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The whole world in a Father’s hands

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” —Colossians 3:23–24

This Sunday is Father’s Day, a day to celebrate what it means to be a great father and know we have a perfect Father in heaven. As children we sang, He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands and learned to trust that God is in control of this world. As we grew older, we came to realize and accept that our perfect Father also honors the free will of mankind. God will always work to redeem the wrong choices of mankind, but the consequences of those earthly choices usually remain.

I’ve thought a lot about this subject this past week. As I write these words, I am thinking about a family whose son will spend most of his remaining life in jail. I’m also thinking about the family whose son will never come home again. Both boys were barely old enough to qualify as “adults” when they made choices they cannot take back. Justice was done, but the justice still feels like a tragedy. Many lives were damaged by a few moments of uncontrolled rage.

How does an innocent baby grow up to become a young man who is labeled guilty for the rest of his life? As I watched the news unfold, I thought, “Did this young man have a father in his life?” “Will this young man ever have the chance to know he has a Father in heaven?”

This article goes to thousands of people each week. I know that some are incredibly grateful for their earthly fathers, while others are not. Most of you are Christians and have the hope and joy of knowing your Holy Father in heaven. As I think about the song I sang as a child, I think about our country’s great need to honor God and place the whole world in his hands.

Only God is a perfect Father. Only God can perfectly guide the earthly fathers in the world right now, and he wants to do that. Which father comes to your mind as someone you need to stop and pray for right now? 

Thank God for those who are working hard to parent well

Cooper Alan has a song that will make you smile. He wrote Whole World in his Hands after the birth of his daughter. The video is a peek into the love he feels for his baby girl. His lyrics are a reminder of what it truly means to be a father in this world of confused priorities. No man will ever get it exactly right, but the best dads are those who choose to work hard at the role of “dad.”

There is a life lesson from Colossians for every person and every parent. Paul wrote, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24). The apostle Paul would tell every dad today to work hard to parent their children, as if they were serving the Lord’s purpose for their lives. He would also tell them that teaching their children to know the Lord as their Father will be the greatest accomplishment in their role as a dad.

Whenever I speak to groups of parents, I remind them that they can do their very best, but their children were created with a will of their own. No amount of parenting can remove a child’s God-given free will. That fact doesn’t change their role as parents. We don’t ever stop praying, and we don’t ever stop parenting. We continue to parent in different ways, once our children are no longer kids.

I loved the Cooper Alan video because of the joy and love his face revealed as he looked at his baby girl. On this Father’s Day, every parent can take a moment to remember the awe we felt when the doctor or nurse handed our child to us and said, “Here you go, Dad or Mom.” 

We also need to remember that parenting is something we work at with all of our hearts, as our service to the Lord. We are called to serve our families as if we are serving the Lord, because we are serving Jesus.

Pray and serve those who don’t have a dad

According to AI, “25 percent (about 1 in 4) of U.S. children under the age of 18 live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. This rate has roughly tripled since 1960, giving the United States one of the highest rates of father-absent households globally.”

Every Christian in America needs to let that number sink in. My readers were probably kids in the 1960’s. The vast majority of us had a dad in our home. I’m grateful every day that I had a dad who loved me, disciplined me, and taught me to be a hard-working parent. But the number of kids who don’t have a dad like that has tripled since I was in elementary school.

As Christians, we can’t ignore the facts, and we shouldn’t ignore the need. Children need parents who will invest in their character, their futures, and their faith. Children today need that more than ever. AI also says, “While exact numbers fluctuate, various advocacy groups and studies estimate that between 70 to 85 percent of incarcerated youths and adults grew up in father-absent homes.” The stats say it all.

The good news of the gospel message

Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again. We are used to that phrase and often substitute “saved” for the words “born again.” Saved isn’t a wrong definition, but it might be an incomplete definition.

If you grew up in church and naturally came to a salvation experience, then you probably remember a day when you chose Jesus as your Lord. Later, you were baptized to affirm and witness to that choice. But when you woke up the next morning, your life probably didn’t seem much different than the day before. That wasn’t true for those early Christians in the first century. Their faith in Christ changed almost everything. It was a new beginning to their lives, their families, and their faith.

Our lives were dramatically changed by our salvation experience, whether we were aware of it or not. That is the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus spoke of in Acts 1:8. 

Who do you know that needs to become a member of our eternal, heavenly family? Some are sitting in prison. Many are sitting in our schools. Many go to work every day, wondering whether work will really make them happy. 

There are a lot of people who need a family, a complete family to embrace them. The good news of the gospel message is that through Christ, everyone can be “born again.” Who will you share that good news with for Father’s Day? Everyone can have a perfect Father if God’s children make the introductions. I pray that the young man who is spending his first Father’s Day in prison will be given that opportunity. 

God’s “got the whole world in his hands,” but he will also honor our free wills. We need to place our lives in his hands and submit to him as our Lord today. Imagine what would happen if we made that important choice each day! The world can be a better place if God’s children will work at it, with all of our hearts, knowing it truly is the Lord Jesus we are serving.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Turning your thoughts to praise

Last week I wrote about the scientific discovery that the brain cannot focus on worry and praise/gratitude at the same time. Therefore, the answers to our worries are the answers God has taught, now revealed in Scripture. 

I love that science continues to prove God’s perfection!

It occurred to me that I had blogged about the need to praise but had not included some of the concrete examples from Scripture about moving our thoughts in that direction. I thought I would do that in this blog.  

Here are some concrete ways to turn your thoughts from worry to praise. 

We need to examine what we trust

I actually just finished writing a Wisdom Matters entry from Jeremiah 17:7. (If you want that content, just click the link and scroll down a bit.) God told the prophet Jeremiah, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lᴏʀᴅ, whose trust is the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Jeremiah 17:7). 

I thought a while about that verse and it occurred to me that a lot of us tend to trust in the Lord as one of our options. God repeated himself to Jeremiah with the clarification “whose trust is the Lᴏʀᴅ.”  

We have worked hard to build our lives, save our money, take care of our health, and establish our lives so that we don’t have as much to worry about each day. We find our trust for the future in a lot of different places as a result. Trusting those places causes us to put our hope in the next bank statement we receive, the next president elected to the Oval Office, or the next prescription medication to come out. We build bank accounts, investment funds, and plans for retirement, trusting that our plans will be enough. Those are good things—unless we trust them instead of God.  

God made it clear to the prophet that we need to trust in the Lord because the Lord is always the One we are able to trust. Consider the people in Ukraine. Three years ago, they trusted in a lot of the same things we trust today. 

If we want to replace our worry for the future with trust in God, we should say with the psalmist, “Praise the Lᴏʀᴅ! Oh give thanks to the Lᴏʀᴅ, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 106:1). 

The reason our trust is the Lord is because the Lord is the only One we are able to trust completely. We don’t just praise God for all he has done, we praise God for all that he is. He is “good” and his love for us has no end; it “endures forever.” God loves us now with a perfect, enduring love. It is the same love he will show us in heaven. If you are worried about your future, remember that our trust is God. His love and our future in heaven are guaranteed. 

Aging is our blessing 

I have a big birthday this year. I’m not sure how I got to be almost sixty-five, but it happened! For the first time there are things like roller coasters and long, uphill hikes that I really can’t do anymore. I walk into my closet for a reason but only remember that reason some of the time. Aging doesn’t always feel like a blessing, but aging is our great blessing. 

After Adam and Eve sinned God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever—” (Genesis 3:22). By the way, here is a little fun Bible trivia. Notice the use of the word us in that verse. It is an early reference to the Holy Trinity.  

We often think of the ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden as a punishment for their sin when, in truth, it was a provision for their eternal lives. Sin had entered the world, and God didn’t want the world to be everyone’s eternal future. Aging, and dying are our blessing. God provided a way for us to live with him again in a perfect heavenly home, the new Garden.  

We can praise God with King Solomon who wrote to encourage all believers to “remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 11:10). We shouldn’t be at odds with our aging bodies. Put away the fears, pains, and anxieties that can shadow the older years because the true value of our lives is that they are eternal. I know that because Job wrote, “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days” (Job 12:12).  

Joy is knowing God better now than ever before. Knowing God enables us to trust him completely. 

The Lord’s lesson to Mary and Martha (and Mike and Marvin as well) 

One of the biggest problems I have with Luke 10:41–42 is that it is so often applied to only the lives of women. It’s hard to attend a Women’s Conference that doesn’t speak to this passage at some point. The truth of the Lord’s words to Mary and Martha is God’s truth for every Christian. 

For those of you who watched The Brady Bunch in the day, the Lord said, “Martha, Martha, [Martha], you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41–42). 

If we want to turn our thoughts to praise, we have to turn our thoughts away from worry, away from stress, and away from the normal, day-to-day concerns of living. Mary knew how to choose the best use of her time; Martha was still choosing her daily chores. And, for the men who read this blog post, remember that we all have Mary-and-Martha moments. We aren’t one or the other; we are both. 

I’ve often wished I could take back my Martha moments and have a do-over with them. It takes time to move our thoughts from worry to praise. It takes time to think through our wrong priorities so we can right them. It takes time at the feet of Jesus if we want to hear him speak.

Paul’s path to praise

Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians while he was sitting in Rome under house arrest. He closed his letter to that church by telling them what to think about instead of worrying about him. He wrote, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:8–9). 

Paul could have told them to meet together and devise a plan for his escape or his time before the Roman court. He could have expressed worry about the future for his ministry. Instead, he told them to think about the things that are the opposite of worry. Take time to read and reread those verses again. When you have worries or anxiety, God, through Paul, has told you what to think about instead. 

Final verses that will turn your hearts and minds to praise 

God told Isaiah, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). God created the world with that righteous right hand! What then should we ever worry about? 

King Solomon, known for his wisdom, was at the end of his life when he wrote, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). 

I spend a lot of time with my mom at her assisted living center. I am BLESSED by the smiles of those who are writing the final chapter of their stories. My time there could cause me to worry about my older years. Or I can watch them and know God has made everything beautiful in its time.  

Each time we worry, praise thoughts should be our next thoughts. The dark stuff of this life is just waiting for God’s touch to either expel it from our thoughts or turn it into something beautiful.  

Fear not. 

God has us in the palm of his righteous right hand.