SCT 2: Yes, it's uncomfortable to call God "daddy"

by Darren Rusco

Note: I'm working on a book about hearing God's voice. The process of writing is a slog for me, so I decided to work it out through blog posts, hoping that would help me get ideas out to print, and also give readers a chance to feedback and help form the end product.

Chapter 2

Yes, it’s uncomfortable to call God “Daddy”

Communication is the expression of a relationship change

One of the reasons Jesus came to earth was to change how people could interact with their God. Jesus told his followers in John 15:15:

I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

Jesus changed the relationship status from slave to friend. That is quite a leap. We can see the core issue behind this change is communication. “You are my friends since I have told you everything.” In a master-slave relationship, the slave does not have the privilege of knowing the secrets of the master’s heart. If a day came where a master was confiding in his slave, that would be the evidence they were now friends. So revelation is the fruit of the relationship change.

This idea is fundamental to learning to hear God’s voice. As new covenant believers, living after the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are in a completely different relational position than the old covenant saints. That we have the Spirit of the living God permanently in us, puts us in a place of advantage compared to the saints of the old covenant who did not experience this privilege. But the way we pray and think so often reveals we are trapped in an old covenant mindset.

When you go into your closet to pray, are you prepared for God to confide in you? Do you think of your relationship in this way? Jesus paid the price of his blood so that you could carry this identity of friend instead of slave. But it goes much further than friendship! In Galatians 4:4-7, Paul expands upon this relationship change:

But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, ‘Abba, Father.’ Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.

While Jesus referred to the slave to friend relational change, we see Paul take the change even further, writing that we are no longer slaves, but instead, God’s very own children! Imagine a slave calling his master “father.” This relational change is inconceivable. A slave becoming an adopted heir with an invitation to call the master “Abba” would have been preposterous in the culture to which Paul wrote. And indeed, “abba” is the Hebrew word for “dad” that is still used in Jewish culture to this day. You will still hear little kids shout “abba” when they run to their dad’s waiting arms.

I do get somewhat amused by watching people squirm in the pews as this idea is taught from pulpits. For many people, the idea of calling their God “daddy” is at best cringy and at worst, downright disrespectful. For many subcultures of Christianity, the idea of reverence for God cannot exist together with the idea of intimacy with God. Pause for a moment and think about why this is. The relational change to friend/child invites us to experience a broad spectrum of feelings towards God, in the same way a child is free to express feelings towards his or her parents. Celebration, laughter, dancing, weeping, and countless other traits are normal behaviors of intimacy in this relational space. But would a slave feel free to express these emotions in front of his master? No, because it would be inappropriate and disrespectful in that relational space. So when I hear people get offended towards the attitude of emotion with God, I see a sure sign of misunderstanding the identity change Jesus won at the cross.

While I won’t insist that everyone change their vocabulary to include the word “daddy”, I will stand firm on the idea that unless we understand the nature of the relationship change from old to new covenant, we will not flourish in the hearing of God’s voice. Our behavior reflects what we actually believe. If I authentically believe that I am an intimately loved child of God, it will be normal for me to press into him for frequent revelation. This is why the relationship was changed in the first place.

These changes could never happen according to the law set forth in the old covenant. But Jesus was sent to earth in order to make the change. Jesus gave many gifts to his followers through his death and resurrection, one of them being the relationship change of slave to son and daughter, which allowed God to send the spirit of Christ into our hearts. Sons and daughters and friends of the master are in a relational position to receive revelation.

Although Jesus installed the new covenant with his blood at his death, he ministered and taught the new covenant throughout his life. This made his teachings and actions revolutionary and controversial, and his teachings on prayer would have been no exception to this. In Luke 11 we have some of this teaching. Following an illustration about a man banging on his neighbor’s door at midnight, demanding some bread, and then the neighbor telling him to go away, Jesus says:

If you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence. And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.

Why are these words revolutionary? Because these actions would never be allowed by a slave. A master tells a slave to go away, and they go away. But Jesus says not to take no for an answer! Nobody at that time would have prayed how Jesus described in Luke 11. Shameless persistence sounds, looks, and feels downright disrespectful. I have heard it taught frequently from our pulpits that there are three possible answers to every prayer: yes, no, and not yet. But does that sound like the teaching of Jesus? Do you see “yes, no, and not yet” in Luke 11? I see Jesus teaching quite the opposite. Therefore, the unwillingness to be persistent in prayer, and not take no for answer, is another sign of misunderstanding the identity change Jesus won at the cross.

I am trying to shine a light in those dark corners of our hearts that still operate with a slave-master mentality. How comfortable are you with approaching God and not taking no for an answer? Yet God is the one inviting this posture. If we don’t have conviction in this area, it will be difficult to embrace the idea of a God who confides in his people.

How does God confide in his people?

Jesus announced the relational change to his followers from slave to friend and demonstrated this by giving them revelation. God the father announced the relational change to his followers from slave to heir and demonstrated it by giving them the Spirit of Christ. The revelation ministry of Jesus was a foretaste of the revelation ministry of the Spirit. We should stand secure knowing that one of the many ministries of the Holy Spirit is revelation. His Spirit in our spirit is for the purpose of communication. Paul explains this mystery in 1 Corinthians 2:11-12:

No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

Plainly stated, we received God’s Spirit so we can know God’s thoughts. He communicates from His Spirit to our spirit.

If we want to pursue the voice of God, we must know who we are in God’s eyes. We must know THAT God wants to communicate with us and that he gave his Spirit for that very purpose. We should not walk through our Christian life with the identity of a slave, someone with whom God does not want to reveal His heart.

One of the whispers I heard from God early on in my listening journey was, “You don’t know how to pray, I am going to teach you how to pray.” I knew this was God. This phrase did not make me feel bad or embarrassed, it filled me with anticipation! And if ever there was a true statement, this was it. Already though, my prayer life was exponentially better, yet God was saying there was much more to come, as I continually heard this phrase for almost a year.

Then one evening in a prayer meeting a man approached me quite sheepishly and said that God had spoken to him about me. This was unusual for me at that time, but I invited him to feel free to share. He hesitated for a moment as he felt awkward about telling me, “I think God told me that you don’t know how to pray, but he is going to teach you how to pray.” You can understand why he was so reserved. But I let him off the hook by telling him I had heard God say that same phrase many times throughout the last year. He told me that God wanted me to minister through intercession.

To be honest, I really didn’t know what intercession was, besides me praying for another person. Trusting that I was ignorant on this topic, I approached my friend Alfredo, who I believed knew some of the deeper aspects of the workings of God that I hadn’t learned yet, and asked him about intercession. His excitement over the topic confirmed my ignorance. He gave me a biographical book to read called Rees Howells: Intercessor. The testimony of Howells’ life is difficult to believe, and if you are up for being stretched, I recommend you read it. According to Howells, in order to gain a position of intercessory authority, where through prayer you can change a circumstance, you must first be able to identify with a person or situation and share in the suffering.

To be honest, I never came close to even thinking this way. My praying was so casual, with this idea that maybe God would answer, maybe he wouldn’t - either way was fine by me. But intercession involved understanding who I am, sharing in the pain of the person or situation I am interceding for, taking Jesus’ teaching on prayer from Luke 11 literally, and then storming the throne of God with aggressive prayer that usually sounds like angry groaning rather than tidy prayers found on a inspirational poster.

So in the spring of 2011, armed with this information, I went for it. I would take up a cause or a person and bring it to God with the understanding that I would not leave until I heard back what God would do. And in that year I saw more instantaneous answers to prayer than I ever have in my life. It hasn’t always been that way, but there was something intense and radical about that season. There were at least three cases where I interceded for a person without them knowing it, while I carried the intercessory aggression, and before I was done praying that person texted me to tell me that something had just changed. They had no idea what I was doing. There was a marriage restored, a child’s behavior changed, a spouse who came to know Jesus, cancer that healed, and so much more.

Why did all of this happen? Was I specially gifted? No. The thing God wanted to teach me about prayer was actually not about prayer. It was something deeper about who I am, that once discovered, manifested in a changed communication behavior with God. I needed to realign my view of our relationship to discover there was so much more.