Father's House Blog

 Last Friday I night I was speaking in Bath City Church at the "Revival Britain" conference. I was one of six speakers asked to offer reflections on what a coming revival might look like in the UK. I chose to speak about Reformation rather than revival. A revival tends to come and go, and often its impact can be quite limited to a geographical area. This is evidenced by the last revival in the UK, the Hebrides revival of 1949, which lasted only a few years and really only directly impacted some remote islands of Scotland. Reformation is a much bigger reality. The first Reformation, in the sixteenth century, transformed a whole Continent. Thanks to the bold preaching of men like Martin Luther, Europe became 75% Bible believing. And that changed everything.
    I am now convinced that we need Reformation not just revival. In other words, we need the church to undergo a radical reformation as in the 16th century and this reformation needs to be a reformation in the Father's love. The first Reformation stressed that God is a Judge and that we all stand condemned in the law courts of heaven. But Jesus is the judge judged in our place. He has paid the penalty for us on the Cross and consequently we are no longer condemned but acquitted. Indeed, not only are we declared no longer in the wrong. We are now declared in the right, because we have the righteousness of Christ.
    This was a priceless revelation and it is known as justification by faith. It is a precious doctrine that needs to remain foundational to the church. But there is a higher blessing than this. It is the blessing of adoption. In the great truth of spiritual adoption, God is the world's greatest Daddy. He is not just a judge, he is supremely Papa. As the adopted children of the Perfect Father, we are called out of the law court into the living room. We are called from the love of law to the law of love.
    Justification is great.
    Adoption is greater!
    It is my belief that adoption was neglected by Martin Luther and consequently became almost invisible in the first Reformation. There are a number of possible reasons for this. The most likely is that Luther himself was poorly fathered and he projected this negative experience onto God the Father. He confessed as much when he recounted how hard he found it to say the simple words 'Our Father'. Every time he did he thought of his own dad.
    Luther's father wounds caused him to neglect the Fatherhood of God and spiritual adoption, and so the first Reformation was incomplete. Today, however, a Second reformation is beginning. This Reformation will not bypass the great truth of the First Reformation - justification by faith. But it will add to that truth what Jim Packer called 'the highest blessing of the Gospel' - namely spiritual adoption.
    This Second Reformation - the Father Heart Reformation - is now urgent. Only such a move of God will start to provide an antidote to the global pandemic of fatherlessness in the earth today.
    A few months ago, in one of my blogs, I wrote about Paul Young's novel, The Shack. This is really a celebration of the Father heart of God in story form. Since writing the last blog the book has been consistently no 1 in the New York Times bestseller's list and there is talk of it being made into a movie.
    A few weeks ago a friend of mine called Brian Draper interviewed Paul Young and asked him if he felt that he was part of a much bigger move of God in the world. His answer in my view is electric. And it points to the possibility of a Second Reformation, a Father Heart Reformation, in the world today.
    Here is Paul Young's perspective. Enjoy!
    
    "Yes, and I say that with great humility and thankfulness that I get to be a part of this. Everywhere I go things are happening, and there is this sense of the wind changing. People are talking about the father heart of God.
    So many of us have been hurt either by the abusive presence of a father, or simply by the absence of a father, and so many of us have painted the face of God with the face of our father. And suddenly, that's beginning to change. We're beginning to realise we don't know the Father. We can't just take our own dad and mask the face of God with his.
    So that's a big change, and there's a sense that we, as individuals, are growing up with an understanding now that maybe we can actually, in this relationship, sense the presence of the Father and hear his voice."