A sermon I did on Father's Day.
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 2:48 am
Thought I'd share it here. (Reading is the Lords Prayer)
Sermon – Our Father
The prayer that Jesus has taught us is famous worldwide and it is the one we hold close to our hearts. The first two words itself hold such incredible significance about who God is to us. “Our Father” Jesus is telling us in those first two words that the creator of all existence is our Father, a label given to someone who cares for us completely, loves us unconditionally and wants the best for all his children and will do the utmost for us, even die for us. Doesn’t that sound like the qualities of what every father should do for his child or any parent for that matter?
So the first two words of this prayer show that God is a parent and he has 7 billion children. However he is not my father, or your father but “our” father and that concept joins us to believers across the world. It invites us to join in fellowship and worship our common Father. Jesus shows us that God is our real Father and we are his real children so that we pray with trust and complete confidence. He often uses the term Abba which means father, but is closer to a term of endearment, almost like saying “Daddy”. Jesus taught us to pray this way so that we may in childlike awe trust that God through Christ has become our Father.
The second line “Hallowed be thy Name” tells us one of the attributes of our Father. It shows us that he is holy. We recognise the distinction that God has from us and we acknowledge his holiness. This is just one attribute of our Father and I am going to go through all his attributes briefly and together we can discover what they mean to us. God’s necessity, his divine eternity, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, his omniscience, his omnibenevolence and his complete holiness.
God is a necessary being. Without him existence would cease to be. He is the creator and sustaining power all of reality. The Lebiniz cosmologic argument for the existence of God states that everything that exist has a reason for its existence, whether through an external cause or by a necessity of its own being. In reality you need a first uncaused cause for all that exists otherwise you end up with an infinite regress and that is impossible. God is the first uncaused cause and the sustainer of the universe.
Romans 11:36 tells us that:
If God is the necessary ultimate being, then how does that knowledge affect us? Because he is the ultimate being then he should be the object of our ultimate concern. Anything else is idolatry. How many of us find things taking the place of God as the focus of our worship and devotion?
God’s necessity and sustaining power implies in the absolute sense that he is Lord. Everything depends on him and he depends on nothing. In our own lives we should depend on the person who depends on no one. Anyone else, no matter how good their intentions, will ultimately fail you in some way. Depend on the one that won’t fail you.
God’s self-existence implies independence. This is what modern man strives to be, independent and ultimately selfish therefore denying our dependence on God. This is an exercise in futility when we raise our heel against the one who sustains our very existence.
Looking at the attribute of God’s divine eternity, this is one that is mentioned very frequently in scripture:
Psalm 90:1-4
But what is time? It is the passing of moments. Science tells us that time and matter was created together in the Big bang. So in essence there was no “before” the creation of the universe in the temporal sense, although God is certainly causally prior to the big bang. So before time God was in a timeless state, he transcended time. This is a state I certainly have trouble comprehending.
When creation started we can see by the Bible that God become temporal as he involves himself in history and will continue on through all of time’s duration.
What significance does this have for us? Our temporal lives are vastly incomplete. We live in an infinitesimal moment called the present. The pass disappears out of existence and the future has not occurred and by the time our brains even register the present moment, then that moment is gone. And all these moments come and go. There are some we would probably hope to forget, but I am sure there are many that we hold dear and are desperate to cling on to their memory. However these beautiful moments soon disappear into the relentless past as it nips at our heels, never to be repeated. However one being who is eternal holds the memory of those moments forever and can recall the beauty of them in their entirety. People who pass are not lost to God as he can remember them and has shared with them every single moment that defines who they are and what they treasure in their hearts.
God’s eternity also tells us quite frustratingly that he has all the time in the world to implement his plan.
2 Peter 3:8
I think this clearly tells us that God has his own timetable. When we pray God does not always reveal his answer to us straight away but often when the answer comes we can see that it was exactly at the right time. I think we can take comfort in that fact that God’s timetable will be perfect and he can see the moments when our patience will be rewarded.
God’s eternity also should prompt us to live our lives in light of our eventual immortality. What we do in this life echo’s in eternity growled General Maximus on the battlefield and that is certainly true. We should be storing our treasure up in heaven and not this life and understand that what we do today has eternal consequences.
Now God’s attribute of omnipresence is beautifully summarised in Psalm 139 7-12
This means that we can contact God at any conceivable location. We can call on him anywhere. People who visit the Victory Church in Cwmbran and Spring Harvest come back saying that there is there was a real presence of God there and can feel quite deflated coming back home from that spiritual oasis. I know I use to feel that when I came back home from Spring Harvest. But we need to realise that, yes God is there, but he is also in the car on the journey back. He is with you when you wake up the next morning and he is with you in every second of your life wherever you go. The presence of God is always with you, you just need to reach out and feel it. Even when you walk solitary through the valley of shadows he is with you.
Psalm 139 1-6
Matthew 10 29-31
More than knowing what will happen, God also knows the secret of our thoughts, the secrets in our heart. He can literally read our minds, and yet he still loves us! He knows what I have done. He knows what I will do in the future. He still wants to spend eternity with me! He still sent his Son to die for me, and in fact sent his Son to die for me before the creation of the universe. Now if a person did that to me who was not God I would think they were insane.
God’s omniscience also tells us another thing and I think this is something in which we can take some comfort. When bad things happen we have heard the cringe worthy expression “God works in mysterious ways” used time and time again. But in reality that is in fact what occurs. When a bad thing occurs we usually only focus on the immediate effects of its consequences, but God can see the continuation of the story and where it will end and so may have perfectly justifiable reasons for permitting that bad event to occur.
A good analogy of this can be lifted from the film Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. In the film Helen (the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow) leaves her house that she shares with her boyfriend and makes her way to work via the tube. On the way to catch her train the path of her life splits. In one scene you see her being blocked by a girl on the stairs and therefore she just misses her train as the doors slide shut. In a repeat of that scene you see the father of the girl pull her out of the way just in time so Helen manages to catch the train. The film then splits into two different stories. The one who missed the train goes back home to find her boyfriend in bed with another women and her life seems to just get worse and worse. The life of the version where Helen catches the train, however, seems to just get better and better. Simple moments like catching a train can cause ultimate diversity in possibilities. But we can go back further than that, what caused the girl to be on the stairs at that time for her life’s path to clash with Helen? Was the girl and her father late for something? Then what factors caused that to happen and so on into infinity. We cannot even begin to comprehend the infinite amount of events and situations and factors that occur to cause one person to miss a train as one event causes another. In the film the Helen whose life seemed amazing ended up being killed in a road accident. The other Helen’s life turned around for the better and she found real happiness. Only God could have known the totality of all those events and permitted some of them to happen.
It is hard on the emotional level to comprehend the workings of God when something bad does happen in your life and there is no real answer to that other than to throw yourself to God more. But knowing God is omniscience we can perhaps begin to understand and trust that God’s providence is in control and ultimately he wants the best for you. Regardless of what situation we are going through we should have the confidence to trust in the knowledge that God knows with absolute certainty the best path for us to follow and we should let him guide us through life. His way and his will for us is perfect and why not accept anything less than perfection.
Our Father has many names and one of them is El Shaddai which translates to God Almighty. One of God’s most obvious attribute is his omnipotence and the awesome power of God is best manifested in his ability to create
Genesis 1:1
If God is truly omnipotent that what application does that have in our lives? Well that makes everyone who believes in the saving power of Christ, a walking stick of dynamite. God’s power, which created the universe, is at work in the believer. The voice that spoke the worlds into being is dwelling in you. The God that says “Let there be light” wants to use you as a vessel to further his kingdom and that is just purely awesome.
The Father’s almighty power is a guarantee that his purpose for the universe will never be thwarted for who can stand against him. And this also goes for his plan for your life, for remember if God is for you then who can stand against you? With God’s almighty power we are conquerors in Christ, in fact even more than that….
Romans 8:37-39
One final comfort we can take from God’s omnipotence is that he will be fully adequate whatever situation you find yourself in. There is no prayer too hard, no need to great, no temptation that is too strong, and no misery that is too deep that God cannot step in and fill us with hope, love and resolution.
The final attributes of God are ones that we should be most grateful for. The creator of the universe is not an evil or indifferent god who does not care about the creatures that happen to spring up on this desolate planet but a holy, righteous and omnibenevolent being.
The angels of Revelation gave testimony to God’s holiness
Revelation 4:8
A holy God is a just God as he is the standard of righteousness and because of that we can take comfort in the fact that all of us will be judged fairly. The problem is that if God was just holy then we would all be condemned as all have fallen short of the glory of God. A holy God cannot be in the presence of sin and so must cast it out into the outer darkness.
However, our Father, as most Fathers should be is a kind and loving Father. In fact he is omnibenevolent and because of this fine attribute he has unconditional love for his children and therefore wants to save us from his own wrath.
John 3:16
What a wonderful father to have. He is the everlasting, necessary being who is with us wherever we go. He knows all our failings and triumphs now and yet to come but will be there to pick us up or cheer us on. He delivers us from evil with a power incomprehensible and gives us that power to shine. He loves us more that our earthly parents and he is waiting with open arms for we his children to come home. Abba, I want to thank you with every fibre of my being and wish you a very happy Father’s day.
Sermon – Our Father
The prayer that Jesus has taught us is famous worldwide and it is the one we hold close to our hearts. The first two words itself hold such incredible significance about who God is to us. “Our Father” Jesus is telling us in those first two words that the creator of all existence is our Father, a label given to someone who cares for us completely, loves us unconditionally and wants the best for all his children and will do the utmost for us, even die for us. Doesn’t that sound like the qualities of what every father should do for his child or any parent for that matter?
So the first two words of this prayer show that God is a parent and he has 7 billion children. However he is not my father, or your father but “our” father and that concept joins us to believers across the world. It invites us to join in fellowship and worship our common Father. Jesus shows us that God is our real Father and we are his real children so that we pray with trust and complete confidence. He often uses the term Abba which means father, but is closer to a term of endearment, almost like saying “Daddy”. Jesus taught us to pray this way so that we may in childlike awe trust that God through Christ has become our Father.
The second line “Hallowed be thy Name” tells us one of the attributes of our Father. It shows us that he is holy. We recognise the distinction that God has from us and we acknowledge his holiness. This is just one attribute of our Father and I am going to go through all his attributes briefly and together we can discover what they mean to us. God’s necessity, his divine eternity, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, his omniscience, his omnibenevolence and his complete holiness.
God is a necessary being. Without him existence would cease to be. He is the creator and sustaining power all of reality. The Lebiniz cosmologic argument for the existence of God states that everything that exist has a reason for its existence, whether through an external cause or by a necessity of its own being. In reality you need a first uncaused cause for all that exists otherwise you end up with an infinite regress and that is impossible. God is the first uncaused cause and the sustainer of the universe.
Romans 11:36 tells us that:
We know of the Father through Christ and Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 thatFor from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Without God there will be no reality. God tells Moses who he is in Exodus – “I am that I am”, the ultimate necessary being.5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
If God is the necessary ultimate being, then how does that knowledge affect us? Because he is the ultimate being then he should be the object of our ultimate concern. Anything else is idolatry. How many of us find things taking the place of God as the focus of our worship and devotion?
God’s necessity and sustaining power implies in the absolute sense that he is Lord. Everything depends on him and he depends on nothing. In our own lives we should depend on the person who depends on no one. Anyone else, no matter how good their intentions, will ultimately fail you in some way. Depend on the one that won’t fail you.
God’s self-existence implies independence. This is what modern man strives to be, independent and ultimately selfish therefore denying our dependence on God. This is an exercise in futility when we raise our heel against the one who sustains our very existence.
Looking at the attribute of God’s divine eternity, this is one that is mentioned very frequently in scripture:
Psalm 90:1-4
Psalm 102:25-27Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
Psalm 102:11-12
My days are like the evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
12 But you, LORD, sit enthroned forever;
your renown endures through all generations.
Jude 1:25In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.
27 But you remain the same,
and your years will never end
There are many more but the bible is very clear that God existed before time, in time and through the everlasting time to come. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.to the only God our Saviour be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!
But what is time? It is the passing of moments. Science tells us that time and matter was created together in the Big bang. So in essence there was no “before” the creation of the universe in the temporal sense, although God is certainly causally prior to the big bang. So before time God was in a timeless state, he transcended time. This is a state I certainly have trouble comprehending.
When creation started we can see by the Bible that God become temporal as he involves himself in history and will continue on through all of time’s duration.
What significance does this have for us? Our temporal lives are vastly incomplete. We live in an infinitesimal moment called the present. The pass disappears out of existence and the future has not occurred and by the time our brains even register the present moment, then that moment is gone. And all these moments come and go. There are some we would probably hope to forget, but I am sure there are many that we hold dear and are desperate to cling on to their memory. However these beautiful moments soon disappear into the relentless past as it nips at our heels, never to be repeated. However one being who is eternal holds the memory of those moments forever and can recall the beauty of them in their entirety. People who pass are not lost to God as he can remember them and has shared with them every single moment that defines who they are and what they treasure in their hearts.
God’s eternity also tells us quite frustratingly that he has all the time in the world to implement his plan.
2 Peter 3:8
God is in no hurry. Does he get Moses to lead his people to the promise land while he is in the prime of his life? No rather he waits 40 years and eventually Joshua is the one to lead the people. Does he allow David to build his temple? No that is down to his son Solomon. It is many years before Gods people are brought out from Egypt because God is waiting for the occupants in Palestine to be ripe for judgement through their inequity. In fact four centuries pass before the deliver is revealed to the people.8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
I think this clearly tells us that God has his own timetable. When we pray God does not always reveal his answer to us straight away but often when the answer comes we can see that it was exactly at the right time. I think we can take comfort in that fact that God’s timetable will be perfect and he can see the moments when our patience will be rewarded.
God’s eternity also should prompt us to live our lives in light of our eventual immortality. What we do in this life echo’s in eternity growled General Maximus on the battlefield and that is certainly true. We should be storing our treasure up in heaven and not this life and understand that what we do today has eternal consequences.
Now God’s attribute of omnipresence is beautifully summarised in Psalm 139 7-12
This makes it very clear that God does not dwell sorely in a tent, or a building guarded by a thick curtain. God does not “live” in heaven, he is not the man upstairs but God is everywhere. He is conscious of and causally active at every point in space. There is no place in the entire universe where God’s power and knowledge does not extend.Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,’
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
This means that we can contact God at any conceivable location. We can call on him anywhere. People who visit the Victory Church in Cwmbran and Spring Harvest come back saying that there is there was a real presence of God there and can feel quite deflated coming back home from that spiritual oasis. I know I use to feel that when I came back home from Spring Harvest. But we need to realise that, yes God is there, but he is also in the car on the journey back. He is with you when you wake up the next morning and he is with you in every second of your life wherever you go. The presence of God is always with you, you just need to reach out and feel it. Even when you walk solitary through the valley of shadows he is with you.
God is the all-knowing Father. The word omniscience comes from the Latin “all knowledge”. It simply implies that God is perfect in knowledge and knows all that is to know. This is something that the writers of scripture knew all too well.The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,[a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
for ever.
Psalm 139 1-6
Job 28:24O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Lord.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Proverbs 15:3for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
Even Jesus knew the extent of his Fathers knowledge, an attribute that he himself shared as the second person of the Godhead.3 The eyes of the LORD are everywhere,
keeping watch on the wicked and the good.
Matthew 10 29-31
So basically there is nothing new that God can learn, he has the totality of all propositional information. This concept has massive implications for us. He knows everything that has happened, everything that is happening now and everything that will happen in the future. Philosophers and Christian scholars have spent many years debating whether this in fact infringes on our freewill, or in fact removes our freewill altogether. The Bible is not dogmatic on this issue. Some camps believe in Calvinism and predestination where God has already ordained the lives people will take and who will be saved. Personally that is not a route I agree with, but follow a more Molinistic approach where God still has providence but through middle knowledge knows what a person will do given a certain situation, which is similar to guessing with 100% chance of getting right 100% of the time. Knowing the probability of what a person will do given a certain situation and guessing right does not in fact oppress the free agency of the person in question.29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.[a] 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
More than knowing what will happen, God also knows the secret of our thoughts, the secrets in our heart. He can literally read our minds, and yet he still loves us! He knows what I have done. He knows what I will do in the future. He still wants to spend eternity with me! He still sent his Son to die for me, and in fact sent his Son to die for me before the creation of the universe. Now if a person did that to me who was not God I would think they were insane.
God’s omniscience also tells us another thing and I think this is something in which we can take some comfort. When bad things happen we have heard the cringe worthy expression “God works in mysterious ways” used time and time again. But in reality that is in fact what occurs. When a bad thing occurs we usually only focus on the immediate effects of its consequences, but God can see the continuation of the story and where it will end and so may have perfectly justifiable reasons for permitting that bad event to occur.
A good analogy of this can be lifted from the film Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. In the film Helen (the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow) leaves her house that she shares with her boyfriend and makes her way to work via the tube. On the way to catch her train the path of her life splits. In one scene you see her being blocked by a girl on the stairs and therefore she just misses her train as the doors slide shut. In a repeat of that scene you see the father of the girl pull her out of the way just in time so Helen manages to catch the train. The film then splits into two different stories. The one who missed the train goes back home to find her boyfriend in bed with another women and her life seems to just get worse and worse. The life of the version where Helen catches the train, however, seems to just get better and better. Simple moments like catching a train can cause ultimate diversity in possibilities. But we can go back further than that, what caused the girl to be on the stairs at that time for her life’s path to clash with Helen? Was the girl and her father late for something? Then what factors caused that to happen and so on into infinity. We cannot even begin to comprehend the infinite amount of events and situations and factors that occur to cause one person to miss a train as one event causes another. In the film the Helen whose life seemed amazing ended up being killed in a road accident. The other Helen’s life turned around for the better and she found real happiness. Only God could have known the totality of all those events and permitted some of them to happen.
It is hard on the emotional level to comprehend the workings of God when something bad does happen in your life and there is no real answer to that other than to throw yourself to God more. But knowing God is omniscience we can perhaps begin to understand and trust that God’s providence is in control and ultimately he wants the best for you. Regardless of what situation we are going through we should have the confidence to trust in the knowledge that God knows with absolute certainty the best path for us to follow and we should let him guide us through life. His way and his will for us is perfect and why not accept anything less than perfection.
Our Father has many names and one of them is El Shaddai which translates to God Almighty. One of God’s most obvious attribute is his omnipotence and the awesome power of God is best manifested in his ability to create
Genesis 1:1
Psalm 33 6-9In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
All things are possible in God. However it must be made clear that omnipotence does not mean doing things that are contrary to his nature such as sinning or creating another god and worshipping him. Nor does omnipotence imply that God can do things that are logically impossible such as creating a stone so heavy he cannot lift, or creating a married bachelor, or creating a square circle. This is something that a lot of atheists try and throw in as arguments against God but they have misunderstood what omnipotence actually means.By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars[a];
he puts the deep into storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the people of the world revere him.
9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.
If God is truly omnipotent that what application does that have in our lives? Well that makes everyone who believes in the saving power of Christ, a walking stick of dynamite. God’s power, which created the universe, is at work in the believer. The voice that spoke the worlds into being is dwelling in you. The God that says “Let there be light” wants to use you as a vessel to further his kingdom and that is just purely awesome.
The Father’s almighty power is a guarantee that his purpose for the universe will never be thwarted for who can stand against him. And this also goes for his plan for your life, for remember if God is for you then who can stand against you? With God’s almighty power we are conquerors in Christ, in fact even more than that….
Romans 8:37-39
If God wants something for you in your life then he will bring it to past if you trust in him, and that purpose might even include failure in certain areas to bring about his will. In these circumstances it might be that only at the end will you see his divine purpose at work for the good.37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
One final comfort we can take from God’s omnipotence is that he will be fully adequate whatever situation you find yourself in. There is no prayer too hard, no need to great, no temptation that is too strong, and no misery that is too deep that God cannot step in and fill us with hope, love and resolution.
The final attributes of God are ones that we should be most grateful for. The creator of the universe is not an evil or indifferent god who does not care about the creatures that happen to spring up on this desolate planet but a holy, righteous and omnibenevolent being.
The angels of Revelation gave testimony to God’s holiness
Revelation 4:8
These celestial beings cried this mantra day and night and this was their worship to their holy God.Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:
“‘Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,’[a]
who was, and is, and is to come.”
A holy God is a just God as he is the standard of righteousness and because of that we can take comfort in the fact that all of us will be judged fairly. The problem is that if God was just holy then we would all be condemned as all have fallen short of the glory of God. A holy God cannot be in the presence of sin and so must cast it out into the outer darkness.
However, our Father, as most Fathers should be is a kind and loving Father. In fact he is omnibenevolent and because of this fine attribute he has unconditional love for his children and therefore wants to save us from his own wrath.
John 3:16
He sent himself. That is the greatest manifestation of his love for us. All through the Bible there are so many examples of God’s outpouring of his love for us, such that there are too many to say here but it still all comes down to what Jesus did for us on the cross. God created us because he loved us. God died for us because he loved us and God will let us spend eternity with him because he loves us. God’s attribute of omnibenevolence sums up all of who he is. Love.16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
What a wonderful father to have. He is the everlasting, necessary being who is with us wherever we go. He knows all our failings and triumphs now and yet to come but will be there to pick us up or cheer us on. He delivers us from evil with a power incomprehensible and gives us that power to shine. He loves us more that our earthly parents and he is waiting with open arms for we his children to come home. Abba, I want to thank you with every fibre of my being and wish you a very happy Father’s day.