For our 30th Wedding Anniversary, we got to go to Switzerland and Austria.  Yes.  It is.  Unbelievably beautiful.   Like, it was the trip of a lifetime.  Magnificent!  Breathtaking!!  Wonderful in every way.  We are still reveling in the beauty of it and thankful for the blessing of it!

Of course I took about a thousand pictures… eventually, Steve asked me to just stop!  LOL.  There is just no way to truly describe how wonderful it is…  but pictures helped!  We showed our kids and our friends and family:  ‘Look how amazing!  These pictures don’t even do it justice!’  And our kids caught the vision:  they would love to go someday as well!  They’ve tasted and seen….

God is like this.

He is so magnificent, so vast, so loving and so amazing that there are no words to adequately describe Him.  What He has planned and purchased for YOU AND ME to EXPERIENCE and live in and enjoy with Him is so incredible that ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard … the things God has prepared for those that love Him.’

But a picture might help.   It might give us a glimpse.  So God sent a picture.

He created Family.

Family is a picture of God the Father and the kind of relationship He wants with you.  And me.  With all His children.  No matter who they are.   No matter who you are.  You matter.

When Jesus taught his disciples (& us) how to pray, he said, “Pray to your Father …  ‘Our Father , who is in heaven . . .'”

Jesus came to reveal that the God of the Universe is a FATHER.  He doesn’t want us to come to him as Master & we his slaves, nor Sovereign & we merely his subjects;  he wants us to call Him Father.  Know him as our Father.  Talk with Him and receive from Him as Father.

Jesus came to reveal how perfect and how loving our Father really is:  that He would come to rescue and save us by sending His only Son, who would actually give His life for ours, so that the rest of us children could be adopted into His family and live with Him now and forever in our heavenly home.

“So I kneel humbly in awe before the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, the perfect Father of every father and child in heaven and on the earth.”  Ephesians 3:14-15  TPT

I had always heard that God was my Father.  As a young girl, I felt His love.  But until I became a Mom, I had no idea what kind of LOVE a Parent, or Father, could feel.  The first time I held my baby boy in my arms, and looked into the face of one so small, so miraculous, so MINE . . . my heart exploded.  This small one – this precious baby boy – born from the love of his dad and me, born of our own DNA, conceived and grown and born from WITHIN me… this one stole my heart.  And I’ve never wanted it back.

From that moment – that second – I knew that I would give my very life for this one.  I knew that I would move heaven and earth to protect him, to nurture him, to teach him, to be there for him.  There is nothing I would not do for this son of ours… and he hadn’t done one thing for us.  He hadn’t spoken one word or accomplished one thing.  He had done absolutely NOTHING to earn my love;  I loved him because he was mine.

And then it hit me.   This is how my Abba Father loves me.

And I began to understand.  And I began to be in awe.  And I have never been the same.

Your Abba Father loves you because you are His!   Not because you have done any thing for Him;  you could never earn His love for you;  He loves you simply because He created you and you are his child.

Here’s what gets me:  my love for our boys is only a ‘picture!’  My love for them  is the most overwhelming, explosive, furious love I have ever known, … yet I know it is only a PICTURE,  a small glimpse,   of my Abba’s love for me.   How can this even be?

Sometimes we learn things in our hearts that bypass our minds.  I only know that I have a Father who would do anything for me;  He protects me and nurtures me and delights in me and laughs with me and enjoys me and teaches me and is always for me.  He would move heaven and earth to be with me – He would even give His very life for me.  In fact, He already did.

And I am safe.  And I am loved.  And I belong.  And I matter to Him.

And so do you and so are you.  You are safe.  You are loved.  How you matter to Him!

Today, ask yourself, ‘How do I relate to God?  Do I call Him Father, and really see Him as MY Father?’   Then ask God this question, “Father, how do you see me ?   How do you feel about me?”    Then write what you hear Him saying.

“God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the written law.  Yet all of this was so that he would redeem and set free all those held hostage to the written law so that we would receive our freedom and a full legal adoption as his children.   And so that we would know for sure that we are his true children, God released the Spirit of Sonship into our hearts – moving us to cry  out intimately, “My Father!  You’re our true Father!”                     Galatians 4: 4-6   TPT