Hildegard und Heinrich Becker - About our Father: About Father and His children

When we speak about God in this book, we are referring to God the Father, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, Jesus' Father, "Abba", as he called him.

When we speak about Jesus, we are referring to Jesus Christ, the son of God who became man.

When we speak about the Holy Spirit, we are referring to the Spirit whom Jesus sent to us as our Helper, who assists us at all times.

All scriptures literally quoted from the Old and New Testament, if not otherwise noted, are taken from the New International Version.

Bibliographic Information from the German National Library

The German National Library registered this Publication

in the German National Bibliography;

detailed Bibliographic Data can be found in Internet under www.dnb.de

First Edition August 2017

Translated from German by Susan Schuelke

Original title "Vom Vater" Publisher BoD Norderstedt

2017 Hildegard and Heinrich Becker

cover picture by Heinrich Becker: Sunrise in Africa

Production and Publisher:

BoD - Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt

ISBN 9783744828789

The Theology Jesus taught was completely Father-centred.

Quote from Prof. Dr. Knut Backhaus, German member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Let us begin looking at a difficult theme with a joke:

Moses, an old man, and Jesus are playing golf together. Moses hits the ball first. He does a pretty good job - but it looks like the ball is going to fall in a pond. Suddenly he raises his golf club in the air, the water in the pond divides, the ball falls on the dry bottom of the pond and rolls out onto the Green. "Great Shot!", calls Jesus approvingly.

Jesus hits the ball with absolute perfection! The ball flies beautifully through the air - and lands on the Green, just a few centimetres from the hole. "Great Shot!" exclaims the old man.

The old man hits his ball again, but this time he is trembling, which makes the ball land next to a tree on the other side of the Green. Suddenly a squirrel appears, grabs the ball very quickly and runs away. Just at that second, out of nowhere, a big eagle flies down, snatches the squirrel with the ball and flies away. While being held by the eagle during his flight, the squirrel is able to let the ball fall - exactly into the golf hole! Jesus turns to the old man, pats him with admiration on his shoulder and says: " Great Shot, Papa!"

Many of us carry a similar picture of God around with us: Because we see him as an old feeble man, we don't trust him to carry the burdens of the world and ourselves in his hand nor positively influence our lives. Even worse, we think he has no idea of what is going on in the world. And if he does exist, he is far away from us, somewhere in heaven, far away from the dust of this world.

Or perhaps he is an unmerciful despot, who is not interested in helping us. Or we think he is a barbarian, who allows all the suffering in the world to continue.

This book is our attempt to explain how such a picture of God could develop and what Jesus really said about his Father. And which consequences this can have on his children.

It has been my, Heinrich, hearts wish for a long time to write about this. Many passages of this book are written as a dialogue, which we think is the best way to express God's wish to have a personal and very close relationship with each of us.

Hildegard and Heinrich Becker

Father

What happens inside of you when you hear this word?

Father

Do positive feelings and thoughts well up in you?

Thoughts and memories of being protected and feeling secure?

Of loving experiences?

He took care of me, defended me, gave me gifts?

I could trust him, he appreciated me?

We did a lot with each other?

Father

Nothing happens inside me when I hear the word Father.

I feel no connection to this word.

I never knew my father.

He was physically present, but otherwise not there.

He doesn't know me.

He left when my mother was pregnant with me.

He left us for another woman.

Father

I feel fear well up inside of me.

He was strict and not fair.

He didn't want any (more) children, I felt superfluous.

I had to protect my siblings and my mother.

He rejected me because I am of the wrong gender.

He rejected me because I didn't live up to his expectations.

Father

Rage develops in me.

He beat me.

He was often drunk.

He misused me.

He completely ruined my life.

In our book we want to show how to find the way to God, to point out who Jesus' Father was, how Jesus spoke of him in the New Testament. Jesus declares himself to be the only way to God the Father. And, in spite of this, the Father has disappeared from the realms of proclamation of the Gospel. Incorrect understanding has slyly found a way into proclamations, which have been corrected by different men and women in the last several years. Besides that, our biological father has a big influence upon our understanding of God, Jesus' Father. In many cases the own father stands in the way of a correct relationship to Abba, how Jesus named his Father.

That is the purpose of this book. And we share what we have personally experienced with our Father Abba.

God as Father!

How can God, who made heaven and earth, speak of himself as a Father?

No religion speaks about that! We only find these statements in the Bible. Gods are to be feared, one has to bribe them with offerings to please them or, at least, to avoid their wrath.

That is what happened with the God of the Bible, as we will see later.

And yet, he is spoken of as the Father in the Old Testament.

Actually we can really see the story of Creation as God's preparation of being a Father for his children, for whom he provides all of their needs.

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,...

After our image or appearance. Here, at the time of creation, we are not the same as God, but similar.

And he cares for his children: He comes into the Garden of Paradise every evening and talks with them about the day. Also on the day when Adam and Eve sinned against him and brought sin into the world. They were still his children. In spite of their lack of trust and their doubts which were present.

The first time God speaks of himself as Father is in 1. Chronicles 22:10: He will build a temple for me. He will be my son, and I will be his father. His dynasty will rule Israel forever.

After God did not allow David to build a temple for him, God spoke to David about his son Salomon. He wanted to be a father for Salomon, who should be God's son. This is connected to his pledging to consolidate the throne of David over Israel. And, as we will later read, God endowed Salomon abundantly with wisdom and worldly riches.

A few chapters later when the building of the temple began, God repeated his Pledge.

Now let us read about this in the Psalms:

First a statement of God about David:

He will call out to me, You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Savior.

In this verse the term Father is written before the term God. This order of terms shows that the relationship to our Father has precedence over speaking of him as God the Almighty One.

This description can be found in a Psalm written by David:

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;