A Call to Fathers (Male and Female)

Glory of the Father

...just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life - Romans 6:4b NKJV

Jesus was actually raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, wow! The Father's glory must be a powerful thing, and we are called to live a life empowered by it. So what in the world is the Father's glory, and how do we access it? I believe that His glory can mean a number of things, but in its most basic sense, it is simply the nature of who He is. The way He thinks, dreams, desires, and behaves are all part of the nature of God our Father. Moses once asked to see the glory of the Lord.

5 Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” - Exodus 34: 5-7 NKJV

Moses asked to see the glory of the Lord, and the Lord spoke of His good nature. His glory or nature is also sometimes described as His name. God our Father is good, kind, compassionate, merciful, longsuffering, and forgiving. It is this very nature that raised Jesus from the dead, and the nature that we are invited to live in.

The Nature of Fathers

In the natural, fathers are always male, but in many realities of the kingdom, there is neither male nor female. The call to be like our heavenly Father is not just to men but to everyone. So if fatherhood is not an issue of gender, then what is it? Fathers are those that reproduce who they are in others. Fathers show us who we are and how to live life. It is entirely possible to be a spiritual father without even realizing it. We were created to reproduce, and whether we like it or not we have influence on people around us. This can be both an amazing and encouraging thing as well as a sobering reality. We were created to be fathered and to father. Even Jesus looked to His Father and reflected Him to the world. We will also reflect the fathers that we look to, and others will reflect the things in us as they look to us.

The Call

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. - Matthew 5:16 NKJV

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light - Ephesians 5:8 NKJV

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God - 1 John 3:1a NKJV

We have the wonderful calling and privilege of beholding our heavenly Father the way He really is and then reflecting Him to the world around us. Each of us who have been born again have the very nature of our Father resident within us, and we have the ability to manifest and reproduce this nature in others. Each of our spheres of influence may be different, but each of us have one. We are a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. Someone or someones are watching us and becoming like us in some way. Let's see our brilliant Father God for who He is and become spiritual fathers who reproduce His nature in the earth.