Finding DadChikamu

My grandmother is a gem of a woman with a love for birds.  Perched right outside her patio window was a red feeder with Kool-Aid-looking juice inside.  She’d sit for hours and watch the hummingbirds hover over the feeder and enjoy the juice.  One day, my grandpa presented me with a new BB gun, and well… you know how the rest of the story goes.  Luckily, I missed the first two shots before I heard the screen door fly open and my grandmother growl, “Luke Timothy Cunningham.”  Anytime my middle and last names are used when communicating to me, I know I’m in trouble.  It’s a label for me that serves a very specific context – I’m getting spanked!

In Scripture, there is a name reserved for getting to know our heavenly dad.  It’s the Greek word, Abba.  The Jews reserved this word for the most sacred and honorable expression of Dad.  As we continue in our journey of finding Dad, discovering Abba is the road to relationship.  The word appears in three different passages of Scripture and gives us a new understanding of our heavenly dad.

In Mark 14:36, Jesus is feeling the weight of His looming crucifixion.  He confesses, “My soul is crushed to the point of grief,” then journeys beyond His disciples to a meeting with God alone.  In this moment of fear, anxiety, and agony, Jesus cries out, “Abba Father.”  He asks for the cup of suffering to pass, then finishes with a Spirit-reviving promise for us, “Yet I want Your will to be done, not mine.”  Approaching the reality of the most difficult moments of His life on earth, Jesus says, “Daddy, no matter what happens, I trust You.”

As we begin to discover our heavenly dad, one of the first truths we are confronted with is His trustworthiness.  We have a dad we can trust.  He promises never to leave us nor forsake us.  His presence is always with us.  The father wounds from your past might be raising red flags as we couple father and trust into the same sentence, but the truth is our heavenly dad has redeemed the trust we feel is lost.  Embrace this trust today!  You have a dad, and He is trustworthy!