Father and son relationships are rarely warm and gratifying. Rarely does a father show affection or approval or pride in his son! Many sons feel anger, abandoned, discontent, shame, neglected, or some never knowing their father’s, feel a void altogether! There is no acknowledgement of “son!” Let alone, “Beloved!” Let alone, “Mine!” A son can come away from the relationship, or lack of it, feeling unloved, shame, and even hated. Angry!
Fathers are the source of pride and honor for a “Man-child!” Without this “Father’s Blessing” we are left with questions in our core-identity: “Who am I? What am I?” Without our “Father’s Blessing” we turn to friends or others outside the home, to find an identity, affirmation and acceptance!
Since the beginning of time, the greatest relationship was between God and man. It was described as being in a Garden, with warm sharing between them, and being in the “cool of the day!” As a man loving the outdoors, there is no greater description of hiking, fishing, or working together as a father and son, with sense of man to boy, or man to man! But some say, I am more creative or musical? David, in the Bible, was all of that, too! What it means to be “male/man” is caught and imparted by a father! To be in the likeness of our father, as a “son; man; father!” It is only in the pain of relationship, we reject being or even wanting to be like our father!
“I love you-son! I am proud of you-son! I see great things for you-you can do it-son! I love the man you are becoming-son!” Anything like it would be great to hear! The child, the boy, the young man, even older men void in heart, still long to hear words of love, acceptance, affirmation and forgiveness, too! Words of love, honor, respect, affirmation with abundance of grace as we struggle to overcome all the assaults of temptations and offenses around us!” The world men have created, after our own likeness, is nothing reflecting the Beauty of Holiness, of Heaven, in relationship with our Heavenly Father.
The Garden, is a beautiful picture of harmony, beauty, serenity of a growing relationship with Father God and Adam. But, that all broke down, when Adam and Eve both disobeyed rebelling against God’s instructions! Since that break in relationships with God, power struggles between husband and wife; between parents and children; between brothers and sisters; ultimately between God and man, have been long and painful. Family issues, with futile attempts at reconciling, with all too disappointing and painful results, have persisted ruthlessly.
Reconciling relationships between fathers and sons is just too painful, and just abandoned! The excuses, assaults, and accusations run too deep! These words: “I love you! I am sorry! Please forgive me! I forgive you! Get up and keep going! You’re the man!” Are all too rare!
In the book of Genesis is a grand and glorious manifestation of the mind of God, in creation!
Chapter 1:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light….” creation was spoken into being!
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; …
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them,
“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good…
Genesis 2:
“7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed…. 15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him….” 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (All Italics: New King James Version.)
This is an amazing glimpse of what the relationship God had with Adam and Eve! What God spoke was good! All creation both great and small, in land and sea, was very good! All was beautiful, including the man/woman, who were after His Own image!
They were to look into each-others’ faces and find comparability’s unlike anything in all creation-seeing the image of God in the other! Then, when God came in the cool of the day to spend time with them, they shared their activities together. They were completely open before the other. There was nothing to hide! They wore no clothes, no coverings, no deceit, no sense of falsehood! They lived in transparent relationships void of fear, shame and guilt!
Eden seems like a ferry-tale or fable: “Once upon a time, far, far, far away, a Dream Garden…!” All too good to be true; But TRUE! It is a place where we all want to escape back into love, joy and peace; The perfection of tranquility! It is the very nature and presence and pleasure of God, Who prepared this for us to enjoy with HIM!
We all make sinful choices for action into sin! Or we have made sinful choices in reactions to others offenses against us!
All of us are, every man, is given the choice to abide or be reconciled with God! Or given choices to hide away to discover the mysteries of experiential-knowledge of darkness! Our hearts are easily deceived by temptation, taking us each away-from Truth, Light and Life! Adam and Eve became father and mother to broken relationships in their affair with darkness, and encountered, and became known in their sin; Sinner-in broken relationship with GOD!
You know the “Tree of knowledge of good and evil? Me too!”
And we as broken people, confused in our darkness of sin, temptation, lustful appetites, struggle to hide our shame, guilt, fear, while continuing to eat from that tree! Ugh!
Temptation is thinking something is better than what we have, but, we need to know for ourselves! Ugh; and we are reach out to bite and taste of sin, and are bitten! That sting of reality, that sin, that enticement, kills us! Once we know that poisonous bite of sin, sin has already killed innocence, it is too late! The deed is done and innocence is lost with it! Pain replaces temptation with a cruel reality of being duped, and becoming the fool! I gave up the precious for something lesser: pain, guilt, shame!
“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:24-25
Separation from the Garden of Innocence into the cruel world of godlessness and fear! A mocking voice in the distant past and even more present reality! The heart builds walls of anger, pleasure seeking, business, addictions, defensiveness, bitterness, to protect and shield ourselves from more harm. We become fighters, runners, or paralyzed in relationships!
How do we reconcile with God, our sin and pain? How do we return to a Loving Father and son relationship with God? It is Our Father who comes to make a way for sons to return! God makes The Way: Jesus His Son-Comes! Jesus shows us what a Father and Son relationship looks like, as Father speaks over Jesus from heaven: Luke 3:22
“You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”
13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3
God so loved the world He came to save, to reconcile our sins against God and ourselves. He came Himself to reconcile our broken relationship with our True Heavenly Father, and even those around us. God came to restore relationship through His Son-Jesus Christ! There was no one comparable to Jesus! Jesus was in such Father/Son Relationship with God, He knew what His Father desired and did it!
12 But as many as received Him (Jesus), to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1
16 …Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (Jesus). 2 Corinthians 5.
After Adam and Eve’s separation from God, the Garden, and the cool of the day-relaxing pleasures of being with God, Adam and Eve descend into painful child-bearing. They cried as their children fought and found faults with each-other, and with God!
God pleads with us still, don’t fulfill your anger toward your natural fathers and brother! Do the right things toward your natural father and brother, love and forgive him! Turn your heart toward God! God continues to speak to us and our children, as with Adam, so with Cain, Noah, Abraham, me and you!
Today, as from the beginning, we are still wrestling in broken relationship, suffering and rebellion against Father God, our fellow man, our natural fathers and brothers! God is watching and cares for the souls of men! God…. so loves the world… He sent His Son:
JESUS
“My Beloved Son!”
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