Sweet Child of Mine

One of my favorite childhood memories was something my dad would say to my brother and I when we were really young. We'd be watching TV and my dad would ask for one of us to take out the garbage or help him with something. My brother and I would look at each other and pretend like we didn't hear him. Then my dad would say just loud enough so we could hear him, "Alright, then you're not going."

We'd both shoot up and start whining, "NO! We wanna go! We wanna go! We'll do anything, just let us go." Then we would go and do whatever he asked us.

The geniusness of this was that we weren't ever actually going anywhere to begin with, but the idea of not going somewhere that we could have was enough to get our butts in gear.

As a young boy all I wanted to do was hang out with my dad. If he was going fishing - I wanted to go with. If he was going bowling - I wanted to go with. If he was going to fill the car up with gas - I wanted to go with! It didn't matter where my dad was going, I just wanted to go with.

But as I got older I found myself wanting to do more things on my own and slowly stopped wanting to do everything that my dad was doing. When I was around 9 years old "then you're not going" stopped having any impact on me.

I think this is what most Christians end up doing. We meet Jesus and fall in love with our Heavenly Father. All we want is to go where our Heavenly Father is going and hang out with him. But as we "mature" in our faith and start understanding the ropes of Christianity we slowly stop feeling the need to hang out with our Father and start thinking that we can do everything on our own.

I think Jesus understood this. He was always talking to the Father and teaching others to talk to him too. He was always hanging out with his Daddy and leading others to do the same. I mean think of all the times that he does this:
- Teaching his disciples to pray by addressing God as 'Father'.
- Going off to lonely places to be alone with his Father.
- Telling his followers to have faith like a child (aka: a child with a perfect Father)
- On the cross, asking his Father to forgive those crucifying him.

So, how's your relationship with your Heavenly Father?
Distant?
Fearful?
Non-existent?
Child-like?

Your Father is looking to love you perfectly. Go and hang out with him today.