It is very important for us to spend time focusing on the person of God the Father. He is one of the three persons of the Trinity and one that often gets neglected when studying the 3 persons individually.

 We will be discussing the blessings of our relationship with the Father as well as the demands of our relationship with the Father. I will not be spending a lot of time on these however, and would encourage you to use the Scriptures provided to dig into these a little deeper. There are a lot of them, so just select a few to look at in depth.

 The blessings of our relationship with the Father

The concept and reality of God’s being our heavenly Father is an indescribable blessing to us who are His children (Matt. 5:16, 45; 6:1, 6, 8-9, 18, 32; 7:11): He cares for us (Matt. 6:25-33; 10:29-31), keeps us (John 17:11), gives us good things (Matt 7:11; James 1:17), fellowships with us (1 John 1:3-7), desires our spiritual maturity (Matt 5:48), disciplines and trains us (Heb. 12:5-11), prunes us (John 15:1-3), makes us His heirs (Rom. 8:16-17), loves us (John 16:27), invites our prayers (John 16:23), speaks to us by His Word (Heb. 1:1-2), sees us (Matt. 6:6), knows us (Matt. 6:32; 2 Cor. 11:31), forgives us (Matt. 6:14), indwells us (John 14:23), sanctifies us (John 17:17; Jude 1), comforts us (2 Cor. 1:3-4), blesses us (Eph. 1:3; Matt. 6:31-34), judges us (1 Peter 1:17), commands us (2 John 4), and gives us a place in His house (John 14:2). How blessed it is to be His children!

 The demands of this relationship

Our being children of this heavenly Father imposes upon us certain duties like obeying Him (1 Peter 1:14-15), submitting to His pruning (John 15:2-3) and discipline (Heb. 12:7, 9), sharing our cares with Him (1 Peter 5:6-7), glorifying Him in all that we do (1 Cor. 10:31), walking in His fellowship (1 John 1:5-7), dealing with our sins (rev. 2:5; 1 John 1:9), serving Him (1 Thess. 1:9), worshiping Him (Eph. 1:3), imitating Him (Eph. 5:1; Matt 5:48), praying to Him (Matt 6:6,9), trusting Him (Matt. 6:25-34), and loving Him with our total being (Mark 12:30).

 Those two sections are from Practical Christian Theology by Floyd H. Barackman.

 The majority of our time on Wednesday will be spent discussing our interaction (as believers) with the Father. The areas that we will look at are: Prayer, submission, faith, obedience, imitation, glorifying Him, and worshiping Him.

 Prayer

We will be talking about what it means to be able to pray to the Father as his children. We will be talking about the attitude that we need to have in approaching God in prayer (Heb. 10:22). We will talk about the different things that we are able to pray to God for including: forgiveness, repentance, concerns, needs, and God’s will. We will also talk about having confidence in prayer.

 Submission

We will be discussing what is means to submit to the Father in His pruning and his nourishing us.  This pruning is the Father’s removing from us those things, like sins and self-reliance, that hinder our bearing spiritual fruit. He does this through His Word (John 15:1-3) and His corrective chastisement (Rev. 3:19).

 The Father also nourishes us in order for us to grow. He nourishes us through trials, through instruction in the Word, and His ministry through other believers.

 Faith

We will look at the importance putting our faith completely in our heavenly Father and trusting Him to provide for our every need. We will look at this through the idea of the “Futility of Worry.”

 Obedience

We will talk about how obedience is an expression of love for the Father (John 14:31). We will talk about how obedience to God is essential to following Him wholeheartedly.

 Imitation

We will talk about how being a follower of Christ means to imitate God and to do our best to be like Him.

 Glorifying Him

We will discuss how we are able to glorify God. We glorify God by allowing Him to produce in and through us His fruit (John 15:1-5, and by our doing His will in His way in everything (Matt. 6:16).

 Worshiping Him

We will discuss the importance of our worship to God and the different ways in which we can worship Him. Our worship in the end consists of us giving back to God was has always been His.