Introduction:
Today is Father’s Day and I’d like to wish a “Happy Father’s Day” to all our dads. Father’s Day is a special day to honor and appreciate fathers. This special day did not become a national holiday until 1972, when President Richard Nixon signed the congressional resolution permanently establishing the 3rd Sunday in June as Father’s Day.
Harry C. Meek is also given credit for the idea of Father’s Day. Mr. Meek, as president of a Lions Club in Chicago, gave speeches to various clubs in the United States about the need to honor our fathers. In appreciation for his work, the Lions Clubs of America presented him with a gold watch, with the inscription “Originator of Father’s Day” on his birthday, June 20, 1920.

Fathers, I can say without a doubt that being a good father & a good husband is the most challenging responsibility we can ever face. If you’re like most men you want to be a good father even those you may have had a poor or harmful experience with their own father.
Getting to know God as “Our Father” is the key and it requires we understand He is a loving, caring, comforting and correcting, Father. We begin this message with point number…

I. “Our Caring Father”.
1. The word father invokes different images for everyone. To some it brings the picture of love, laughter, respect, and acceptance. Unfortunately, others associate the term father with fear, rejection, and disappointment. That is why it is so important to appropriate your understanding of your heavenly Father from the scriptures and not from your experiences. God is our model of a father in the truest sense of the word. This is why our Lord would have us address him as our father. We can and should address God as our father being mindful of… child / father relationship. Calling God “Father” aids us in understanding He is knowable and approachable. —Romans 8:15
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

2. Our Father was willing to pay the price in order to save us. He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? – Romans 8:32
Our heavenly Father is always ready to meet your needs. Your heavenly Father loves you so much that He is willing to discipline you to bring you to Christian maturity (Heb.12: 5-10).

3. Even when you rebel against Him and reject His love, our Father continues to do what is best for you (Rom. 5:8). He does not make His love for you conditional upon your love for Him. He loves you even when you are not loving Him (1 John 4:19). This is what a father is like biblically. If this has not been your experience, it can be now. There is One who has adopted you and who wants to love you in a way you have never experienced. Take comfort and strength from Him—your heavenly Father. He has made you His heirs. I Peter 1:4

4. He has made you His heirs and reserves a home for you in heaven. We cannot comprehend all that is ours as fellow heirs with Christ. The knowledge that we will share Christ’s inheritance with Him absolutely should astound us! Left to our own, we could not begin to understand all that we received once we became children of our Heavenly Father. Perhaps you did not have a loving father.

5. But the Father has given you His Spirit to serve as your Guide and Teacher. The Holy Spirit will lead you to the promises, power and resources that became available when God adopted you into His family. Take time to meditate on the wonderful promises of God that are available to you. Let the Holy Spirit convince you of the reality that you are, indeed, a child of the Father and a fellow heir of Christ. We address him as Dad, not King, or Master or Sir…

Dad” is an incomplete concept. Where are we to turn if our fathers are gone, or if they fail us? Our heavenly Father knows exactly what we will face today and next week. He is eager for us to experience Him as

II. Our Comforting Father

When we are fearful, frustrated, or hurting, we need someone who not only cares, but who also can comfort us. Our heavenly Father can comfort as no one else can because He is the God of all comfort (2 Cor. 1:3). How does God comfort us? He does it in four primary ways

1. He comforts us with His promises. There are more than 7,000 promises in the Bible, and God has never broken one of them. There is a perfectly matched promise for every problem we will ever have. Psalm 23:4 remind us of this kind of comfort even in death.

2. He comforts us with His presence. The Bible tells us the Lord … will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed (Deut. 31:8). We can trust in the Lord’s presence in all of life’s problems.

3. He comforts us with His people. One of the most difficult things in life is to have serious problems and feel no one cares or understands, and there is no one with whom to share our hearts and hurts. God doesn’t comfort us just to make us feel better or to help us through our problems. According to 2 Corinthians 1:4 God comfort you and me so we can learn of His sufficient loves and grace and thereby comfort others.
Our heavenly Father wants us to be good stewards of our pain. We are good stewards only if we let painful experiences equip us to comfort those who will go through similar experiences. Then, we can comfort them with the same comfort we have received from God.

4. He comforts us with His purpose. God has a divine purpose for every problem He allows us to have. The Bible tells us: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). This means God uses our problems and pain to develop us according to his purpose. God never wastes a problem or hurt. He has a divine purpose for allowing every one of them. He is ready to show His strength through our weakness. Our heavenly Father knows exactly what is best for us,

III. He is a Correcting Father

1. God disciplines us because He cares what kind of people we are becoming. Furthermore, God cares about everything in our lives. That’s why He wants us to pray and tell Him all about our troubles. He cares! The Bible tells us to cast our worries on the Lord because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). God cares about our discouragement, our loneliness, our problems, our financial stress, our pressure at work or school, our health, and on and on.

To our surprise, we often discover that God knows far better than we do what is best for us. At times we assume that we know what would benefit us. We can even be foolish enough to assume that we don’t require anything of God. Yet God wants us to go to Him in our need (Matt. 7:7).
God is the potter; we are the clay. He uses our problems and hurts to shape us and make us more like Jesus. Our heavenly Father comforts us with His promises, presence, people, and purpose.

Getting to know God as “Father” requires we understand He is a loving, correcting, caring, and comforting Father. Yet, there is one more thing we need to know…
Getting to know God means we understand what He expects of us. Our heavenly Father wants to see a family likeness or resemblance to Him in our lives. God gives us a command in 1 Peter 1:16 to be holy as he is holy.
The word holy (HAGIOS, hag’-ee-os) means “set apart” or “sacred.” It is the idea of being different from the world. If we emulate our heavenly Father, our morals, language, attitudes, and actions are different from those of this sinful world.

Because we are to resemble our heavenly Father, Paul writes: Be ye therefore followers of God (Eph. 5:1). The word translated followers (MIMETES, mim-ay-tace’) is the word from which we get our English word “mimics.” Thus, when people see our attitudes and actions, they should see us “mimicking” God, who has made Himself known to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

When people look at your life, God wants them to see what your heavenly Father is really like. That’s why we are to emulate Him. First John 4:17 tells us God’s love is made complete in us and we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment if something is true in our lives.

Conclusion:
Be not ye therefore like untothem: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. – Matthew 6:8

Our Father loves us more than we will ever understand or imagine in this lifetime and He knows what we need even before we ask. As children of God, we need to stand in this truth and allow what is on our hearts to pour out to Him in thanksgiving, prayer, and trust that our prayers are heard no matter how long or how “well” we pray because He already knows what we need before we even ask!