Father's Day and The Father Who Really Knows What Is Best

Yesterday was a wonderful Father’s Day. My son Allen picked up the tab at the Blue Star Chinese Restaurant, one of my favorite places to eat, and my daughter Joyce bought me two DVDs, “Through Gates of Splendor” and “End of the Spear”, just released this past week. She knows how much the story behind both of them mean to me. Most of all on this Father’s day I am thankful for my Heavenly Father who allowed His Son to give his life for us. When we talk about the death of Jesus on the Cross so much of what we say has to do with salvation, or His death for our forgiveness and rightly so. But His purpose in His death was much more than forgiveness. His goal in our forgiveness was our transformation from futile existence to one full of purpose and meaning. A large segment of people who believe in Jesus as the savior today see the cross as one dimensional. They see it as bringing salvation, something they could not do for themselves, but nothing more. God seeks to change not only our eternity; He wants to change our here and now. He wants to change us into the image of His Son. “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn, with many brothers and sisters.” Rom. 8:29 LNT. Rob Bell said, “If we only have a legal-transaction understanding of salvation in which we are forgiven of our sins so we can go to heaven, then salvation essentially becomes a ticket to somewhere else. In this understanding, eternity is something that kicks in when we die”, “Velvet Elvis” pg 108. The message from scripture is not only how to be saved, but how to live. He is the ONE Father that always knows what is best.