The Perfect Father Practicing Love
David W Palmer
(Revelation 3:20–21 NLT) “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends. {21} Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne.”
Yesterday, we saw that the first flaw God wants fixed in our Christian life is slipping away from our first love. In this passage, Jesus refers to the second flaw Father wants to remove from our lives—that of believing, depending on, and trusting the words of another; he wants our whole life built only on his word. Jesus says that if we open the door to our innermost being, he will come in and “share a meal together as friends.” In other words, he will share a feast of his word with you … as your friend—not as a judge, etc. That’s right, “If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31 NKJV).
Jesus’s primary way of correcting, teaching, and improving us is through God’s word and Spirit; learning his word gives us the ability to judge ourselves and get the foreign, shakeable, false beliefs out. For this, our Lord—Jesus, the Living Word of God—has in mind his teaching and admonitions as is clearly seen here:
(Matthew 7:24–27 NKJV) “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: {25} and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. {26} But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: {27} and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
Jesus used the rock foundation of the wise builder as an illustration. Physical rock will shake like everything else when God is shaking the earth and heaven (Heb. 12:26). Our Lord only used it to picture the unshakeable spiritual quality of God’s eternal, absolute word in the environment of natural storms, etc.; it won’t shake in any environment. Father God wants our lives to be built securely on the rock foundation of his word—by hearing, believing, and obeying it. He sent Jesus, the living word, as his apostle (sent one) to earth to give us his word. Only as our lives are built 100% on God’s true word will they be crash-proof from the storms of life, the attacks of the enemy, and the increasing shakings.
What’s more, Father knows that as his word comes to life on earth in greater and more increasing measures—Jesus’s spoken word being the creator and upholder of all things—a tremendous shaking will occur. (We are certainly seeing this in the world around us now.) Father wants us to not only survive this shaking, but to thrive in it.
First, here are the passages about God’s word; the word created and upholds everything, so it’s not surprising that he can shake everything with his word as we will see:
(Psalm 33:6 NKJV) By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
(Genesis 1:3 NKJV) Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
(John 1:1–3 NKJV) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. {2} He was in the beginning with God. {3} All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In the following passage, we see that the same living Word of God that created everything, also sustains, supports, undergirds, and upholds everything—including the physical universe, the world in which we live:
(Hebrews 1:1–3 AMP) “God … His Son [namely Jesus], … through whom also He created the universe … upholding and maintaining and propelling all things [the entire physical and spiritual universe] by His powerful word [carrying the universe along to its predetermined goal]. …”
