As Christmas has just passed, one of my favorite movies is A Christmas Story. A few years ago, a third movie (yes, there was A Christmas Story 2, but let’s not descend into such pain) was released in this series called A Christmas Story Christmas. If you’re a fan of A Christmas Story, I highly recommend it! Part of the thrust of this movie (spoiler alert!!!! I apologize!!!) was remembering loved ones. In that spirit, I began to think about my Dad this year; more specifically, I began to think about my Dad, and then I thought about my step-Dad.

My Dad was not perfect. I’m sure thousands of people say that. But from the outside, my Dad was incredible. He was an IT manager, overseeing developers, system admins, etc. People he worked with loved him because they could feel how much he loved them. He was a good husband; no man is perfect at this, but it was always clear to me that my parents loved each other and us kids. He was good Dad. Admittedly, this judgment comes with the benefit of hindsight and the illumination of being a Dad myself. He let me get away with too much, and sometimes, his idea of “peace” was more in line with my brothers and I being separated than actually brokering a ceasefire.

Still, whatever his faults, one thing cannot be disputed about my Dad; he absolutely loved and followed after Jesus the Christ! Whether you prefer Yeshua, Mashiach, or even Yeshua of Nazareth, my Dad’s life reflected his devotion. From his prayer life (which I got an amazing glimpse into) to his detailed study of the Scriptures, he was a man who wanted to be as close to the triune God as one could be, albeit hampered by his own challenges and failures.

My Dad had been through the Vietnam war; as a newlywed, he decided it was best to sign up and choose his MOS than to be drafted and risk being assigned to the front lines (he later found out he never would have been drafted). And while, like many Vietnam vets, he did not talk much about his time there, I caught glimpses of his love for his fellow soldiers, from then and into the future. Though I never had the honor to serve, I learned to value and support our military from his example.

As I grew into my teenage years, moving from seeing my Dad as merely my Dad and into seeing him as a beloved fellow man, my Dad got sick. He had been diagnosed with diabetes and began to manage it with diet and exercise, though he did neither all that well. But there was a greater danger lurking just ahead. My Dad began to feel excessively tired. While we would later learn he was dealing with a chronically-low blood count, my adolescent mind saw it as lazy. After some time, the family was finally told (in point of fact, he’d even hidden it from my mother, preferring to keep the status quo until he knew there was a problem).

So, here I was with my Dad being sick, and shortly after, I found out he may be dying. That’s not the way you want to drop bad news. “Hey, I’m sick, and it’s not too bad, but…well, I’m waiting on a test that could mean I’m dying.” {THUD} How do you handle such things? Me? I argued with God….and God argued back. Call me crazy, tell me I didn’t hear from God; I don’t care. God spoke and made points I could only now think of. So, do with it what you will!

And so, a couple months went by; my Dad was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (I think I’ve written on this before), and within 7 months, my Dad was gone. No bone marrow transplant due to his diabetes, just 3-ish weeks of remission before it returned, and we knew the end would shortly come. But in these 7 months, my Dad lived in the most commendable of ways. He endured humiliating challenges (cancer survivors and their loved ones know what many of these are), counseled a man whose wife had left him, spent time with family and friends alike to say goodbye the best anyone can, and eventually, he went home to be with Jesus. Similarly, I learned to serve my Dad in a way I’d never had the privilege before. I learned that my Dad cried, sometimes, when he prayed. I learned that he didn’t want to leave us behind, but he loved Jesus more. And now, some 25+ years later, I still learn from my Dad’s notes, when I find them; be it an email he sent that my Mom forgot she printed out, a notebook I find in a box, or notes in his Bible’s margins, I echo Tony Stark, “Dead 20 years; still taking me to school!” =)

And though my Dad passed, our glorious Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three-in-one, aka the triune God, knew that I still needed a Dad for a little while longer. So, He gave me Ken. A few years after my Dad passed, my Mom chose to date again. She ended up meeting an amazing man, and not longer after, with counsel from friends, family, and pastors, they got married. I’ll never forget (this was actually before they got married) being at a pivotal moment in my life and that feeling of “I wish my Dad was here” cropped up; at that very same moment, I looked up to see Ken’s smiling face from across the room, taking pictures and beaming as if I was his kid all along!

Ken Bergstedt was the real deal, folks! Jesus took him home last year. We didn’t have constant enough contact for me to feel the loss as immediately as it is for others. Even so, I still have plenty of moments (such as now) where I miss that man fiercely! Much like my own Dad, Ken loved fiercely! You couldn’t escape a handshake, and you could rarely avoid a hug. While he wasn’t one to let falsehood or foolishness remain, you were first a creation of the triune God and in that light, he might correct a falsehood or bring an end to foolishness. But it was always in the context of fierce love!

Ken took such care of my Mom that I couldn’t help but love him. In truth, I was hesitant to receive him when my Mom and he first got together; he was a great guy on paper, but it was a different matter for him to step into the place of my Dad. I was not self-aware enough to realize the difference until we were moving furniture for my Mom one day, and my Mom told me to do something. I initially brushed it off, “I’ll do it later”, but Ken saw my Mom’s need, and he legit barked at me, “Ben, do as your Mom told you!” While I’ll never know if he saw my attitude, I initially bristled “how dare he order…”, but I (thank you, Jesus!) quickly came to my senses and realized he was right; he and I did whatever it was my Mom had asked (move a couch, I think). And while I don’t recall Ken ever having to bark at me like that again, as soon as he married my Mom, he was Dad; in truth, he was dubbed Dad Bergstedt, which made him Dad B, and the engineer in me always had a chuckle at that “Dad B” designation, as if my first Dad were Dad A. LOL! It still tickles me now, and Ken was never one to be offended by my humor at that.

Gosh, I’ve had such great men to help mold and shape me! As I reflect on the above, I can’t help but get emotional at the great Dads I’ve had, and the love they’ve shown me. Anyone who knows me knows that I can be hard to love at times. I too adamant about the truth, to the exclusion of emotions. These two men loved me dearly, treated me as a son, and invested in my life (both financially and in all other ways) for so many years, and truthfully, I don’t think I valued them enough…maybe we always feel that way. I don’t know.

There is another Father, though. For many years, I’ve fallen into a common trap in Christianity; it’s easy for us to focus on God is One, because we know what the looks like, but we often forget that God is Three-In-One. You see, one of the unique attributes of the Christian faith (as revealed throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Bible) is that God exists in Three Persons and is relational. God is One, and God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He is not three Gods, nor is He One God in three modes (or moods, as Michael Reeves says). He is One God, eternally existent as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God the Father always loves God the Son through the Holy Spirit, and God the Son always loves the Father through the Holy Spirit and reflects what His Father is doing. It is through the Son, in the hypostatic union (theology term meaning the Divine Nature/Substance and Man Nature/Substance were unified into one) of the God-man Jesus, that the Father is revealed. It is through the Scriptures/Bible, written by and through the Spirit that we know the Son. The unity of the Trinity is such a unique beauty that when one begins to contemplate it, one is hard -pressed not to gasp in awe at the thought!

For the purposes of this post, though, I want to look upon God the Father, which will be in the context of the above. Reader, if you’re a follower of Jesus, trusting in His sacrifice in your place, this Father is your Father, too! Now, you own father may have been quite different from the men I’ve described above, but let me give you a glimpse into THE Father, the one that all other fathers/dads should imitate.

You and I were created because God the Father so loves the Son. He created an entire creation out of love for His Son. I can’t speak for all dads, but I know that I’ve had my days where even my love for my kids comes second to my love for another 15 minutes of sleep! And the Son so loved creation that He wrapped Himself in human flesh, volunteering to endure cold, heat, pain, suffering, hunger, lack of sleep, that annoying humidity where your clothes stick to you but you’re not event wet, just BLEH! As we celebrate Christmas, consider that God the Son voluntarily endured dirty diapers, a smelly barn, correction from his human parents, dealing with siblings, and being, of all things, quite helpless at times because he didn’t have the musculature or physical fortitude for some action or task. These are all common things for those of us who have always been human, but God the Son took on humanity, and because He was the God-man, He was able to do whatever, but He volunteered/chose to endure the things we humans do, including temptations, though He never sinned. The temptation ends when sin is committed; Jesus never sinned, which means most, if not all, of the temptations He endured were always present.

All the while, the Father’s love was being poured out on Him, providing as needed, but sometimes withholding as needed. It was always a perfect dance in which the Son was revealing the Father, and the Son was enduring to show Himself spotless, while the Father poured out His love. Even at the end, the beatings Jesus endured, the crown of thorns, the cross, these were the Father’s love poured out in a way we rarely understand love, mostly because we’ve seen abuses perversely called love. It is not love to beat a child, but it is love to correct a child (rather than risk arguments for trying to expound on this, I will simply say, I don’t think it’s inappropriate to spank a child in an intentionally corrective way that is not out of anger or similar like revenge). It is not love to hang a person on a cross, but if your loved one asked you to let them be the one to die in the place of another loved one, barring a variety of nuances, it is selfishness to deny them (an example of this soldiers going into battle). In the perfection of the Godhead, God the Son had chosen to die in our place. His love compelled Him to endure the wrath of God so that we could rightly love God again. And because the Son’s love compelled Him, and it pleased Him to do it, so the Father’s love was compelled and He was pleased to pour out His wrath on His Son in our place. (Lest someone read this wrongly, if you chose not to accept Jesus sacrifice in your place, and if you choose to love yourself more than the triune God, you will still face wrath at the end of all things; a man who refuses to let his debt be paid, even though he will never be able to pay it himself, will still face the consequences of that debt not being paid.)

In my mind, it’s easy to believe the Father loves the Son, and as I am in the Son, loves me, such that He saves me. However, I get caught up in the day-to-day. I tend to think that the triune God somehow doesn’t love me enough when I have a bill I can’t pay, or a problem with no resources to resolve it, or even an emotional pain with no resolution in sight. But this is where we need to preach Paul’s exhortation to ourselves from Romans 8:31-32 (NASB, emphasis mine), “What then shalll we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” In our modern, transactional culture, we sometimes see things as one-and-done. Similarly, we think God did that one-time thing, saving us from our sins and enabling us to live for Him, but He won’t do any more than that. It’s one-time only, and it’s done. However, Paul makes it clear to us that God isn’t one-and-done; rather, He set the bar by Jesus dying for us and being raised up again. The triune God doesn’t look on our need and say, “You need more?! Wasn’t that first time enough?!” Rather, He looks on our timidity to ask Him and says, “I already gave you the most valuable thing; why are you afraid to ask for this little thing? Ask!”

But God the Father is also a good father, a good dad. He isn’t just going to give us everything we ask for because sometimes, we ask for things that’ll hurt us. Years ago, I section of Proverbs stood out to me and made me start adding this to my prayer life. In Proverbs 30, we have these “words of Agur” that contain this profound statement, in verses 8b-9, as Agur makes requests of God, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God.” The man asks for neither riches nor poverty. I think many people understand well the moral dangers of poverty, wherein one may deceive one’s self, justifying sin because of need. But we don’t often think about the danger of riches, believing that it is you who has made you wealthy, or thinking you don’t need God because you have X, Y, or Z. The wisdom of this man’s words are that he requests God give him neither, so that he may stay in the perfect place of trusting in God for his provisions, and being just full enough to avoid the temptation to justify sin. God the Father is a good father, giving His Son everything He needs, and the Son is a good Son reflecting a good Father, and He will give us what we need, never to hurt us, but for our best, including sometimes saying no or not-now.

This is but a glimpse of God the Father, revealed through God the Son, who is Himself revealed by the Holy Spirit, and the three-in-one working in absolute unity. It is an amazing and awesome sight! Many authors have filled small and large books with more detailed thoughts and truths out of Scripture. My intent here is not to be such an author but to whet your appetite for more of the Son, that you might seek Him and dig into the goodness of the triune God!

I have been blessed with great, but still very human, Dads. Yet, my ultimate blessing is God my Father, as I enjoy this relationship with Jesus, God the Son, who calls me brother and presents me faultless to His Father. And all of this through the Spirit who unites us, given to be our peace and companion here while Jesus is in Heaven, until He comes again. So, I encourage you, be reminded of the amazingness of the One True God, who exists eternally as One God in Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The triune God who’s love is like none other we can even grasp because it is so pure and so beyond anything we would think, but He has made Himself known to us, and we can enjoy Him and get to know Him better. He is never unkind, never unloving, and always does exactly what is needed. Oh the amazing God we serve! If you don’t know Him, I pray this encourages you to get to know Him.

Godspeed – 1 Corinthians 15:10