Not Forsaken

by Louie Giglio

  God’s love set a rescue plan in place for you, not because you deserved or earned it, but because of His great love for you. “See what manner of love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). That’s what we are because we have been born again as sons and daughter of God.

  God’s love is described here as lavish . It’s not paper-thin or dirt-cheap. His love is not flimsy or silver-plated. It’s solid gold. And there’s enough of His love for every moment—for all your highs and lows in life—and for every circumstance you’ll ever face.

  I love how Eugene Peterson describes God’s love in his version of Psalm 36: “God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. How exquisite your love, O God!” (Ps. 36:5–7 msg ).

  There’s something more profound than just having a new spiritual birth certificate. You also now have the spiritual DNA of God. When you were born physically, everything you got came from your earthly parents. But your spiritual birth isn’t about getting anything at all from your mom and dad. They may have influenced you in your faith, encouraged you in your understanding of Jesus and shown you what it looked like to follow Him. But when you were born again, everything you received in the new you, you got from God.

  Look again at how this came to be: we are “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12–13). God is our perfect heavenly Father. And we are born of God. That means we have new spiritual DNA coursing through us. God’s DNA. Sure, I still have my DNA from Louie my dad and Martha Jeane my mom, and I received some character traits and physiology from them. But praise God, He is giving me new life. I am born again by the Spirit of God, so that means I have received a brand-new spiritual DNA from God. If you have received Him and believe in His name, then you also possess this new DNA. This spiritual DNA brings new dimensions of structure for your character, for your coping mechanisms, for your patterned responses, new building blocks for your very soul.

  When we receive this new spiritual DNA, it means whole new possibilities open up. Romans 6:6–13 indicates that our old nature was crucified right along with Jesus on the cross so that our old selves ruled by sin might be done away with. Our parental natural DNA is still part of us, but thanks to Christ, we are no longer bound by our old sinful nature. We are not slaves to sin anymore. Jesus has set us free from sin, and we are alive to God in Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 5:17 calls us “new creations.”

  I don’t mean we become divine. We’re not “little Gods,” and we’re not equal to God in any way. Yet the Bible says a new nature has been given to us by God. We actually have the spirit of Jesus living inside of us (2 Cor. 13:5). Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20), and Paul further described how Christ can “make his home in [our] hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17).

  That’s fantastic news for you and me, because it means the domino effect of our human DNA, those particular characteristics that constitute the sin nature, can be broken by the power of the life and death and resurrection of the Son of the living God. The old has passed away. A new life has begun. We are sons and daughters of God. Everything has changed.

  Stopping the Trickle-Down Effect

  There’s one more thing that results from your new birth that’s a game changer for your future. You are no longer a slave to the behavior you have seen modeled by your father (or mother). You are not a slave to the sins of your father. In Christ, you have the spiritual DNA of Almighty God woven into your soul. That means you are free to do what you see your heavenly Father doing.

  No matter what kind of relationship you had with your earthly father, if you are left to operate only out of your natural DNA, you’re never going to reach your full potential as a child of God. Sure, you’ll have the advantage of the good traits of your parents, but you’ll also suffer the downstream consequences of their genetic and behavioral flaws.

  If you’re a daughter who never got a loving embrace from your dad, it’s possible that you’ve sought to find that embrace in the arms of a lot of other men. If you’re a son who watched your dad struggle with rage or the bottle or porn or unfaithfulness or greed or aimlessness, it’s likely you swore at some point you’d never be like him in that way. Yet, years later you see the seeds of his faults trying to take root in the soil of your life.

  The ripple effects of sin are strong, and the consequences of our actions don’t impact just our own lives. Dads, there’s a lot riding on your choices and the patterns you develop. You’re not just modeling attitudes and behavior for your children; you are passing on to them the sin patterns that you think they may not see. “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation” (Num. 14:18). This doesn’t mean you are going to have to give account for your father’s sinful choices. And it doesn’t mean that God is eager to dump on you something your father did (or does). The Lord is not like that. He is slow to anger and He overflows with love and forgiveness. But sin has a trickle-down effect, corrupting generations to come.

  The King James Version, and several other versions of the Bible, translate the last phrase of Numbers 14:18, “He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation.” The word visits in this verse has a simple and clear meaning—that the father’s sins have a way of showing up for a visit in the lives of their kids. Sometimes the visit comes a day later and at other times ten years down the road. But at some point, it’s likely there’s going to be a knock at the door, and Dad’s sin is going to be looking to stay for a while.

  For example, my dad was an Olympic gold medal-winning worrier. So, naturally, I can be prone to worry. Just saying I’ll never be like him won’t work. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. His depression has come calling. His loneliness has rung my doorbell more than a few times.

  In saying this I’m not encouraging you or me to blame what’s wrong with us on our dads, or on anyone for that matter. That approach to freedom doesn’t work. I’m simply saying that, like it or not, the attitudes, actions, tendencies, shortcomings and outright rebellious, sinful choices of our dads are doing their best right now to set up shop and get control of our lives.

  But here’s the key.

  Dwelling on the negatives we have seen in our earthly fathers only serves to reinforce the behaviors or patterns that we don’t want in our lives. Every time you play that old tape of what your dad did, swearing up and down that you’ll never do anything like that, you are rehearsing once again the very thing you are trying not to do!

  I’m not going to be a workaholic. I’m not going to be a workaholic. I am not going to be a workaholic. I am not going to be a workaholic. I am not going to be a workaholic. When you say that, you just get “workaholic” ingrained five more times in your psyche. You underscore five more times what you don’t want to become.

  If we’re not careful the opposite effect can also happen. We declare: I’ll never talk to my kids that way. Or I’ll never raise my voice like that . Or I’ll never lose control in anger.

  And we don’t. But because we have camped out on the negative things that we don’t want to become for so long, we end up swinging to the far opposite edge in our parenting style. We never discipline our children, create healthy boundaries, or enforce consequences when any boundaries are willfully broken. Above all, we want our kids to like us, so we turn our promise to not be like our parents into an excuse for not being the true parent our kids desperately need. The result can be kids who can’t function in a consequential world and who are not sure they are truly loved. Sure, on the surface no child wants boundaries, but without boundaries it’s possible they’ll wonder if they are really valua
ble to their parents. So the kids are unsure about life because there were no guardrails, yet in the parent’s mind they succeeded. They didn’t raise their voice like their dad.

  You see, fighting the negative only puts us on the wrestling mat with what we don’t want to become. And it’s a fight we cannot win in our flesh.

  Revival on the Inside

  Because that fight is impossible in our natural capacity, that’s why this idea of new birth is so revolutionary! Bad habits aren’t really broken, as much as they are replaced by good habits. Negative thoughts don’t just go away because we want them to. They go away when they are replaced by good and positive thoughts.

  That’s the beauty of being able to live out the potential of our new spiritual DNA. We are not left to try to dynamite the “old us” in our own strength. We have a spiritual revival happening on the inside, new spiritual genetics that are informing the way we think and live.

  The new standard for our lives that we find in Ephesians 5:1 is this: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.” You can actually resemble the characteristics of your heavenly Father. People will begin thinking things such as, He’s sounding more and more like his Father; She has her Father’s way of relating to people. God’s goal for your life does not end with spiritual birth. His plan is to watch you grow into spiritual maturity. He’s thrilled that you’ve been born again. But His plan is for you to grow up to become a mighty woman of God, a mighty man of faith. And He knows you can or He would never have set out this invitation.

  Instead of fighting against the tide of the old ways handed down by your father, you can rehearse the new ways you see in your heavenly Father. Try saying this: I’m going to get better at making wise decisions. I’m going to get better at making wise decisions. I’m going to get better at making wise decisions. I’m going to get better at making wise decisions. I’m going to get better at making wise decisions. Five times you have reinforced who you do want to become! You are replacing the negative with a new picture of who God says you can become. Why would you want to do this? Because your Father is wise and His truth teaches you to think like He thinks. His Spirit gives clarity and courage to make the right choice at the right time.

  The most natural thing in the world is to grow up to be like your earthly father (not inevitable, as we’ve discussed, because bad patterns can be broken). But just as little children grow to resemble their parents, in the same way, your perfect Father wants you to get used to the idea of growing up spiritually to look like Him. It might seem like a high bar from where you’re standing, but He knows it’s possible for you to grow up and be like your heavenly Abba. You are free from the past and able to become who God has made you to be.

  Set Free

  Remember that moment when John the Baptist pulled Jesus up out of the Jordan River after Jesus’ baptism and the voice was heard from heaven? The voice didn’t say, Hey, everyone, this is my slave! He’s going to work really hard and do everything I need him to do.

  No, the Father said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Yes, Jesus was going to work really hard, and He was going to fulfill all the plans and purposes of His Father. But the Father wanted Him to know first and foremost He was a Son.

  It’s the same with you. In Christ you are no longer a slave; you are a daughter—a son—of the Father. “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Rom. 8:15–17).

  This is the benefit of God’s rescue plan. “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir” (Gal. 4:4–7). Your identity is that of a loved child. And you are free. Think about some of the ways your freedom releases you:

  You are no longer a slave to the abandon you experienced when your dad decided he didn’t want to be a part of your life anymore. It happened, but it doesn’t define you.

  You are no longer a slave to fear, unsure about the future because you never knew if your dad was going to show up or not.

  You are no longer a slave to the kind of thinking that says, None of the men in our family have been faithful to their wives, and I’m scared I’m going to be like them. Or, My dad never showed me what a good man loving a woman looked like and I’m afraid I’m never going to be able to find the right one because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for.

  You are no longer a slave to the wall you’ve erected to protect your heart from additional hurt in the event your dad didn’t call, or show up, or reach out, or care.

  You are no longer a slave to divorce. It’s real and you live in its wake every day, but it doesn’t dictate who you are.

  You are no longer a slave to the abuse or the addiction of your parents or even the grave where your father is buried.

  You are no longer a slave to the persona or character you have created for yourself in an attempt to escape the pain of your real life; the alter-ego that’s just a projection to the world—you trying to convince them and yourself that you’re okay.

  You are no longer a slave to the role of sole mediator and keeper-of-the-peace between your parents, a role you may have filled since you were a small child.

  You are no longer a slave to the heart numbness you have grown accustomed to.

  You are no longer a slave to living life at an emotional distance from everyone you care about, afraid of repeating past relational failures and the pain it might bring.

  You are no longer a slave to dread, that looming sense that cancer or an accident or some other terrible fate is going to rob you of everyone you love.

  You are no longer a slave to the co-dependency of being what your mom needed when your dad bailed on her and the family.

  You are no longer a slave to the thinking that you’ll never be good enough .

  You are no longer a slave to the lie that you’re not worthy of love.

  You are no longer a slave to comparison.

  You are no longer a slave to the idea that you’ll never have a father’s embrace.

  You, my friend, are a uniquely designed, wonderfully created, dearly loved son—or daughter—of a perfect Father. And, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

  All this is yours because through Christ you were born again. Born as a child of God with new spiritual genes!

  These spiritual genes are there at your rebirth, and in the next chapter we’ll look at how we grow stronger and how we become men and women who reflect our Father’s heartbeat to the world.

  Chapter 10

  Be Imitators of God

  On a spiritual level, our propensity toward emulating a model can be good news for us. We’ve talked about how the most important thing about us is what we think about when we think about God, and how, fortunately, we aren’t left on our own to figure out who God is.

  God is a revealer, and He wants us to know who He is. He wants you to respond to the correct image of Him. He doesn’t want us wasting our whole lives because we don’t know who He is, or because we’re responding to a wrong image of Him. Primarily, God reveals Himself as a perfect Father. He models ultimate fatherhood. That doesn’t lower the awesomeness of God. Or tarnish the fact that He’s the creator and sustainer of the universe, or that He’s all-powerful and wise beyond our understanding.

  It means that God is knowable to us. By faith in Christ we can become the children of God, and as ch
ildren of God we receive the Father’s blessing. The Father loves us and accepts us and invites us close to Him.

  If the blessing of God being our father was all there was to the relationship, then we could end the book right here. But there’s more than simply receiving the blessing of being beloved sons and daughters of God. At the end of the blessing comes a phenomenal responsibility and opportunity—

  We’re invited to model our lives after our heavenly Father .

  Beyond the Mushed-Up Peas

  Maybe that further invitation doesn’t sound good to you. I’m fine with just the blessing, thanks. You’re loved. You’re accepted. God’s involved in your life. So, you’ll take your new identity as the child of a perfect Father and sit on that identity. You are content to stay in the blissful innocence of being held like a baby in the Father’s arms, someone who never takes responsibility to grow up.

  If this is your thinking, then know you’re missing out. It’s actually in your best interest to want to develop and mature in Christ. Why? In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul laments that the believers have stayed “mere infants in Christ.” He wants to give them spiritual solid food, but they’re not ready for it yet. He can only give them milk, because they are still worldly.

  Imagine that all your friends are going to a barbecue on the beach. You can count on there being baby back ribs and salmon on the grill and all the sides. Frisbees will be flying, and the night will be filled with laughter and stories by the fire. Your mouth is watering at the aromas coming off the grill.