Father’s Day Sermon by Pastor Thuamminlian
Doctrine of The Fatherhood of God
There is a true story about how a Muslim woman once walked into a Christian doctor’s room at a hospital to find him suggest that they pray for her health and then heard him call God ‘my Father’. It came as a shock to the woman to imagine addressing God as Father – to talk to Him as if He were her father. That incident changed her life and she became a Christian later on.
While we are so privileged to be able to address God as our Father, often we see relationships between earthly fathers and children too weak and broken that sons and daughters find it hard to call their own fathers ‘father’. It is to be pondered upon that when our children cannot call even us ‘father’, then how can they be expected to believe in our heavenly father and call Him ‘Father’?
God saw the sufferings of the Israelites in Egypt and called them ‘My people’. He showed the Egyptians His Fatherhood and led His children the Israelites free from their captivity. Fathers today must also try and understand the hardship being faced by our children and take steps to free them from any kind of captivity they might be held in.
‘The Lord’s Prayer’, taught by Jesus Christ to his disciplines, underscores the Fatherhood of God. The identity and qualities of God have been kept sacred and the trustworthiness of the Father has been declared through the prayer to all His children. Fathers today need to realise that they must maintain their trustworthiness of their fatherhood, because children look up to fathers and when fathers do not prove themselves worthy in the eyes of children, then children simply seek role models elsewhere. Fathers must try and fulfill the demands of fatherhood, and pass on the trustworthiness of God as our heavenly Father to our children, and that our children may pass on the same to their children and so forth.
In John 17:1-26, it is seen that Jesus prayed to the Father in a way that showed how deep and strong their relationship is. This is the perfect relationship that fathers must strive to build with sons and daughters. A research once carried out in Lamka, Manipur, brought out that of the sizeable and random children and youth that provided inputs, a mere 20% indicated that they shared the hardships they faced in life with their parents! It was a matter of great concern that the rest 80% shared their problems only with people outside the family.
Ten Biblical Principles To Choose A Life Partner
During the days of our forefathers, choosing a life partner was a comprehensive process, involving scrutiny of potential grooms and brides. In Genesis 24:1-67 too, it is found that Abraham was meticulous in seeking and choosing a life partner for his son Isaac. The criteria laid down and methods employed by Abraham, however, greatly differed from those of our forefathers’ and demand the attention of today’s youth who are yet to find a life partner. Ten principles that can be learned from Genesis 24 in choosing a life partner:
- Seeking the opinion of others and not simply going one’s way
- Being able to relate to and understand each other
- Abstaining from bodily desires before marriage
- Sharing common aspiration
- Sharing common enthusiasm
- Praying
- Having a kind heart
- Enjoying the blessing of one’s family
- Timely
- ‘By the well’, i.e. meeting or seeing each other at appropriate places.
Choosing a life partner who loves Jesus will also love us truly and assures that marriage life will be blessed and successful. Place of first meeting with one’s partner is important, and it bodes especially well if two people meet each other for the first time at a place of worship rather than anywhere at all. With a praying heart, one must wait on God for the right time and ready oneself to meet and choose one’s own partner for life!
