My Heavenly Father

Wallace Alcorn

I experienced a distinction between my Father “which art in heaven” and my heavenly father. At a social gathering, our host broke the ice by asking each to answer her question: “How did you come to know God?” The accounts were earnest and credible testimonies as to how we came to accept Christ as our personal Savior. This is the way others took the suggestion because this is what the expression usually means.

But this is not how I took it. However the host meant it to be taken, something else came to my mind. While others reported truthfully and no doubt accurately what had been the occasion of their accepting Christ, I thought of the cause of my coming to know God.

In my case, the occasion of my decision to accept Christ might have been an October Saturday morning in 1939 in the balcony of the Tabernacle Baptist Church on West Wells Street in Milwaukee during “the invitation” in a child evangelism rally. Alternatively, it might have been the following morning at the end of the worship service at Garfield Avenue Baptist Church when I actually “went forward” at “the invitation.”

The actual cause was different. In point of fact, neither of the 1939 events was actually even the occasion. I came to this realization gradually through the years of maturing spiritually. This is to say, as I learned (not only mentally but experientially) more about God, the gospel and myself.

The occasion of my accepting Christ was my upbringing in, first, my home on North First Street and, second, as supplemented by the ministry and fellowship of Garfield church. The cause (within this occasion) was the lives I observed my parents living and the lives I saw being lived by the people in our church. Narrowing the focus still further, it was my father who embodied our Father. It must have been one of those many times Dad and I had serious talks with a shared Bible between us. My father was god-for-me (see Ps 82:6; Jn 10:34) until I accepted God in his Son.

A colleague once came to me and unburdened an incident that both sobered and challenged him—and demonstrated this to me. As he had passed his young daughter doing her homework and wanting to ask his help, she looked up and began, “Dear heavenly…” Embarrassed, the girl tried to explain: “You know, Daddy, sometimes I don’t know if you’re daddy or Jesus.”

My father not only represented God to me but also, as far as I could recognize, modeled Christ for me. To hear me say this would have made him most uncomfortable because he was quite aware of the ways in which and at times when he was not much like Christ. Nonetheless, he was in many ways and at most times very like Jesus. When I heard the nature of God and the actions of God taught, I thought of my father. What is God like? He’s, well, like Dad. My initial understanding of God was my observations—and especially experience—of my father. He was a heaven-like father.

How did I come to know God? By knowing my father who knew God and lived a consistently godly life.

I have a strong suspicion that the majority of those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior came to know God because we saw him lived in some Christian believer. When we heard the gospel proclaimed, it made sense because of what we saw in that person or those people. Frequently, we don’t recognize this immediately, but it comes to us as we grow to know Christ better.

Make no mistake about it: It is the work of the Holy Spirit that we are saved. But part of that work was and is our seeing the Spirit working out salvation in that person. Perhaps the most effective evangelistic thing we can do is to be that person.