Love & Beauty Sermon, Pt. 3- How Deep the Father’s Love

By Abigail Barrett

“Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” -Jeremiah 31:3

My journey to knowing God as a Father is a long one. Maybe I’ll write a book about it one day (wink, wink). But for now, I am going to fast forward to present day.

Not too long ago, my spiritual mother told me,

“You are God’s daughter, but it’s more than that… Before you were born, God intricately planned every part of your life.”

This statement made me curious because it implied that the absence of a Father in my life was something intentionally planned by God.

My sister-in-Christ also shared an encouragement with me. She said,

“Everything you have received thus far has been through the spirit of adoption. You have to rest in the significance of being a daughter of God because your longing for a father cannot be fulfilled by anyone except God.”

I had heard these words before, but I needed the Holy Spirit’s help to understand them. So, I sought the Lord and this is what He taught me.

God intended to be my father. And it’s important to note that His intention to be my father did not begin with my conception. It started before my conception. It started before the foundations of the earth. It started before the beginning of time. It began (if I can even say that it began) in the mind of God. It began with love.

This brings us to reason #1 for why God is a better father to us than our earthly fathers can ever be. The philosopher in me wants to describe it this way:

“God’s love for us is ontologically prior to us.”

Ontology has to do with things that exist, or have being; and, the word prior means before. So we can translate this statement to mean,

“God’s love for us existed before we did.”

In contrast, the love our earthly fathers have for us are “ontologically posterior,” meaning that their love for us existed after we did.

What do I mean by this? Earthly fathers only have the capacity to love us once they know who we are. I would go so far as to say that it is impossible to love someone without knowing them. Therefore, our earthly fathers’ love is limited by their knowledge of us. Whether we were planned or unplanned children, there was still a time in our earthly fathers’ lives where they had no idea who we were. (I am sure they were not thinking of us when they were two years old!) So, at some point, they did not love us. Their love for us has a beginning. God, who is omniscient, loves us with an eternal love.

God’s love is not only prior to us in the sense of time, but also in the sense of contingency. All I mean by that is that God’s love is the reason why we exist. Without His love, none of us would be here.

The Lord explained it to me like this:

Before the beginning of time, there was a specific expression of love—I like to call it a specific flavor of love—that God wanted to uniquely and exclusively share with one of His creations.

In my case, God desired to uniquely love His creation as a Father. (That is not to say that He doesn’t love me as a brother, friend, etc. It just means that God wanted me to uniquely experience Him as a Father.) But not just any Father; God wanted to be a “girl dad” to show His love for something that is precious, beautiful, and worthy of being protected. He desired a father-daughter relationship, wherein His love would be reciprocated with complete dependence on Him and total submission to Him. So, God created me… He created a creature fit for the specific kind of love He desired to express.

In the same, you were created to fit a unique expression of God’s love. He created you to be in a loving relationship with Him. His love is the reason you exist.

✨Stay tuned for Part 4✨