Father Father Father

Love. There are so many degrees, levels and types of love. I love baseball, I love music, I love going to the movies, I love stimulated intellectual debate, I love women, and I love Oakland. In all these examples of love the word love can be replaced with other adjectives and still express my feelings. For example if I said, I'm a huge baseball fan, our I'm a film aficionado, or I'm a debate champion you could ascertain that to some degree I love these respective things. However, while it would be true that I love these things it still doesn't define this new level of love that I have discovered and had revealed to me.

To know love on this level is life changing. To know love like this is a secret corner under a palm tree with a slight wind on a lazy day. This type of love is made up of the thoughts and memories you have when your mother or father goes in for critical surgery and you don't know if they will come out alive. The way your heart feels when you need to say thank you one last time and you're not sure that you will have the chance. Even yet, this type of love is the way a man feels when he looks into his son's eyes and the way his son's eyes answer back unconditionally saying, "You are my hero and my friend, how I love you so dad." My wife and I are best friends and we express our love to one another often. But we both agree there is another level of love between the father and the son. When my son says, "Dad I love you," at that moment my heart is touched with the highest level of love known to man.

I was riding with my seven year old "son" one day taking him to breakfast because he loves it when I make time for him and I alone, our special time together. I looked over at him while we were at a stop light and he says," I love you dad". The feeling I got from his words prompted me to ask God,"what is this level of love that I feel between "my son" and me that blesses and yet weakens me so?" It blesses me so much that all I can think of is I never want to leave him or let him down or have this feeling go away. It weakens me because I can't fathom not having him in my life. God answered me and said, "It is the same level of love that I had for man and the reason that I became a son." A "son" is you in your purest form before the corruption and inequities of the world. In my greatest examples of love, I use the relationship between a father and a "son." I told Abraham whom I loved to sacrifice his "son" knowing that Abraham felt the same level of love for his "son" that you are feeling for yours and yet in obedience he went forward. It's the same level of love I allowed the angels who remained in Heaven and did not fall in Lucifer's rebellion to feel to for me (in the persona of Jesus) as a 'son' and watched in grief and horror as I called life out of my only "begotten son" that I may prove Satan a liar and yet open the doors for man to become the "sons" of God. I gave the example of the prodigal "son." The son that demanded his inheritance while his father was yet living and left his father and family and went out into the world and squandered his entire inheritance, while his brothers remained at home supporting their father and yet when the father saw his wayward rebellious "son" returning home while he was still a mile away his father said," kill the fatted calf and lets have a celebration for "my son" whom was lost has been found." Not only will we celebrate but I will also give him a brand new ring of "sonship" for "my son" who was lost is found.

This example is to show the unconditional supreme love between a father and a "son" and to help you better understand and appreciate the sacrifice I made when I sacrificed my only "begotten son" while it was in my sovereign power to over rule it all. I love man. It was at that moment that my heavenly father increased the portion of love in me to a new level.
With tears in my eyes I received his blessing and felt his pain. I now better understand the love and burden I have for my people because like my father I love man.