The nature of God, the power of God... He describes first His power, and His unlimited resources; then His ministry towards people. So God is very clear that the earth shall be filled with a manifestation of His glory; and that glory will be manifested through His sons. When God designed the earth, He designed it to fill it with His glory and goodness; and He had many ways He could show His glory. He's shown it through nature; so when you go to nature, you feel connected somehow to God. You go and see the vastness of the oceans, there's a connectedness seems to come to the Lord. We’re starting to touch the glory. You've seen aspects of it; that you look at the vastness of the stars and you start to see the vastness of God. You start to look at the beautiful designs in nature and creation and think; you start to see the magnificence of God, but this is nothing compared to what He has planned to unveil and reveal.
This is the thing we can catch: we are the centre of His attention! We are the centre of His attention! So God's plan to manifest His glory - it began in the beginning, and it's never changed. He planned to manifest what He is like through a father/son relationship. It's not to do with gender; it has to do with function, and the biblical understanding of the function of a son, in relationship to his father.
We'll just look first of all, at the word 'father'. So when we think about father, of course for many people there's emotional things come to mind that aren't that pleasant. But when the Bible is talking father, it's talking about these: it's talking about a source of life. It's talking about the author or originator, the supplier of life. So from a Bible perspective, everything originates from some source. The father is the source; the father is the author of life. The mother nurtures the life and brings it forth, but the father is the one who authors life. He is the source. That's where life comes from; it comes from the father. So when we're thinking about God as a Father, then we're thinking about an originator. He is the source, He is the supply; and in Exodus 34, where God reveals, He reveals that He is unlimited resources. He is the unlimited one.
When Jesus ministered in the power of the Holy Ghost, He had unlimited resources available to Him to minister; so the Father is one of unlimited resources, unlimited resources, unlimited supply. A father fits certain functions. For example, a father is the source of our identity. You take the name of your father; so if you have no relationship with a father, you struggle with identity. The father is the source of identity. Notice when Jesus comes up out of the water, the Father speaks to Him: You are My Son. You belong somewhere; your identity is in Me. The devil's first attack on Jesus was on His identity: to shift His identity away from revelation by His Father, to performance in ministry. Many people in ministry struggle, their ministry is their source of identity, so their life is tied up in it, and they use people to build who they are. That's not fathering! That's not even true ministry. That is actually spiritual trading; I'm trading, to get something! We have to be free and cleansed from the defilement of trying to find out identity in things external, when it must be found inside the Lord. If it's found in something outside you, then it's never going to be stable.
Father is a source of purpose. One of the things the Father does is, He has a purpose; the word I like to use is the word 'assignment' - fathers give assignments to their sons and daughters. A purpose is a very general, broad thing - it's like a broad, big plan. Assignment is: this is what my job is; this is what I've been given to do. So purpose could cover what everyone's called to. We're called to the purpose of: changing our community, evangelising, sharing the gospel; but specifically, you have your own assignment, and that becomes very, very important.