Our God is our Abba Father.

If you are a member of Refuge Church in Langley, BC, and happened to be at the 1^st service at 1 pm – either as a member of a guest, then you were treated to an amazing sermon by Pastor Darren Feenstra entitled “Abba Father”. 

The sermon was based on the Lord’s Prayer, and of course our own prayer life and how Jesus taught us to address God as Our Father.   Like many others, I often will pray that way without further thought.  After all, how often do we not say The Lord’s Prayer?  And how many prayers do we not actually start with “Our Father”?   But Jesus taught this and thus it has incredible meaning. 

So, what about the Hebrew word “Abba”?  I knew already that the term Abba refers to “father”, although more like “daddy”.  Jewish parents were known as Abba and Ima.  We may balk at the idea of calling God something akin to Daddy.  But Jesus himself taught the disciples that God wasn’t “just” Yahweh – I Am Who I Am.   He told them to address God as “Abba”.  Paul writes this in Romans 8: 15 “And by him we cry “Abba Father”.  Why?  Because we are God’s children.   This itself, should cause us to well up with joy!  Jesus, after he arose from the dead, in John 20: 17, said to Mary Magdalene, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”   My Father – My God – your Father – your God. There’s no mistaking this change in how to address God!  We have unfettered access to the Father – just like a child does with his daddy. 

To help our understanding of this, Pastor Darren did two things.  First, he taught us that in order to truly understand that God is our Father we need to know this God whom we are praying to!  Second, he gave us a neat visual to understand our unfettered access to God our Father. 

Who is God?  Interestingly enough, I just finished a lecture by Dr. Scott Swain on the Doctrine of God within his series on Systematic Theology.   While his lecture was devoted to the attributes of God – His independence (or Aseity) and His infinity – it just built on what Pastor Darren preached on!  He wanted to draw our attention to how powerful our God is.  And he used Job 26: 13,14: “By His breath the skies became fair; His hand pierced the gliding serpent. And these are but the outer fringe of His works; how faint the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?”

First – by His breath:  in Hebrew the word is Ruach – and in Genesis refers to the Holy Spirit and breathing out life and creation.   Here in Job, we read that by His breath the skies became “fair”.  The NLT interprets it as “His Spirit made the heavens beautiful…”.   God breathed out His creation.  Like a whisper.  God spoke the world into existence through his Ruach – the breath of God.   And here’s where Pastor Feenstra went – he wanted us to grasp the utter power of creation by looking at the galaxies.  The verse in Job speaks of whisper and thunder.   We were asked to recall a time when we heard a thunderclap above our homes – the mighty, loud, ear covering, trembling feeling of thunder.  Then compare it to a whisper.   It’s like two polar opposites of sound!! 

God – with a whisper – brought into being the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, our earth.  We saw pictures of our earth compared to the planet Jupiter, to the sun, to the largest star….which was breathtaking.  Many of us know a little about the absolute beauty and power of God’s creation in many different ways – some of the scientific discoveries of our galaxy leave us in awe of God’s power!!  But here’s the thing.  This creating work of God is like a whisper.  It’s the “outer fringe (or outskirts) of His works”.   In other words – you ain’t seen nothing yet!!!   No wonder Job says, “Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”!!    We can’t.  We simply can’t as finite, limited creatures, handle comprehending the mightiness of His power.  It would overwhelm us to nothingness. 

And?  It is THIS GOD that we GET to call Abba Father!!  And we get unfettered access to Him.  To give us a visual of this, Pastor Darren spoke about how hard it would be for any of us to get an audience with the President of the United States.  Especially in the Oval Office.  There are all kinds of hoops to jump through, security checks, background checks – and so on and so forth.  Then he showed us a picture – an old black and white photo of President John F Kennedy standing in the Oval Office with multiple other men of importance, apparently discussing the issue of the Cold War.  These were likely his closest aides, generals and whoever else.   People were intentionally invited into the Oval Office.  And in the bottom right corner of the picture, there’s a little boy, crawling out from under the desk…. the President’s little boy.  He wasn’t invited as an important official, he had no purpose there.   And yet, there he was.  He had unfettered access to his abba in the oval office even!!    And this is a picture (albeit imperfectly) of our access to the Most High Powerful God whom we get to call Abba Father.  Are you blown away yet?  I know I was moved to tears. 

God spoke to me through His Word of my Father’s love for me, that the God of the universe great in power – forgives me and loves me.  And when prayer is hard as it has been lately for me, when prayer seems useless, mechanical or just not fervent at all, then  remembering who my Father is, recalling His great power shown as a whisper in creation – remembering that I get to call Him Abba, is the remedy I need to tell myself how amazing it is that I get to pray to Him at all. 

Abba Father – hear my prayer, all for Jesus’ sake!

Grace and Peace.