Security for Your Fathers Day

Fathers Day is met with mixed feelings. Some use it as an opportunity to boast about their amazing father and share pictures to facebook friends. For others the day is a reminder of all the pain their father has caused in their life because of his selfish mistakes. Still others may meet the day with mourning over the father they lost and didn't get to spend nearly enough time with.

We all have strong feelings about the fathers in our life, whether good or bad. As we grow up we look to our fathers to make us feel secure and safe. It is their job to protect us. Sometimes we reach the conclusion that we have been well cared for, other times the absence of fatherly security shakes us.

When our fathers fail us we must remember the one they reflect.. The one who created us all with a need for security.

My dad and I dominating a frog race at family camp.

I have been blessed in my life with a very godly, loving father. He has made countless sacrifices of his own dreams and desires in order to give me and my sisters security in our lives. He supports us in our passions and encourages us to recognize and invest in our gifts.

 Although he has not always been the perfect dad, he has humbly and lovingly raised us to become women who love God and respect others. He has given us a home where we felt secure and safe.

But most importantly, he has reflected the Father who does it perfectly. This last year when I was four hours away at college, I started to appreciate fully what my earthly father had taught me about my heavenly father.



He showed me what it looked like to be provided for in very real, physical ways, just as God has provided for my every need. He showed me how much someone could support me and love the things I love, just as God is so very interested in my simple every day life. He showed me what it meant to be loved unconditionally despite my performance, just as God loved me enough in the midst of my sin to give me salvation.

Everything he does to secure me in this life is a reflection of God who holds me, keeps me, and protects me no matter what I experience in this life. The security I have in my heavenly Father is not bound by the circumstances of my season, it is steadfast through all things.

I am thankful for an earthly father who loves me. But I know he has made mistakes. He is not "the best dad ever"-- neither is yours. When our fathers make us feel secure, we should thank God for that picture of Him. When our fathers fail and hurt us, we should thank God because He will never do that to us.

So whether you bear a blessing or a wound -- or a little bit of both-- this Fathers Day, don't forget to celebrate your true Father, because he is so worthy of the recognition.

"My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you." -- Psalm 139:15-18

"The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in

    from this time forth and forevermore." -- Psalm 121:5-8

"But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand." -- Isaiah 54:8