Oct 21th, 2025 @ YWAM Kona withh Tom Cole
If Jesus is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride, then we cannot fully understand His return without understanding the heart of the Father who walks the bride down the aisle. Without the father’s heart, we miss the tenderness of the moment where the Father presents the Bride to the Son.
When Tom became a father, his heart was troubled because he did not know how to be a good father. A child’s heart is like a container made to receive the voice of the father. Children absorb everything spoken over them, whether good or harmful.
In the Old Testament, God reveals Himself primarily as Lawgiver. The text repeatedly says, “God said” and “Moses said,” showing the authority and distance of God as covenant keeper. But in the New Testament, God reveals Himself as Father. Jesus calls Him Abba, Papa. This shocked the religious minds of the day. To them, this intimacy was scandalous.
The voice of a father carries immense power. It can speak life or death. Children receive the father’s words as identity, and they live from that identity for years, whether they realize it or not. They internalize the voice of their father and often spend their lives either fulfilling it or trying to disprove it.
Scripture gives us pictures of the father’s role in naming and calling forth identity.
God wants to lavish His children with nurture, and nurturing does not belong only to the mother. Ephesians 6 speaks of a father’s tender, nourishing love. A child is shaped not only by guidance, but by gentleness.
Before Jesus went into the wilderness to fast for forty days, the Father spoke to Him audibly: “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” If Jesus needed to hear the Father’s voice before entering spiritual battle, how much more do we need to hear it too?
****Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4