what's in a name?

1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, [a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1-2 TNIV)


I went to see the movie Firewall a few weekends ago. It stars Harrison Ford and the overall the movie was good. The group of guys I went to see the movie with all agreed that it ended sort of abruptly, but that’s sort of beside the point.

The beginning of the movie is a montage of the day-to-day happenings of Harrison Ford’s character (Jack Stanfield) and his family: Beth (his wife), Sarah (his teenage daughter) and Andrew (his son). After the montage and initial credits for the movie are done, the first scene of the movie shows Jack getting ready to leave the house for work. Jack kisses his Beth good-bye, tells Sarah and Andrew to stop fighting and right before he is about to go out the door, they show his daughter Sarah say “good-bye, Jack”; and she says it with this defy-authority, teenage kind of tone in her voice.

Forward to the end of the movie…(no, I’m NOT going to tell you what happens).

Let’s just say that tragedy strikes this upper income, Seattle-based family. And in the very last scene of the movie, Jack’s family runs up to him in relief that they are all alive and you hear the voice of the once defiant Sarah scream, “Daddy!”

It’s a small detail, but a detail that I noticed.

A few months ago, I made a conscience decision to begin referring to God as “The Father”. In effect, calling Him the Heavenly Father. Now, I don’t call Him this exclusively. Sometimes I call Him God or Lord. But, I’ve really tried to use “Father” or “The Father”. There were several reasons for this. One reason was because many of the authors that I was reading referred to God as The Father. Another reason was because Jesus referred to God as His Father, The Father. And lastly, in hopes of having a relationship with God and being more present to Him, I felt like using the title “Father” would make things more personal, more intimate.

For many people, this might be extremely difficult. Using the term father may be a reminder of growing up without a father or growing up with a bad father. For instance, my wife’s father divorced her mom and left the country when she was 17 years old and has not contacted her since then. He was a Muslim man and had a pseudo-epiphany about his devotion to his religion. When his attempts to revitalize some of the religious customs with his family failed, he made the decision that God was more important than his family and he moved back overseas to Jordan. Meaning he divorced his wife and left his 19 year-old son, his 17 year-old daughter (now, my wife) and his 8 year-old daughter.
For my wife, it was understandable that calling God “Father” may not have been the easiest thing to do. But, as her relationship with God has grown and gotten deeper, it’s become less difficult.

In the movie, Sarah is not unlike many of us. The title Father has lost some respect over time. Because of the lack of fathering in our country it has become less enticing to say and less meaningful in our society. It makes sense that we would rather call our Father in Heaven anything ranging from God to Lord to “the big man up stairs” as long as it keeps Him at arms length from us. It gives the illusion of holiness or religious piety without any relationship or true intimacy.

Jesus instructs us in Matthew 6 “this, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus, modeled intimacy for us and with this prayer, He is inviting us into that type of intimate relationship with His Father and our Father, God.

After the movie finished, all I could think about was “why did it take a tragedy in Sarah’s life to scream out ‘Daddy’?” In the comfort of suburbia, Sarah was able to become complacent enough to just call her dad “Jack”. Then tragedy strikes and puts every member of the family’s life on the line and at the very end…she is screaming “Daddy” as she’s running to hug him.

Why do we wait for tragedy to strike our lives before we accept Jesus’ invitation to call His Father in Heaven, our Father?

Are we complacent?

Is there just enough religion in our life to keep an arm’s length from God, because ‘we just don’t call God ‘the Father’ in this congregation’?

Do we really need tragedy to strike in our lives before we identify God as our Heavenly Father?

What will it take for us to begin walking in the promise? It’s the promise that we are the children of our Heavenly Father, the sons and daughters of the Living God.

Are you walking in the promise? Or are you living your life like a defiant teenager?

My challenge to you is the same challenge I place upon myself. Begin to refer to God as “the Father” or “the Heaven Father” or “the Father in Heaven”. They are synonymous, so don’t get hung up on which one you use or whether you are consistent. The point is to begin making your relationship with God personal, more personal. Intimate. Like a Father and a son; Like a Father and a daughter; Like Jesus, the ultimate Son.

Don’t wait until tragedy strikes your life to accept the invitation that Jesus died to make available to you.