JUST LIKE FATHER
By Steve Bietz
Burke County
Another June has arrived, which means that another Father’s Day is upon us. Paul Harvey was an American radio broadcaster for ABC News Radio. He broadcast ‘News and Comment’ on the mornings and mid-days on weekdays, and at noon on Saturdays. He also shared his famous ‘Rest of the Story’ segments. From 1951 till 2008, his programs reached close to 25 million people per week.
I remember a story Paul Harvey told about a dad named Grey Baker. When Gray Baker goes golfing there in Jackson Mississippi, he would often take his young son with him. The boy has been learning the game of golf by watching his dad play the game. Mr. Baker decided to purchase his young son a set of play golf clubs for his birthday. On the next weekend, the Bakers had a family cookout in the backyard. Grey’s son had his plastic golf clubs and suddenly announced, “Dad watch me as I play golf just like you.” With that, the boy swung the golf club and then proceeded to say a couple of curse words as he let go of the club and threw it into the pear tree. Yes, unfortunately just like dad. Like father like son is usually a pretty good bet.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus claims to be the spitting image of the Father God. The term ‘spitting image’ is not biblical. We first come across it in a play by George Farquhar in his 1689 production ‘Love and a Bottle’ where we hear the line, “Poor Child! He’s as like his own daddy as if he spat out of his mouth.” In the Gospel of John, chapter 14, we come across an incident when one of the Lord’s disciples, Philip, asked Jesus to show him and the other disciples what the Father God was like. Jesus shared His disappointment with Philip’s inquiry and replied “You mean I’ve been with you all this time and you
still don’t know Me? When you’re looking at Me, the Son, you’re looking at the Father God.”
In other words, Jesus claims to be the spitting image of the Father God.
I believe one of the greatest compliments we could ever get is when a person might say about us, wow, you sure can tell he spends a lot of time with the Father God, he’s beginning to look like Him. That would be high praise indeed, but unfortunately, we don’t often live up to it. In Acts chapter 4, we see that the Jewish leadership, as they saw the boldness of Peter and John and knew them to
be uneducated and ignorant, at least in their eyes, they marveled. The Jewish leaders must admit that Peter and John looked a lot like Jesus. (Acts 4:13)
I think we should all want that for our lives, that we don’t just resemble our dads on another Father’s Day, but that we resemble our Heavenly Father to the point that people say, wow, you can surely tell that they have been walking with their Father, the God of Heaven. May we all in our daily walk, grow more and more like the Father God as we allow the Holy Spirit to transform our lives.
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Steve Bietz is the pastor at Morganton Seventh Day Adventist Church. You can read more good Christian news from Pastor Steve Bietz HERE.
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Blue Ridge Christian News covers Burke County, McDowell County, Mitchell County, Yancey County, Madison County, in North Carolina, and Christian news from around the country.
