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HOW DOES DAD FEEL?
#5
GETTING PRESENTS FOR THE KIDS
There's a birthday we simply have to mention today
— whether it fits or doesn't fit our topic of the week. Fortunately, it
ties in rather nicely, we'll discover Billy Graham's 81st birthday. On
page three of his recently released autobiography, Just As I Am, he tells
us:
"I was born on November 7, 1918, four years before the armistice
that ended World War I and one year to the day after the Bolshevik Revolution
in Russia."
It's hard to envision that a man born before the end
of World War I could have been on television here in 1999 just a few days
ago, preaching his heart out from a evangelist meeting in San Antonio, Texas. But
such is how the Lord has blessed this unique servant. I'm sure he's receiving
greetings from all around the globe, and we add ours right here: Happy
birthday, Billy Graham.
With our topic this week being the love of God, we've used as a series
title: HOW DOES DAD FEEL? How deep, really, is the love our heavenly Father
has for each of us?
In this delightful autobiography, Billy Graham details the many, many
evangelist meetings he's held around the globe. And of course, virtually all of these
forced him to leave his family behind, sometimes for months at a time.
He would absolutely ache, he writes, at each departure. He hated saying
goodbye. There's an old black-and-white picture in the second photo section
where he's kissing his wife Ruth goodbye. Little Bunny, his third daughter,
is standing there holding Mom's hand, a sad look on her face. And even
while he felt certain God was calling him to those mission appointments,
it was painful for a father to be apart from his loved ones. You can be
sure he treasured the moments at Little Piney Grove there in Montreat,
North Carolina — the baseball with the kids, the Rook games, the hikes,
the worships.
He tells how in those early years he got in the habit of bringing each
of the children a gift after the trips. Mom and the whole tribe would
come down to the train station in Black Mountain to welcome him back.
And so they kind of fell into the habit of greeting him with "Daddy,
did you bring us anything?" But after Ruth, his wife, broke them
of that habit, telling them it wasn't very polite, they would simply follow
him into the house and then ask in their sweetest tones: "Daddy,
can we help you unpack your suitcase?"
He also confesses that the years of preaching and overseas ministry blunted
his skills with a hammer and a saw around the house. A friend called once
and asked Ruth: "Is Billy handy?" "No," she said,
trying not to laugh, "but he keeps trying." Once when he was
shoveling some dirt out in the yard, his son Franklin watched in amazement.
"Daddy, you can work!" he said finally, much to Graham's amusement.
Well, these birthday memories are pleasant, and we appreciate how Pastor
Graham has opened up the door to the family dwelling, so to speak, and
given us a glimpse inside. But how much more important for you and me
to glimpse the love of a heavenly Father that transcends even the goodness
of a Billy Graham. And Billy would certainly be the first one to say so.
And the parallels between a dad's love and the infinitely higher love
of God are such life-changing truth for us today. I'm sure Billy Graham
loved shopping for those five gifts — plus one for Ruth, of course — there
at Heathrow Airport or in Tokyo or in Nairobi. At last it was time to
go home! And what pleasure it gave him to pick out the gifts.
Well, how much more does God want to give gifts to you and to me? He's
eager to pour out heaven's blessings, it says in Malachi chapter three.
A paragraph comes to mind from a classic old book called Steps to Christ,
by E. G. White. Here it is:
"What can the angels of heaven think of poor helpless human beings,
who are subject to temptation, when God's heart of infinite love yearns
toward them, ready to give them more than they can ask or think, and yet
they pray so little and have so little faith?"
All through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, especially
in Matthew chapter seven, He tells us how much God wants to give us "(quote)
good gifts." "So ask!" He says in verse seven. "Ask
and He'll give it to you. He wants to! He's ready to!"
And of course, when I think of those long Billy Graham evangelist meetings in foreign
cities, the painful absences, how well I remember some of my own. Six
and seven weeks in a distant city many time zones away. It's always been
rewarding work, but we certainly miss our loved ones. How much more does
our absence from God hurt Him! He misses us because we're on a distant
planet, isolated by sin. He also misses us when we refuse to be in relationship
with Him, when we go our own way, walking down our own roads, without
time in fellowship with Him. A contemporary Christian song by Michael
W. Smith, entitled Once a True Believer, describes how God misses that
person who used to be in a relationship with Him. There's an empty place
in the Father's heart, he sings, for that prodigal son or daughter.
Have you ever been through a divorce or a painful romantic breakup? And
you missed that person terribly. David tells me about a mission memory
where some of the Christian families in Bangkok would send their high
school kids down to a boarding school in Singapore. One young couple put
their 14-year-old daughter on a plane for her ninth-grade year. Later
that very same evening he saw them on the porch listening to a little
cassette of Cyndee singing. And their eyes were misty with the memories.
Well, God has those same feelings when we're away from Him, only multiplied
a million times.
Maybe you don't feel that love today. Even though you don't feel like
celebrating, because it feels to you like God is a distant stranger. Maybe
He doesn't exist at all, you even think. It certainly doesn't feel like
He exists. You pray and hear nothing. You're lonely and feel nothing.
You come back from the funeral home with empty arms; it seems like you're
so alone since your baby died. And you feel nothing. "Where's this
God, Melashenko!" you want to scream at the radio when you hear our
program. "I don't feel a thing!"
Listen, friend, that's a very real challenge here in 1999. Others seem
to feel so much from heaven, and maybe we don't. And when we have a radio
series entitled HOW DOES DAD FEEL?, you want to say, "Never mind
that. Why don't you talk about how I feel instead?"
Let me encourage you with the testimony of someone who went through your
exact situation. One of the great religious writers of all time, Hannah
Whitall Smith, traveled that valley of darkness. Feeling nothing. Wondering
why all the buzz of spiritual joy was hitting her neighbors but not her.
Finally, after years of studying and praying and walking in the shadows,
in her book The Unselfishness of God, she made this observation in a section
entitled "My Awakening."
"It was no longer ‘How do I feel?' but always
‘What does God say?'"
Despite the flatness of her feelings, the Bible said
God loved her. He loved her passionately; He loved her with great intensity;
He had sent His own Son to redeem her. These were facts plainly written
in her Quaker Bible, and the lack of feelings were irrelevant to the truths
of God's Word. She was loved! Period!
"He loves me," she writes. "He
forgave me, He was on my side and all was right between us." Then
she adds: "I had got my first glimpse of the unselfishness of God,
only a glimpse but it was enough to make me radiantly happy."
Notice that this was a happiness based on truth, not
on the whims of daily emotion. She goes on to tell the marvelous story
where Martin Luther had a kind of dialogue with the devil. Maybe you've
heard this one:
"The devil said to him: ‘Luther, do you
feel that you are a child of God?' and Luther replied, ‘No, I do not feel
it at all, but I know it. Get thee behind me, Satan.'"
And she concludes: "The facts of religion [are]
far more important than my feelings about these facts."
Here's the bottom line, then, friend. Our God, our Father in heaven, loves
you right now with a love that is incredible, overwhelming, intense, powerful,
everlasting. It would be unbelievable except that we can trust in the
Word of God; we can believe it. God loves us as the Father loved the Prodigal
Son. God's love for us is strong enough, almost, to compel us to enter
His kingdom. Almost. And yes, it's a love that surpasses even the love
that our birthday friend, Pastor Billy Graham, has for Gigi, Anne, Ruth,
Franklin, and Ned . . . and now his 19 grandkids.
I appreciate the portrait of love I get from a wonderful autobiography
like Graham's bestseller, Just As I Am. But I have to remind myself that
even this giant of a man shows us only that: a portrait. The real thing
is how much God loves us. In his book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis tells
us that in heaven we will turn:
" . . . from the portraits to the Original,
from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures [God] made loveable
to Love Himself."
Yes, friend, that's Dad. Your Dad and my Dad. That's
how much He loves us.
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