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So much of the impression that I have gained over the years of my Christianity is that it is all centred around Jesus. The Father is really only mentioned in passing. Indeed, the Father seems to be in the background compared to the person of Jesus. I believe this is because we have such a focus on the person of Jesus. He is the one whose name is the name above every names, He is the only name under heaven by which a man may be saved. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and we are exhorted to fix our eyes on Jesus “the author and finisher of our faith”, so the focus on these is so that Jesus is the centre.

It is also said a lot that the cross is the axis point of history. We even date our calendar by Jesus’ birth. The significance of Jesus is ultimate as far as the salvation of mankind and the place that He has in our life on this earth. However, Jesus Himself said, “The Father is greater than I”, and he bows his knee to the Father, and everything that is given to Jesus is finally surrendered to the Father. So it is actually the Father who is the ultimate authority for us. Why do I say that? I say it because I think so much of the focus on the church has been that Jesus is the only one that we are to look to. But actually Scripture shows us very clearly that Jesus is the mediator between God and man, the one who brings us to the Father. He stands between to unite us with the Father, not to just draw us to Himself. He has come to draw us, to bring us to the Father.

For us in Fatherheart ministries, sonship is actually the ultimate goal. This goes way beyond the whole matter of emotional healing. In some of our schools this issue of emotional healing is focused on more strongly than others. If I had been running a school twenty years ago, the entire school would have been emotional healing from Monday to Saturday. At that time all we saw was the emotional healing issue. In the timeline of this revelation many have only understood the ‘father heart of God’ teaching as an emotional healing ministry. I want to see them go beyond that and see that the Fatherheart revelation starts with emotional healing that goes on into sonship. If our minds are locked into that, then we will only see as far as emotional healing and think that is sonship. “I had an experience of the Father therefore I am a son.” Many people have had experiences of Jesus and didn’t go on to discipleship. They didn’t come back to follow Him. In the same way we can have an experience of the Father and not want to move into sonship. Sonship is an ongoing and continuous relationship with the Father.

I believe that the church has been polarised into different camps regarding the whole issue of inner healing, healing of the memories, healing the past etcetera. Putting the issue of inner healing under those sorts of headings has actually polarised the church either for positive thinking Christianity (“standing on the Word”) versus the ‘healing’ camp. The church has divided along tangents like thus. I believe, however, that this message brings it all back together. In it God heals us but then we rise up into the full freedom and expression of sons, walking in that victory, walking in supernatural power and authority. All those things flow out of sonship. My conviction is that we’re actually going a little bit beyond where a lot of the church is on the power issues. For a lot of the church these issues have got such big gaps in them that they leave room for ambition and personal glory, rather than the humility of sonship. It has opened doors for the flesh to be gratified by the power of personal ministry and therefore the glorification of manifestations and suchlike, which I think in some ways has gone out of control. Thankfully, He is in control and it’s all going to work out, but I believe sonship is what brings it back into the rightful and harmonious place that God intends.
James Jordan

Zephaniah 3:17
17 Yahweh, your God, is in the midst of you, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with joy. He will calm you in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. (WEB)

This is one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament. It is absolutely packed full of gold nuggets that speak of our Father’s heart for us! Let’s examine this verse line by line…

Line #1…Yahweh, your God, is in the midst of you, a mighty one who will save.
First of all, there is the promise that God is close to us. He is actually in our midst! Then there is the promise that He is Almighty and will save us! One translation says that God is ‘a mighty warrior’. This is a really good example of the ferocious love of God! He is close to us and He will war on our behalf.

Line #2… He will rejoice over you with joy.
Do you know that your Father is actually happy about you? You were created for His pleasure and your life brings much joy to His heart. The NIV Bibles says that He ‘takes great delight in you’.

Line #3… He will calm you with his love.
Have you ever seen a loving mother calm her little child? No matter how big the bruise, how scary the nightmare, the love of a mother has the uncanny ability to calm even the most anxious of hearts. Our heavenly Father promises to calm us with His love!

Line #4… He will rejoice over you with singing.
This is one of my most favorite pictures of God where we are told that He sings love songs over us. What an amazing picture that is! I actually think that when we are singing worship songs to Him on a Sunday morning, He is responding from heaven by singing songs over us in response!

May this short, but packed-full Bible verse bring you a closer look at your heavenly Dad. He is not distant and angry, but loving and tender …yet mighty to save!

The loving-kindness of our God, a real Father who watches over us, and who provides us with good things. Some time ago God said that He is going to show His kindness to me. It reminded me of a very important Hebrew word which appears many times in the Bible. It is the word ‘chesed’, which has been translated most closely as ‘loving-kindness’. Contained in the meaning of ‘chesed’ is that it is ‘without cause’. In other words, it does not arise from ANY other initiative but it is from the initiative of the Father and we can receive it by faith. Receiving the ‘chesed’ of the Father definitely means material blessings. I always had a problem receiving material blessings but now I know that God MUST bless us materially in one way or the other. Why? Because God our Father must show Himself to be interested in the ordinary lives of humans or the Incarnation is a farce, and the Resurrection is a non-event. We must go in faith to believe this.

‘Chesed’ is an act that has no cause.  Titus 3:4 says“…when the kindness and love to man of our Saviour God appeared”. God’s loving-kindness appears to us when we need it most.

John 14:5-6
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me. (WEB)

In the seventies, there was a popular slogan that found its way onto billboards and bumper stickers throughout evangelical Christianity. This slogan simply said… “Jesus is the way”. In today’s Bible passage, we read in Jesus’ own words, who He is the way to. He tells His disciple Thomas, that He Himself if the only way for us to come to know God as Father.

Because of broken father figures and misguided religious portrayals of God, many believers struggle to have a living, loving relationship with Father God. They seem Him as distant and angry, and a judge that is just waiting to discipline us when we do something wrong. As a result of these kind of misconceptions, many well meaning people miss out on the very relationship that Jesus died to bring us into.

Jesus is the way to His Father. Jesus came to reconcile us with His Father. Through Jesus’ resurrection, we now can call His Father, our Father too (John 20:17). My prayer today is that each one of us would see that Jesus is the way for each one of us to come to God and cry out ‘Abba, Father!’. I would encourage you to ask Jesus to reveal His Father to you… For this is a prayer that He will most certainly answer!

John 17:26
I made known to them your name, and will make it known; that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (WEB)

Matthew 16:13-17
13 Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” 14 They said, “Some say John the Baptizer, some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. (WEB)

Jesus’ life was all about being a Son to His heavenly Father. His public ministry was launched in the waters of baptism when His Father said… “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” and culminated on the cross with Jesus praying to his Father these words… “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”

In today’s passage of Scripture, Jesus asks His disciples who people were saying that He was. All of the people’s observations were based on what Jesus did, not who He was. But then Jesus asked Peter what he thought and Peter’s response was exactly the response that Jesus was looking for… “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Sonship was everything to Jesus. Though He was a prophet, being a prophet was not His identity. Though He healed the sick, this was not who He was. He was simply the Son of God. My prayer today, is that each one of us would draw our identity from the same source as Jesus. We may do many things in the Kingdom, but it is who we are that truly defines us.

1 Corinthians 2:12 says “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God”

This is an astounding statement. As far as I can see, what it is saying is that everything in God, that He has purposed for us, is completely and utterly FREELY AVAILABLE!!!

Here, hold on a minute!! That can’t be true! It’s too much to believe and expect! In our experience we are not able to receive and take advantage of the things that the Father has freely given to us. Why?

Well, the nub of the issue is not so much about what God has given as a free gift, but rather about how we apprehend the gift. The things freely given by God are understood by the Spirit who is from God. Go back to verse 9 “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”. Don’t stop there!!! Read on! “…these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit!!!

So, there is a direct comparison between the “spirit of the world” and “the spirit who is from God”. Why can ‘the spirit of the world’ not apprehend the things freely given?

Simply because the ‘spirit of the world’ is the spirit of the orphan. This spirit qualifies, it has pre-requisites, it says that we must earn the gift by attaining worthiness through self effort. In effect, the spirit of the world says that there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’. The Spirit who is from God the Father reveals the reality that “everything is gift”. It is not by my own effort, or my own worthiness but it is completely and utterly free gift. The faith of sonship can apprehend this!

I finish this post with a few pertinent Graham Cooke quotations.

“The place of your dreaming is also the place of your permission”

“Christianity is an affair of the heart, not the head. Lead from the heart and you will see the provision”.

“Expect favour. Receive the upgrade in your heart.”

“There is only risk in the place of deliberation. If your head rules your heart you will be denied by your own caution.”

Watch this space for more about this….

1 John 4:7-9
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. 8 He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love. 9 By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. (WEB)

The greatest expression of the Father’s love to us, was and will forever be the free gift of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ. If we ever doubt our value to God, all we have to do is look at what He was willing to pay in order for us to come home. The once and for all sacrifice of the Lamb of God is the defining moment in all eternity where God proved His love for the world.

In today’s Scripture passage, the Apostle John encourages us to make the love of God our priority in all that we do and are. For at the end of the day, it will be the love of God that defines us. If we don’t live in love, we truly do not know God, for God Himself is love.

My prayer today is that we would all have a greater revelation of the love that God has for each one of us. I pray that His love would so fill us up, that it would spill out of our being to those around us. May this be the fulfillment of the prayer that Jesus prayed in John 17:23… I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you loved me. (WEB)

Psalm 68:5
A father of the fatherless, and a defender of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. (WEB)

This is the best news that anyone who is feeling fatherless could hear! God Himself, chooses to be a real Father to all those who feel fatherless. No matter how terrible our life experience with our parents has been, God promises to more than make up for all our loss by being our true Father.

In John 14:8, Philip asked Jesus words that I believe echo the cry of every human heart… “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” (WEB) We were all create to experience the perfect, unconditional love of Father God. We were all created to feel a sense of belonging in His wonderful family and our God and Father will not disappoint us.

He IS a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows. May the reality of this promise go deep into all of our hearts today. We are not orphans cheated out of our family’s blessings. We are heirs of God through the free gift of our Lord Jesus Christ’s life.

Romans 8:15-17
15 For you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God; 17 and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him. (WEB)

“If you can still take your life back, you haven’t really given it yet”

“One of our greatest needs is that we need perfect fathering. Anything less than that hurts”

“The person that He wants you to be is the person you would have been if Adam and Eve had never sinned”

“To embrace weakness is a safer place than to try to be perfect”

“If your heart is in pain, stillness will be a problem to you”

“I don’t expect to be fruitful. I don’t try to have a ‘productive life’. Trying to ‘be productive’ is a lot of pressure. Resting in the Father’s love is a place where He can be productive through you”