If you then, evil (sinful by nature) as you are, know how to give good and advantageous gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven [perfect as He is] give what is good and advantageous to those who keep on asking Him. - Matthew 7:11 (AMP)
What if our heavenly Father is always saying that, whispering at the end of every call, “I just want you to know that I see you. You are amazing to me. I love you, bud.”
This level of intimacy between Father and Son got Jesus crossways with the religious leaders. When Jesus called Yahweh “Abba”—Daddy—the Pharisees pulled a muscle: “Who do you think you are—someone special?”
Can’t you just see Jesus smile and nod, “Yep.”
Up until that point in history, no one had ever addressed God so affectionately. It wasn’t kosher. I like what Linda Boone writes:
“God’s desire is to not only have you experience His love, but to totally overwhelm you with His love. To have you experience it to overflowing. To have you sense, feel, taste, and touch His love for you. He really wants you to experience Him!”
Jesus knew he was his Father’s Beloved Son, “the firstborn of many” (Rom. 8:29). Jesus wants us to align with the Father—to connect with him and know what Jesus knew (John 17) and intimacy that gives Life. I believe this is what he meant when he promised us “abundant life” or Life to the Full.
Just as our hearts, well into manhood, long to hear our earthly fathers deliver the packages of worth and value, “I see you and am proud of you,” so our deep masculine hearts also need this from our heavenly Father, time and time again.
As his image-bearers (Gen. 1:27), we are the object of his fierce and passionate, tender and overtaking love. You are worth the price paid.
Like I wrote yesterday…if eBay has taught us anything, it has taught us this: The value of a thing is what someone is willing to pay for it. Unlike eBay, the Father wasn’t bidding, hoping to get a bargain or steal us away in the last moment. No, the Father made a grand and glorious declaration through the Son:
“I love them and I want them. They belong to me!”
Through Christ we have been ransomed. The ultimate price is paid—His life in exchange for our freedom, that we might have a Life. That theme is in all the epic stories that move our hearts, because it is in our story.
In your time alone with God, ask Him:
Father, how do you see me, what is my worth, deep within me that you would ransom?
Jesus, thank you for giving your life that I might have one. Where and why am I lacking in experiencing your love?
Holy Spirit, guide me to the Truth. Teach me through whatever means my value and worth to the Father. I invite you to give me the ears to hear your intimate whispers of affection.
