantheon ruler Zeus, Egypt’s Amon-Ra, the fertility god Baal, the “detestable” Molech, to whom child sacrifices were made, and many more. The list of possible candidates was long.
The idea that one must choose between the gods is presented numerous times in the Bible. For example, Israel’s aged leader Joshua issued an ultimatum to his contemporaries: “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Other examples include the famous prophet Elijah’s challenge: “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” To this challenge, we are told, “the people said nothing.”
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul praises the Christians in Thessalonica who “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” In each of these situations, ordinary people came to a decision about which God they would trust and serve.
But the choice between competing Gods is only one aspect of the decision that needs to be made. It is not enough to say that this or that God will be my God; I must go on to relate to this God as Lord – the one whose authority I acknowledge. The decision now is not about which God I will serve, but whether I will serve him, or he will serve me.
This decision predates the other, for it predates the gods. The Bible tells how Adam, the most ancient of humans, chose. His was not a choice between the Gods, for there was then only one. The choice was between the one God and himself or, put differently, between going God’s way and going his own. He chose badly.
This archetypal decision is made by each succeeding generation, and by each person in every generation. Though universal, the actual moment of decision can pass unnoticed. Rarely does someone think, “I will choose myself over God.” Instead, they think, “I must do this; I have no other choice.” The mind has camouflaged the true nature of the decision.
There is a fascinating biblical account that sheds light on this. The nomadic Hebrew people had gone to Egypt for refuge during a time of famine and had remained there for hundreds of years. When societal sentiment and public policy turned against them, they left Egypt in one of history’s largest refugee flights. Poised on the border of “the Promised Land,” their newly installed leader Joshua had a God encounter.
On the eve of the Battle of Jericho, Joshua was alone when he met a soldier with a drawn sword. Being a man of extraordinary courage, he immediately approached the stranger with the challenge: “Are you for us or for our enemies?”
The stranger, it turned out, was no mere soldier but the “commander of the army of the Lord” and, quite possibly, the Lord himself. He answered Joshua, “Neither.” It seems that God was not on Israel’s side nor their enemy’s. The question, as Joshua learned, is not whether God is on our side but whether we are on his.
Joshua learned the lesson that everyone must learn. The true God will not serve us or our cause, no matter how just or noble. But we can serve him—or not.
Yet throughout history, people have tried to indenture God and claim him for their side. They have expected him to render service, as if they were the God and he were the servant. When he does not comply, they are reduced to using him as propaganda in their crusade.
This makes it difficult for people to believe. They suspect that the God about whom they have been told is a fiction, a propaganda tool, for the people from whom they have heard treat him that way. How will they believe otherwise until we who claim to believe start acting like we do?
I (Shayne) remember preaching through Matthew and coming to chapter 19 and the section on divorce. When I announced my text, and told people it was about divorce, you could hear a pin drop. I looked out to see friends who have been divorced dreading the condemnation they were certain was coming. But Jesus teaching on divorce is meant to spare us pain, not cause it. It fits directly into his brilliant instruction on the righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees – the righteousness of the heart.
Only when we can pray, “Our Father,” from a full heart can we say truly, “Hallowed by thy name.” This message looks at hallowing the name of “our Father, the One in the heavens.”
Approximately 31 minutes. Text below.
You live in two worlds – maybe more – simultaneously. One is the real world, which God made, and sin marred. The real world is comprised of the sum total of all that is, from quantum physical processes to spiritual powers to hidden motives. The real world is where real things really happen.
But you also live in what the psychiatrist Jerome Frank in 1961 labeled an “assumptive world.” The assumptive world is the world that you assume exists. It overlaps with the real world on a great many points but diverges from it on others. God created the real world, but you created the assumptive world, as do each of us.
I’ll give you an example from real life. About 30 years ago, there was a pastor in Toledo who was loved and admired by his congregation. They considered him caring, hard-working (he was always on the go), and holy. Then, in a move that surprised everyone, even the pastor’s wife, he was arrested for bank robbery. It turned out that he had been robbing banks for a long while. In further revelations, people learned that he had a second life, including a second home and a second wife (or lover; I don’t remember which).
That congregation’s assumptive world included a pastor who was kind, caring, and hard-working, but the real world included an immoral, thieving, hypocrite and grifter.
When a person’s assumptive world – we all have one – collides with the real world, a person experiences all kinds of emotions: fear, despair, uncertainty, hatred, and more. Sometimes these emotions are so powerful that a person is incapable of carrying on their life and routine.
This is the case with many people who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When some trauma forces them to acknowledge that the world in which they thought they lived does not exist, they don’t know how to live. When they discover that they are not the people they assumed they were, they lose their identity.
The real world and the assumptive world are always scraping up against each other, though the result in not always so catastrophic. People who used to attend church stop doing so because their assumptive world has collided with the real world and has suffered damage. Some people stop believing in God because such a collision. Others change jobs, divorce, separate from parents, experience midlife crises, and so on.
In a head-on collision between the assumptive world and the real world, it is always the assumptive world that changes, not the real world. But that doesn’t mean that a collision between the two is always negative, or that the emotions it evokes are always painful.
The assumptive world of the disciple of Jesus is continually changing to become more like the real world. But remember that “real world” does not mean the world of the physicist or the politician or the philosopher – they all have their assumptive worlds too; it means the world as it really is—God’s world.
Psychologists think that a person’s assumptive world is designed to make them feel safe and worthwhile. They take for granted that collisions with the real world will cause pain and insecurity, and this is often the case. But the merging of the Christian’s assumptive world with the real world can be a source of joy, growing confidence, and insurmountable hope. Jesus’s teaching is intended to help his disciples enter the real real world – God’s world under God’s loving rule – with the result that their lives will be much better, full of peace and joy and love.
Jesus lived in the real world in a way that no one before or since has done. He invited people to enter that world with him by trusting him. But when we begin following Jesus, we bring our assumptive world – with all its false ideas and mistaken images – along with us.
That world needs to – and can – be carefully disassembled, false ideas and mistaken images removed, and rebuilt. By paying careful attention to Jesus, listening to what he says, watching, what he does, and obeying what he commands, we can do that. Our assumptive world will not perfectly reflect God’s real world in this lifetime, but we can make real progress in that direction, the direction of love, joy, and peace.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, many of us may experience a divergence of sorts between our assumptive world and the real world. Jesus tells us to pray, “Our Father in heaven” or, in a literal, word-for-word translation, “Father of us, the One in the heavens.” When we speak those words, there may be hidden deep in our assumptive world an image of God that can derail us right from the outset of our prayer.
Here is what I mean. When many of us read “in heaven” our minds assume – I don’t say we think it, but that we take it for granted, which is more problematic – that heaven is a long way off. So, if our Father is in heaven, he is an absent Father. Phrases like, “the highest heaven,” accentuate that image in our mind. Heaven is out there somewhere – maybe in the Pleiades, 135 parsecs, 444 light years away. If I did the math right, that is about 260 trillion miles. And the Pleiades are, cosmically speaking, on our side of town, even in our neighborhood. So, if God is in heaven, he must be a long way off.
That kind of mental image, present in so many of us, makes praying in faith almost impossible. A distant heavenly Father, like a distant earthly father, cannot be counted on. If God is way up there somewhere, I’m going to have to make it on my own. If that’s been part of my assumptive world all along, what’s the sense of praying? And doesn’t the prayer Jesus taught us reinforce that assumption?
It does not. In fact, it collides head on with that assumption. The problem for us is one of language and culture. For us, heaven is up there somewhere. It is a long way off. But the Jews did not think merely of heaven but of “the heavens.” When Jesus was on earth, they routinely spoke of three heavens, the first was the air around them, the second the sky above them, and the third God’s throne room that is over all.
“The heavens” start right here – in the air around me. To pray to our Father in the heavens is to pray to the God who is all around me. Yes, he is in the Pleiades and a thousand parsecs beyond, but he is also in the atmosphere that enfolds me. When I pray to “Our Father in heaven,” I am not sending up a flare hoping that the distant God who resides in the Pleiades might notice. I am speaking to the God who (in David’s words) is at my right hand and who hears my whispers. More than that, he hears my thoughts, for David said, “Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord” (Ps. 139:4).
To pray to the Father in heaven is to pray to the God in whom “we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28). To pray to the Father in heaven is to pray to the God who sees. The wise prophet Asa said, “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). It is not that he might notice. He is watching.
When Hagar (the story is told in Genesis 16) was in trouble and utterly demoralized, God rescued her and her son. This is what she then understood about the Lord: “You are the God who sees me,” and that he saw her was a very good thing. People who are not burdened with sin and shame want to be seen.
The former Surgeon General of the United States, Vice Admiral Murthy, has said: “During my tenure as … surgeon general … the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness.” The research firm YouGov has documented a surge in loneliness among people 23 to 38 years old, who are now 10 percent more likely to experience loneliness than their parents.
But if they could pray, “Our Father in heaven,” and understand it and mean it, their assumptive world would change. They would know that they are never alone. They would know that Isaiah was right when he said: “… you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I” (Isaiah 58:9). They will know that they are seen.
If we get right who we are praying to – “Father,” the one who loves us and is ready to help us – and get right where he is when we pray – not far away but with us, watching us, and listening for our call, like a dad with a beloved child – then we will get right the next line of the prayer: “hallowed be your name.”
The request, “Hallowed be your name,” expresses a desire to see God’s name honored, loved, and held in highest regard. We can pray this and mean it when we think so highly of God that we want everyone else to think of him like we do.
It’s like that with all the things we delight in: we want other people to delight in them too. If I love a book, I want you to love it too. If I eat at a restaurant that is off the charts good, I tell you all about it. If I think our Father in heaven is “greater than all” (as Jesus put it), I will want everyone else to think the same.
When a boy thinks his dad is the best and tells his friends about him, he is hallowing his dad’s name. If some kid then put his dad down, that boy will be deeply bothered and will object. He wants everyone to honor his dad.
So do we. We pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Christian Smith has done extensive research into the religious views of American teens. He has learned is that teens pray more frequently than we knew: 40 percent say they pray daily or more than once a day, and only 15 percent say they never pray. The numbers are encouraging, but there is a problem: the faith of many of these praying teens is sub-Christian.
Here is what some of them said about their prayers: “If I ever have a problem, I go pray.” “[Praying] helps me deal with problems. … it calms me down for the most part.” “Praying just makes me feel more secure, like there’s something there helping me out.” “I would say prayer is an essential part of my success.”
According to Smith, many young Americans pray to a “distant God” who asks nothing of them “because” – I quote – “his job is to solve problems and make people feel good.” No reverence. No repentance. “There is nothing here to evoke wonder and admiration.”[1] A faith that lacks wonder and admiration is not a Christian faith.
When C. S. Lewis learned that his mother was dying, he prayed for her healing, but she died. Years later, he wrote: “I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even without fear. He was, in my mental picture … neither … Savior nor … Judge, but merely … magician; and when he had done what was required of him, I supposed he would simply—well, go away. It never crossed my mind that the tremendous contract which I solicited should have any consequence beyond restoring the status quo.”[2]
The young Lewis prayed in a way that was similar to that of millions of American teens today. He became an atheist for the next two decades. I’m afraid that some of them will become atheists for the rest of their lives. But people who hallow God’s name – who think the world of God, want everyone to know him, and are grieved when he is dishonored – those people don’t become atheists. They become joyful, hopeful, and confident.
It has been said that until we truly long for God’s name to be hallowed – to be loved and treasured above every other name – “the human compass will always be pointing in the wrong direction, and individual lives as well as history as a whole, will suffer from constant …disorientation.”[3] Ours is a disoriented and disorienting world.
But we cannot hallow God’s name with words alone. St. Paul rebuked people who used words – they taught, preached, and told other people how to live – but whose lives contradicted their words. “God’s name,” he told them, “is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24). Blasphemed, not hallowed, because their lives cancelled their fine words. That is the worst kind of “cancel culture.” We who were baptized in the Name, must not engage in it.
The opposite of hallowing God’s name is taking his name in vain. When I was a new Christian, I was under the impression that taking God’s name is vain was all about saying, “God” or “Jesus Christ” as a kind of a swear word, which happened often enough in my experience. But there are other, even more damaging, ways to take God’s name vain.
Using God-talk – whether with children, grandchildren, or other adults – as a tool to get people to do what you want is one. It is manipulative and, in the long term, always harmful.
So is using God’s name to try to convince people we are telling the truth. This happens when we say things like, “I swear to God.” I wonder if God sometimes says, “Hey! Don’t bring me into this!” Jesus warns us explicitly against doing this. He told us to let our yes be yes and our no be no. Anything beyond that comes from (and leads to) evil (Matthew 5:37).
I could list other ways to hallow or profane God’s name, but we don’t need a list. We need to become a certain kind of person—one who longs for our Father’s name to be hallowed.
For that to happen, we must encounter him for ourselves. People assume (part of their assumptive world) that such encounters almost never take place, and they shouldn’t expect one. But in the real world – God’s world – such encounters happen regularly.
And many people are committed to avoiding them. They know that such encounters would change their lives and so they fear them. They try to stay busy and always have a distraction at hand in case God should come too close. They don’t have time, they say, to read the Bible, though they spend hours watching TV and fiddling with their phones. Their prayers are like emails: they push “send” whenever they’re in trouble, but never check the inbox to see if God may be reaching out to them.
The truth is that a person can avoid God if they so choose … for a while. They can maintain the illusion that they are in control … for a while. They can so distract themselves that they hardly think of God and can quickly redirect their thoughts when they do. If I were to suggest to these people that they were avoiding God, they would deny it, but God knows and, deep down, I suspect, they know too.
The other side of all this is that people can find God if they so choose. God has set up the world in such a way that anyone who truly wants to find him will find him and those who want to avoid him can do so. (Hell, the outer darkness, is the final refuge for those who choose to avoid God.)
Encountering God doesn’t happen by accident, though. Listen to God’s word through Jeremiah: “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD…” God will let you avoid him, but he will also let you find him.
J.P Moreland said, “God maintains a delicate balance between keeping His existence sufficiently evident so that people will know He’s there and yet hiding His presence enough so that people who want to choose to ignore Him can. This way, their choice of destiny is really free.”[4]
Seek him and you will find him. And when you do, you will discover that the awesome, powerful, all-knowing, joyful, kind God is your Father and that you are never alone. Then you will pray for his name to be hallowed.
One hint for you who seek (and seeking is a life-long occupation). You will need help. And you’ll have it. “Christ … suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God…” (1 Peter 3:18). He is the key. He not only knows the way to God; he is the way.
[1] Adapted from Tim Keller, Prayer (Dutton, 2014), page 294
The people of this generation are living through a sea change but as is often the case, those on the sea are liable not to notice it until it is too late. The term “sea change” has had two primary meanings. Shakespeare coined it in The Tempest to refer to a change wrought by the sea itself on the body of a shipwreck victim. Think of T. S. Eliot’s bone-picking undersea current in The Waste Land, and you will have the idea.
Today, the term has lost Shakespeare’s literalness. Instead of a change effected by the sea, it is used as a metaphor for a large scale transformation in culture or industry. The sea change occurring in the Western World – now spreading through the Majority World as well – is both. It is a large scale cultural transformation that is being propagated by culture itself – a culture that has been alienated from God.
Jesus predicted such a sea change in the week leading up to his execution. His words are both prophetic and ominous. He warned that a day was coming when “the love of most will grow cold.” Is this not occurring in our generation?
We are currently living in a culture of rejection. The traditional circles of belonging – family, religion, social clubs, friend groups – are breaking down. There are complex reasons behind this reality, rooted in a materialistic worldview that has emerged with the West’s rejection of religion generally and Jesus in particular. The trend has been further exacerbated by the digital revolution and by the pandemic.
The result is a spreading coldness that is hard to ignore. Respect for others, once considered a mainstay of civilized culture, has come to be seen as a weakness. Leaders are now expected, even required, to show contempt toward their enemies—and are celebrated when they do.
Family, which is the fundamental circle of belonging, has lost its cohesion. In 1950, 11 out of every 100 children born would become part of a broken family. By 2004, that number had risen to 60. In a study published by the National Library of Medicine, 89 percent of preadolescent children admitted to a hospital mental health unit “had some kind of disruption in their family structure.”
Vice-Admiral Murthy, who served as surgeon general of the United States under presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, reported: “During my tenure as … surgeon general … the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness.” That loneliness is a result of the social fracturing that continues to occur in our nation.
Dallas Willard rightly asked, “Could the epidemic of addictions and dysfunctions from which the masses suffer possibly be related to the fact that we are constantly in the presence of people who are withdrawn from us, who don’t want to acknowledge we are there and frankly would feel more at ease if we weren’t—people who in many cases explicitly reject us and feel it only right to do so?”
The loss of social cohesion seems to be accelerating. The idea that a person might enter a public building, even a school, and begin killing as many people as possible, including children, would have been unthinkable in 1950. Even America’s most infamous mobsters would have been morally outraged at the idea. But now it happens with mind-numbing regularity.
Is there any hope? Yes, but it will not be found in the bankrupt coffers of modern and postmodern philosophies. It will not be found in philosophies at all, whether irreligious or religious, for philosophies can at best explain the coldness of love; they cannot “warm it up.”
That happens in relationships, beginning in a relationship with the Creator, which alone can set us right. It then extends to relationships with family, friends, and society at large. A good place for this to happen is in the church where, allegedly at least, people have been connected to the life and love-giving God.
But churches must be more than entertainment venues or centers of religious instruction. Being the home of theological distinctives is not enough. Churches must become communities of love and belonging, centered around Jesus and apprenticeship to him.
How can the addiction to anger or to lust be broken? How can Christians experience the righteousness of the heart in these areas? We think through these questions based on Jesus’s extraordinary Sermon on the Mount.
In this message, we enter, explore, and savor the Lord’s Prayer, which is to say, the prayer he gave his disciples. And what a gift it is! We see in this first sermon that it is those who can call God, “Father” from a full heart who can pray this prayer in a way that helps them and changes the world.
Viewing time: Approximately 24 minutes (Text is below.)
The famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher said that he once thought the Lord’s prayer a short prayer but had come to think of it as the longest prayer. He said that if someone stayed with each word, “suckled at it,” as Martin Luther put it, he couldn’t get through the Lord’s prayer in a lifetime.
This morning, we are going to follow Beecher’s advice and Luther’s example. We will not rush through this best of prayers but enter it, explore it, and savor it, beginning with its first word. But before we get to that word, we need to look at what immediately precedes it, for Jesus said, “This, then, is how you should pray…” In the original language, that is simply, “Thus, therefore, pray…” Therefore? What is the therefore there for?
Jesus has just instructed his disciples not to be like the gentiles, who prattle in their prayers. And they do this because they don’t know God – who he is and what he is like. First century gentiles would sometimes list every god they could think of when they prayed, hoping they would mention the right one. But Jesus’s people know there is one God and, and they know who he is: the God of Abraham and – gloriously – the Father of us. For them prayer is an expression of faith, not of desperation and doubt.
People who don’t know God often think of prayer as a magical incantation – better get every word right or it won’t work! – or a persuasive sales pitch. People who know God think of prayer as a conversation with the Father who loves them. They don’t need to impress God. They don’t need to get his attention. He doesn’t need to be begged and his arm can’t be twisted.
When the great preacher Haddon Robinson’s kids were young, he would sometimes grab a fistful of pennies and close his hand tight. Then his kids would try to pry his fingers open. The rules of the game dictated that once a finger was opened, it couldn’t be closed again. As fingers were forced open, pennies would drop, and the kids would snatch them up. When they got all the pennies, they would run off happy and play.
People who don’t know God think they must pry his hand open to get what they need and, once they’ve got it, run off and do their own thing. But God is not tight-fisted; he is open-handed. He doesn’t withhold what we need, and he doesn’t want us to leave him when we get it. Instead of prying his fingers open, he wants us to take his hand and do life with him as his beloved children.
And that brings us to the first word of the prayer—in the original language. In English, it is “Our” but in Greek it is Father. Placing a word first in a sentence gives it emphasis in Greek and in this sentence Father is emphatic. From this one word, the rest of the prayer flows. To pray it in a way that is powerful and transformative, a person must be able to say its first word from a full heart: Father.
And right there is the problem. It is hard for people who don’t have faith in fathers to have faith in Father. There is an approach to spiritual living that speaks of the twin poles of consolation and desolation within the human heart. Consolation describes the uplift of spirit that happens as people move toward God. Desolation describes a depression of spirit that happens when people (knowingly or unknowingly) move away from him. For many people, the very word “Father” causes desolation, not consolation.
During the pandemic, Rob Kenney launched a YouTube channel that he called, “Dad, how do I?” It has about 4-and-a-quarter million subscribers and has had tens of millions of views. In his videos, he provides practical advice (like “How to fix most running toilets”) and emotional support (like his three-minute “I am proud of you!” video, which has had 1.4 million views).
When Kenney was a kid, his parents divorced, and his dad got full custody. Shortly after that, his dad met someone and started spending weekends with her. He would make sure the cupboards were stocked with groceries, then he’d drive an hour away, leaving his kids to fend for themselves. That went on for a year. At the end of the year, he got his kids together and told them, “I’m done raising kids.” And he left.
Rob, who was then 14, went to live with his 23-year-old newlywed brother in a 280-square-foot trailer. (Most hotel rooms are bigger than that.) Now, Kenny, a Jesus-follower in his late 50s, is trying to help people like him who are missing their dads. Reading people’s comments on his videos – people from around the globe – is enough to bring you to tears. They say things like, “No one ever told me they were proud of me.” Or, “The sad reality is that my dad … never taught me anything, or said he loved me, or that he was proud of me.” Or, “My father left me when I was 3 and my mom is very strict to me because of her boyfriend. I barely ask her stuff anymore. I love you, dad.”
In the final words of the Old Testament, God promised to send a prophet who would “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers” to avert disaster on the land (Malachi 4:5). But that has not happened in our society.
You may think, “My dad was no winner, but that was a long time ago. I’m over it.” I hope that you are, but this I know: you never outgrow the need for a loving father. When Bob Russell’s kids were young, at the end of each day his family would hold hands and pray together, then the boys would go to bed. After they got settled in, he would go up and kiss them goodnight.
One night, his nine-year-old said, “Mom, I can’t remember whether Dad kissed me good night or not.” When his wife told Bob that. he burst through his door, jumped onto the bed, and wrestled and tickled him. They laughed and Bob kissed him, and then they just laid there in the darkness for about fifteen minutes and talked—it was a beautiful, sweet time.
Every night for weeks after that, as soon as they said “Amen,” the nine-year-old would bound up the stairs, get in bed, and holler, “Dad, you didn’t kiss me good night.” Then Bob would go up, jump on the bed, and repeat the ritual.
One night after he left his youngest son’s room, he walked by his older son’s room and said, “Good night, Russ,” which he did every night, and Russ called back (as he did every night), “Good night, Dad.” On this night, though, Bob thought, “Every night Russ hears us laughing and carrying on in the next room. Then I go by and just say good night. Maybe he’d want me to do that to him.” So, he bolted through the door, jumped on the bed, and started wrestling with his older son—and nearly got whipped! Then he said, “Rusty, I want you to know how proud I am of you and how special I think you are. I want you to know I love you.” Russ said, “Okay, Dad.”
The next morning, as Bob was walking by his door, Russ said, “Dad, could you come in here a minute?” He went in. Russ hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally said, “Dad, thanks for coming in last night. I never get too old for that.”[1]
Neither do we. Young or old or in between, we need to know we are loved by our Father. That may be difficult if you didn’t know your earthly dad and may be even more difficult if you did. But not impossible.
When Kim Tate was a little girl, her parents divorced. Her dad was supposed to pick her up on weekends, and she would sit and watch out the window, waiting for him to come. It was as if all the world depended on his visit. Sometimes he was late, and she would wonder if he was coming. At other times, he simply didn’t show, and she would think, “He doesn’t love me. I don’t really matter.”
When Kim went off to college, her life went off the rails. She moved in with a guy and they eventually got married – but she was miserable. In her misery, she and her husband started going to church, and she heard about the God who loved her and whose Son died for her, and she believed in him. She started a study of the Book of Deuteronomy – and interesting choice for a new Christian – and she was taken by the phrase, “hold fast” (or “cling,” as some translations have it) “to God.” She couldn’t get over the idea that her heavenly Father wanted her to cling to him. Her words were, “What an unsurpassable gift for that little girl staring out of the window, waiting for her dad, and wondering if she really mattered.”[2]
What an unsurpassable gift for all of us.
When you can genuinely address the God who made heaven and earth as Father, it will change your life, your mood, and your future. To call the God of the universe “Father” is to know that you are known. A Sunday School teacher taught her young class to repeat the Lord’s prayer. Whenever they didn’t understand the words – “art,” “thy,” and “hallowed” – their minds filled in the blanks. One kid filled it in this way: “Our Father, who art in heaven, how’d you know my name?”[3]
He was onto something. Your Father knows your name. And he knows your history – remembers things you do not – experiences, fears, pleasures. He understands you – what moves you, what you hope for, why you do the things you do. Your Father knows you.
When you genuinely address God as Father, you know that he can, and will, take care of you. Everything you need, he has. To call God “Father” from a full heart is to breathe a giant sigh of relief. I will be alright.
I was with our friend Mike Taylor on the day he died and on the preceding day. On the day he died, he was able to squeeze my hand and mumble an inarticulate answer to my question. The previous day, though, he was able to speak. The doctors had just told Mike and Audrey that the next 24 hours were critical, so I asked Mike if he was afraid. He answered: “No. I have Jesus. I will be alright.”
People who know God as Father and Jesus as Lord have that kind of assurance.
When you can call God “Father” from a full heart, you not only know that you are known, and that you are safe, but also that you are wanted. People who can pray this prayer, and not merely recite it, know that they are loved—and that changes everything! In Adam’s horrific collision with sin, humans didn’t lose arms or legs; they lost love. To be unloved – or to lack the knowledge that one is loved – is to be insecure and afraid or to be guarded and angry.
Love liberates us. Some people go through life in chains because they do not know – have never known – that they are loved. Knowing yourself to be loved – deeply, genuinely, eternally – is the foundation for being able to love. Why do we have so much trouble loving other people? It is because we haven’t received love.
What could change that? What could open us to love? Knowing God our Father loves us. This is why the words of 1 John 3:1 have resonated with millions of Christ followers over the past two millennia: “See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children—and we are!”
Eugene Peterson and his wife were sitting in an airport, waiting for a connecting flight to Israel, when a little boy near them jumped up and began running. As he ran, he shouted, “Abba! Abba! Abba!” to his dad, who swept him up into his arms. That is a true picture of how the God of heaven and earth feels about us, and how we might feel about him.
Only if we get this first word of the prayer right – that is, if we can say it and mean it; say it from a full heart – we will be able to pray the rest of the prayer in a way that will help us and make a difference in the world.
We’ve all heard the maxim, “Hurt people hurt people.” Yes, but “Loved people love people.” That’s why, when we pray, “Father” from a full heart, we can say the next word, “our,” with joy. It is impossible to pray “Father” aright in a way that excludes others.
So, in the prayer, we address “Our Father,” not “My Father.” We ask Father to give us our daily bread. We ask him to forgive our debts. We ask him to lead us not into – but away from – the trial that will become a temptation. When I pray “Father” aright, I take you with me into my prayers.
But how can I pray “Father” aright? Over the years, I have shared with you a little of my own relationship with my dad. I was afraid of him. He could get angry quickly. Growing up, I never shouted, “Abba! Abba! Abba!”– at least I don’t remember doing so. But I do remember staying out of his way, going in my room and closing the door, keeping things from him that might set him off. Instead of comfort, there was fear. Instead of intimacy, there was distance.
That was my fatherhood model – and I know that some of you had much worse models. By God’s grace in both our lives, my dad and I began experiencing healing in our relationship well over a decade before he died; some of you never experienced that. So how can you address God as Father from a full heart? Our entire society is suffering terribly from “absent father syndrome.” I fear the curse of which Malachi spoke has come upon us, for the hearts of the fathers have not been turned to their children and the hearts of the children have not been turned to their fathers (Malachi 4:5). So, I ask again: How can we pray “Our Father” from a full heart?
There is only one way I know: believe on the Father’s Son Jesus. When you do, his Spirit will come into you, the Spirit of sonship and daughtership. That is what changed my life and even, eventually, my relationship with my dad. That is what enables me to speak truthfully, though often haltingly and sometimes with tears, when I say, “Our Father…”
The apostle Paul writes, “…those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
Those who confess Jesus Lord, who believe in him and come over to his side receive in themselves the Spirit that calls God – like that little boy in the airport – “Abba!” This Spirit enables them – even those who had no dad or whose dad was cruel and abusive – to joyfully call God “Father.”
Paul explains to the Galatians that “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” That is Jesus’s Spirit in our hearts. When we believe in him and confess him Lord, we get his life (and with it his troubles), his future (in both places where Paul speaks of this, he goes right on to say that we are God’s heirs), his Spirit, and his Father.
If you have not yet trusted Jesus and come over to his side, I encourage you to do so. If you don’t know how, talk with one of our prayer helpers today, or with a friend who has already done so, or with me. We would all love to help you take this important step.
If you have already taken this step, yet still find it difficult to say “Father” from a full heart, you probably need to work through some things. God will help. Ask him. Perhaps you will also want to confide in a wise Christian friend or counselor.
Know this: God wants a loving, healthy Father-Child relationship with you even more than you do. He will help you enter it.
[1] Bob Russell, in the sermon “The Pressure of Fatherhood,” PreachingToday.com
[2] Kim Cash Tate, “A Father Worth Waiting For,” CT magazine (July/August, 2019), pp. 79-80.
[3] C.L. Null, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Christian Reader, “Kids of the Kingdom.”
What changes would the Republican Party make if Christians, who have been a key bloc within their base, could no longer deliver enough votes to compete with Democrats for national offices? How would the party react to a 12 percent drop in giving from Christian donors over the next decade? Would they stick with the Christians?
We may find out. The number of Americans who identify as Christian has declined by 12 percent in just a decade. The Pew Research Center has projected that Christians could be a minority group in the United States by as early as 2055. Even if the rate of “switching” – a change in religious identity from the one in which a person was raised – stops increasing but remains constant, Christians will still lose their majority status by 2060.
Should switching cease entirely, which social scientists do not expect, the percentage of Christians in the U.S. would nevertheless decline due to Christian deaths outnumbering Christian births. Apart from a Christian spiritual awakening or revival, Christians are on their way to losing their majority status and, with it, their political clout.
They are already losing it. Six years ago, Fox News website ran an article titled, “A look at white Evangelical angst over declining clout.” Newsmax, a right-wing news agency, just ran an article that began: “Demographers predict evangelicals, who helped elect Donald Trump, will likely cease being a major political force in presidential elections by 2024.”
If even Fox News and Newsmax are convinced that Evangelical political power is waning, what must politicians be thinking? Does anyone seriously believe that conservative politicians won’t jettison Christian legislative commitments if that’s what it takes to form new election-winning coalitions?
When conservative Kansans voted down a proposed constitutional amendment that would have removed state protections for abortion, shockwaves were felt throughout the conservative political community around the nation. Catholic and Evangelical Christians in Kansas had failed to deliver. What did this portend for politics in the rest of the country?
The day is coming when historians will claim that a breakup between conservative Christians and the political right was an inevitability. And because Christians tend to be a loyal bunch – they consider faithfulness a virtue – it is doubtful that they will be the ones to initiate the breakup.
What will Christians do when their suitor and protector has abandoned them or, and this is the more likely scenario, tried to hang onto them while pursuing other voting blocs? Will they stick around for years, decades even, like a betrayed spouse hoping somehow to regain their partner’s devotion?
Where will Christians be when they are left behind by both parties, unwanted, ignored, and only remembered when some tight political contest brings old suitors calling again? They will be in a better place than they are now, for they will have discovered where their power lies and where it doesn’t.
The idea that Christians need governmental power for their cause to succeed is false. If history is any indication, the opposite is true. In its first three hundred years, Christianity was politically powerless and, by the mid-third century, fiercely persecuted. Yet for those first 300 years, the number of Christians grew at about 40 percent per decade. Compare that to the U.S., where Christians have exercised great political power but have gone from about 90 percent of the population to 64 percent in just three decades.
Some Christians will find all this discouraging – will experience “angst over their declining clout.” But from a biblical perspective, they needn’t worry about their clout; God has plenty. Their mission is not – and never was – to give their particular “kingdom of the world” a religious facelift but to disciple all the nations.
At the time of the communist takeover in China, the country had about a million Christians. After 70 years of repression and sometimes brutal persecution, the number of Christians has increased 100-fold and is predicted to top 200 million by 2030. Chinese Christians are fulfilling the mission Jesus gave them with spiritual, not political, clout. Christians here can do the same.
This class session focuses on the righteousness of the heart and how it contrasts with expressions of anger and contempt. Anger and contempt have ravaged society and family. Our hope for the future lies in the righteousness of the heart, which comes through faith in Christ.
The Way Home 