My Father Is Missing

The spotlight in society has fallen on women who choose to have a child, but not a husband. On one hand, the media has been telling the conservative voices to not bother single mothers. On the other hand, you see more and more articles about what happens when there is no father. One of the leading health officers in the United States has said, "The greatest issue facing us is fatherlessness." Isn't that surprising? Time magazine commented on women who choose the fatherless family: "They are bringing a child into the world with a hole at the center of his life where a father should be." I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I'd like to have A Word With You about my father is missing.

Our word from the Word of God comes from Luke 15. This is the familiar story of the prodigal son, who got his inheritance early from his father, went to a far country and spent it all, and ended up feeding pigs, and trying to eat with them. Verse 17 says, "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father, and say to him, Father I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men.' So he got up and went to his father."

This is the story of a searching man whose real problem was that he was away from his father. Maybe that's a picture of you right now. In the story, God is the father, and God has told us He wants us to know Him as Heavenly Father. You say, "Well, if he is like the father I had, I'm not too interested." Well, remember this. God is not like the father you had on earth. He is like the father we all wish we had, and what you are feeling down deep in your soul is father lonely. We have a hole that we are waiting for a father to occupy. How do we lose Him, and how do we find Him? Look at the verbs in Luke 15. It says that the young man "set off for a distant country." The Bible says we have all done that. It says, "We have all sinned and fallen short of God's glorious ideal," and wandered away like sheep.

We are away from God by our own choosing. The next verb says, "He squandered his wealth." All your years away from God are squandered years. They are wasted years until you know the relationship with a father that you were made for. The next verb says, "He spent everything." You can do that so easily. We spend, in search of the missing part of us. We spend our self-respect, our relationships, our virginity, our reputation, and our future. We can not find ourselves in achievements, relationships, or pleasure. We spend everything, and then it says, "he longed to fill his stomach." Maybe you feel an awful emptiness inside that nothing has been able to fill.

Then we read, "He came to his senses." Maybe that is where God is bringing you right now. It is hard to live without God. It is hell to die without Him. It says that the son went up to his father. There is only one way you can get to the father you were made by and were made for. In John 14:6, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the except through me." What would happen if you came to Him today? It says that "while the boy was a long way off, his father saw him, was filled with compassion for him, and ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him." That is the welcome you could get from God today. He runs to you with His arms open wide. Why don't you run to Him and be born into His family today? No longer will you have that hole in the center of your life where a father should be. No earth father could ever fill that hole anyway. It was made for your heavenly Father. Come to Him and you will never be father lonely again.

If you would like to know more about what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or if you want to know for sure that you belong to Him... Read YOURS FOR LIFE!

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