Our Affable Father In Heaven

Before embarking on today’s attribute about our Father in heaven, I invite you, not to go slow, not to make a rolling stop, but to make a dead stop. Stop, and focus your eyes, ears, heart and mind on our Heavenly Father.

Most times, we thank Father God for His Son Jesus. However, in this precious and privileged moment, whatever be your state, will you give Jesus thanks for God? It is because of Jesus that we come to the Father and know the Father. Listen to what the Scriptures tell us and Scripture is infallible.

Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. John 14: 6 – 7.

Philip then asks Jesus to show them the Father and they would be satisfied. Note what Jesus says to him. Don’t you know me Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? John 14: 9b – 10a.

And so we pray.

Thank You Jesus, for bringing the Father to us, so that we can know Him as we know You. Amen!

I continue to encourage, implore and motivate you, regardless of your sunshiny or stormy state, to live and firmly declare these attributes of God.

He Is Approachable,

He is Identifiable.

He is Available.

Today, continuing with the same text, we look at another attribute of God, as viewed in Jonah’s prayer.

He prayed to the LORD, ‘O LORD’, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I know that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Jonah 4: 2

God is Affable - That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.

God is Good-Natured. No one who knows Sovereign Father God, and even some who do not know Him, can but testify to His affability. We all know, for example that with His Good Nature, since God is good and there is no ill in His Nature, He is considerate and kind to all.

Is this not what Jesus spoke to us about being affable to all, when He said, that we should love everyone, including our enemies? In our good-nature, which only comes from God and in Him, since we humans, in carnal flesh, are by nature wretched, we are able to bless those who curse us, do good to all who hate us and pray for those who spitefully use us and persecute us. We are able to be thus minded, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5: 45, because of the Holy Ghost.

Clearly, this affability of God, our Heavenly Father, has not been altered in any way. Jonah knows this fact about God and knows it only too well. It has been so engrained in Him that he does not even have to think about it. It is automatic. I am truly curious and held by Jonah’s words, about being so quick to flee to Tarshish. Returning to the beginning of the Book of Jonah, it stated that God’s Word came to Jonah when he was at home. God told him to go to Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness had come up before God. What comes next is not any conversation with God, any kind of talk recorded. All the Bible says is this. But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish, Jonah 1: 3a.

It is Jonah’s open statement to God, in prayer, about being so quick to run away from God, which gives great weight to the fact that Jonah not only knows the affable nature of God, but it is frighteningly real to him.

What comes to mind is this same attribute in Jesus. Do you remember how, on Sabbath days, some of the good, religious, God-fearing Jewish leaders, would see Jesus and would see sick people come into His Presence and they just knew that Jesus would heal the sick? I mean, they so knew this nature of Jesus, this kind, accommodating, drawing to Himself, affable nature, they had not the slightest doubt that He would heal that person. It’s like: Look! See what I told you! He simply can’t help Himself when it comes to healing the sick. I can just hear Jonah in his prayers saying this to God. See! I just knew it. You can’t help Yourself, but to forgive the worst sinner, who repents!

What a testimony! What a Forgiving Father!

Whether you are articulate or inarticulate with God, do you declare and display this attribute about Him? He is Affable.