There are three main occurrences where you see Father God actually speaking in the record of the Gospels. Of these three moments, you actually hear Him declare His love and approval over His son.
It’s important for you and I to know that a good Father speaks his love and approval over His children. This is the nature of who God is as a loving Father.
Let’s be honest, if you and I were God and we had a moment to speak, we might throw some lightning, split the earth open or nearly blind people with a display of glory.
Nope. God decides He is going to use this moment to speak about His Son.
He wanted to talk about His Son. He says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
Why is this so important? Because Jesus needed the Father’s love and approval. This moment was critical for what was ahead, as He would spend the next three years of His life manifesting the ministry of that the Father sent Him to do.
Three things needed to be declared and embedded into the life of Christ. They are the same three things we need to experience from Father God if we want to live effective and whole lives here on this planet.
Here are the three things we need to hear and experience from Father God.
1. “I Love You.”
When the Father says, “beloved son” we are talking about someone who is dearly loved. Sometimes this King James phrasing causes many to miss what is being said. We don’t typically use the word “beloved” in our modern vernacular, so let’s put it in plain English.
I love Him. I love Him dearly. I love Him so much.
Jesus needed to actually hear His Father tell him that He loved Him. You and I carry that exact same need in our hearts.
It was God’s design that our earthly fathers set the foundation for this, by genuinely telling you that he loves you and matching it with loving actions. This sets the foundation for you to be able to hear Father God’s love with greater clarity.
Yet for most people, they have lived their entire lives without being told on a regular basis that they are loved. It’s often so neglected that people have expressed to me, they don’t feel the need to be told they are loved. Society has lived without this healthy practice for so long that its commonplace. No wonder we struggle to feel God’s love over our hearts.
I find that until people realize they needed to hear this, they won’t realize the wound they carry in their hearts a result. When the Father speaks His love over your heart, you don’t have to go searching all the over the planet for it or an imitation. It’s established in your heart.
If Jesus needed to hear His Father’s loving words, than so do you and I.
2. “You Are My Son.”
Not only does the Father speak love over Jesus, He speaks identity. It is the Father’s job to speak identity over his children. If Jesus did not have identity spoken over His life, He may have become vulnerable to what other people thought about Him or who they thought He was.
In this moment, the Father reminds Jesus of who He is, not just as Messiah, Savior of the World, Healer, Deliverer or Great Prophet, as accurate as those may be. His core identity is Son.
Which is a fantastic example left for us. Because you and I as believers are sons and daughters. That’s our core identity.
Sometimes we make life so complicated by our roles, responsibilities and aspirations, we forget the simplicity of who we are. As a believer in Christ, your core identity is not a business person, husband, wife, mom or dad. Your identity is in sonship.
Father God does just say Son, He says “My Son.” There’s something powerful about a Dad saying, “this is my son,” because it speaks identity, but it also communicates belonging.
The Father wants to remind you of who you are and Whose you are.
We not only have an identity, we have a lineage. The moment you and I became born again, we joined into a lineage that is not of this world. It’s a heavenly inheritance where God is now our Father. We enter into a new family with other brothers and sisters, following the example of our elder Brother and Lord, Jesus Christ.
We live in an identity crisis today, mainly because fathers have not modeled Father God’s heart in speaking out love and calling out the identities of their sons and daughters. You see, when the father does not speak identity, we become prone to listening to everyone’s opinions of who we are. On top of that, we will waste years trying to find an identity in what we do or chasing some achievement.
Yet nothing can ever satisfy the identity that the Father gives you. There’s no pressure in it. You just receive it.
How do you live as a son or daughter? You wake up, show up and receive it. You don’t perform for it, you just embrace it and let the image of what that means form your life.
When you know you are loved and know who you are, the rest is just details. But it’s important that we learn to receive it from the Father.
3. “I Am Proud of You.”
When He says, “in whom I am well pleased” we see the Father gushing with approval over His Son. This is the third thing that a good father delivers: approval to his sons and daughters.
Saying “I am proud of you” is not an arrogant, pride filled statement. The meaning of this word is “being filled with delight and pleasure” over the life of someone else.
Many people walk through life without connecting to this from God.
Did you notice that Jesus received this from the Father before He did any ministry? At this moment, He has not healed the sick, cleansed the lepers or raised the dead. The ministry did not officially begin yet.
That reveals something critical we need to understand: in the Kingdom of God, approval is given up front by the Father so that you do not spend the rest of your life trying to earn it.
When a father gives approval up front, it satisfies a need in our hearts. You and I need to receive validation and approval from Him. Without it, we end up making terrible choices or delving into very needy behavior. We look to anyone and anything to fill that empty void in our hearts. It’s the place that a father needs to fill.
Receiving Father God’s Love and Approval
I ask people, “Have you ever heard your earthly father tell you he loved you? Did he show you who you are? Did he let you know he was proud of you?”
The majority of people in the world give a blank stare to that question, or begin to grieve because of what their hearts missed. They never heard it.
Do you understand that there is an absolute war over you receiving this in your life? The enemy knows that if you don’t receive these three simple needs in your life, that struggle with follow you continually?
If you are like the millions of people who have not had these experiences, you can begin to position your heart before the Father right now. He wants you to experience His love, know your identity and experience His delight over you.
Today, you can stop trying “to do stuff” to earn His love and approval. You can position your heart right now to receive His delight over you. You may need to hear Him say, “I love you and accept you right now.”
Remember, if Jesus Christ needed this, the One who lived the perfect and sinless life, don’t you and I need it?
God’s design was that your earthly father would release this to you, so that you could more easily hear it from your heavenly father.
The Father’s Blessing
So, do you have an experience receiving this love and approval? If not, I would love to pray a prayer of blessing over you. This would be a great moment for God to heal the broken areas in your heart in relation to what “father” means.
Father, I come to You in the mighty name of Jesus and I thank You for every person that’s reading this. If we are going to understand walking with You and what Jesus brought, we’re going to have to understand what father means. We need to know who you are as a Father.
For every person, father has a different meaning; some good, some bad. We’ve all experienced that. No one has had a perfect relationship with their earthly father.
So God, in that, no matter what our earthly father experience was, we still need to come to You because You are the source of true transformation. You are the perfect loving Father. You are the source of healing, of setting up our identity the way that it’s supposed to be.
So, Father I just thank You for every heart and every ear. I pray a new work of what father means; that the voice of Father God speaking would be a true reality in their life.
God, I bless every person reading this. I bless every believer, that they may know they are loved. May they know who they are. May they know that you are proud of them.
So, I bless you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I bless you with every blessing that is available from heaven and I tell you these words,
God let the healing work of the Lord Jesus Christ lead us deeper into the heart of the Father that we may gain an identity.
Before I’m anything else, I’m a son. Before I’m a dad, before I’m a husband, before I’m a preacher or teacher, businessperson. Before I’m a mom, before I’m anything else, we are Your children. That’s our identity and that’s what we need to begin to stand on. So God I thank You for that and I seal this in the might name of Jesus, amen.
For Further Reading:
Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22
Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35