Father's Day (Part 1 of 2): 5 lessons on how being a parent (a dad) teaches us about God

Father’s Day (Part 1 of 2): 5 lessons on how being a parent (a dad) teaches us about God

Most of you have been holding out on me. But now I get it—or I get a lot more about how being a parent really helps you identify with God, the Father.

Remember (or for those brand-new to this column), I’m still technically a newbie at this. The first of my five fabulous foster children arrived the day after Christmas 2019. The last, a sweetheart with an undiagnosed learning disability (or something?), arrived fulltime just after Easter 2020.

The five came from three different foster homes. The kiddos range in age from 2 to 7. Yep! Indoctrination into fatherhood by fire! The saying, “Go big or go home,” applies here, especially as a single parent, but you moms and dads ahead of me have been withholding information, maybe even from yourselves, because it is true: being a parent helps you understand more fully who and how God is.

Since I mention my five, here are five lessons I have learned so far about God since becoming a father. First, God certainly wants to get your attention sometimes. I snap my fingers, clap, shout “Hey!” and have even stomped my feet during living room play time that in decibels challenges the fourth quarter raucous of a college football game with the underdog ten and long on the third down. That’s God sometimes. Dear parent, God does what He can to get you to listen to Him.  

You may have noticed God can be loud. That summertime boom of thunder doesn’t have anything on the Creator of that thunder and the storm that may or may not go with it.

Second, watching you make a whopping mistake is so hard on Him. When you should have gone left and veered right, ouch, yeah, that really hurt Him as much as it hurts you. When you drop what shouldn’t be dropped, or shove off what you should have held gently forever does to Him what that same thing does to each parent in love with his/her child: it sinks Him.

Third (and this is connected with the second), God hurts when you hurt. That parent/love thing may be the strongest (most obvious) when your child hurts that deep, down to the core hurt.

I remember the fifth and final time I lost a child when trying to adopt a newborn. It was a horrible story. The deepest, sharpest pain found me each night I’d settle down to sleep because then, in dreamland, I couldn’t control my thoughts. I wept then like I never had before. And I realize now that God wept just as hard.

Fourth, as we delight in the joys our children experience, God delights in us. You’ve seen your tike succeed. That rush? That joy? When, for example, the lead in the musical takes his or her bow, and that center stage star is yours, no light shines brighter in the house than yours. That same joy fills God when you find joy.

Fifth, as you forgive your wanderlust teen for dropping a house on a bystander wearing ruby slippers (or something to that effect), and that crash is loud and mean, you forgive your child (or you should forgive your child) as God forgives you. The adage, “I can’t stay mad at them for long,” does have—or should have—deeper meaning. Specifically, it has a godly meaning. Those who know and follow Jesus, know that God forgives humankind its sins.

It is important to note that not everyone holds father imagery in high regard. Before we get to the second and final part of this Father’s Day column next week, it is important to balance paternal images with other images for God, such as God as loving mother (Isaiah 49:15 and 66:13), God as shepherd (Psalm 23), God as friend (James 2:23), and God as gardener (John 15).

For those who may have a hard time this coming Sunday for any number of reasons, consider what John Piper offered in this June 15, 1986 sermon. “The overarching guide for every father should be to live in such a way that his children can see what God the Father is like. They ought to see in their human father a reflection — albeit imperfect — of the heavenly Father in his strength and tenderness, in his wrath and mercy, in his exaltation and condescension, in his surpassing wisdom and patient guidance. The task of every human father is to be for his children an image of the Father in heaven.”