Names of God | Week 3 | Bill Bush | Full Service

Pastor Bill Bush · Jun 20, 2022

Big Idea

Quoting the message: Our perfect Father loves and leads, end quote. — He loves us first, and through that love invites us to trust His leadership.

God calls Himself Father not to trigger fear or bad memories, but to give us the opposite: a perfect Father who nourishes, protects, and leads with love. Whatever earthly father you had, you can know and run to a heavenly Father who loved you first and is trustworthy to follow.

Key points

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1A good father both loves and leads, and the two are not in tension.
Pastor Bill tells a story about being forced by his dad to mow the lawn and clean the pool while sick from secretly drinking the night before a bowling tournament. His dad already knew what happened but made him keep his word anyway, showing care by bringing water and leadership by holding him to his promise — love and leadership working together, not against each other.
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2Culture gives us distorted pictures of fatherhood that shape how we see God.
Pastor Bill runs through pop-culture father archetypes — the mean, controlling father (Darth Vader), the bumbling sitcom dad, the absent or dead father — and notes studies showing people's description of God almost always mirrors their description of their own father.
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3Rules without relationship breeds rebellion, and relationship without rules breeds chaos.
Pastor Bill contrasts the hyper-legalistic church that has the rules but no love, with the version that offers love but no boundaries, arguing both misrepresent God as Father and both leave people confused about who He really is.
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4Two New Testament words for father, pater and Abba, both point to love joined with leadership.
Pater means nourisher, protector, upholder — someone who cares and leads. Abba, often mistaught as just an intimate 'daddy,' literally carries the sense of 'father, I will obey you' — intimacy paired with obedience, not one without the other.
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5The Lord's Prayer is an outline for an honest, ongoing conversation with the Father, not a magic formula.
Working through Matthew 6, Pastor Bill shows the prayer moving from honoring who God is, to surrendering to His will, to naming real needs, to confessing sin, to asking for protection from temptation — modeling a real relationship rather than a transaction.
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6Forgiving a father who hurt you is possible even without reconciliation.
Pastor Bill distinguishes forgiveness, which takes one person, from reconciliation, which takes two, and encourages people to release even a father who never sought it — describing writing out forgiveness on paper and burning it as one way to let it go.
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7Jesus modeled honest, submitted prayer to the Father in Gethsemane, and only through His obedience can we call God our Father.
Pastor Bill points to Jesus crying out 'Abba, Father' before the cross, honestly asking for the suffering to be removed but yielding to the Father's will — showing that only because Jesus obeyed can anyone become God's child and pray this prayer at all.

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is to stop treating God like a distorted father figure and start actually talking to Him like the perfect Father He is.

Talk to your Father honestly in prayer
Use the Lord's Prayer as an outline rather than a recited formula — start by honoring who God is, ask what He wants for your life, name your real needs, confess sin, and ask for protection.
Forgive the father, or anyone, who hurt you
Release the person even if reconciliation isn't possible or safe; Pastor Bill suggests writing out the forgiveness and burning the paper as a way to let it go and stop being held back by it.
Stop trying to manipulate or appease God
Quit treating prayer like bargaining for what you want or trying to avoid His anger, and instead rest in the fact that He already loves you and knows what you need.
Run to Jesus if you've never surrendered to Him
If you've never said yes to Jesus, turn from trying to earn God's love or do your own thing, confess you're a sinner, and put your faith in what Jesus did on the cross.
Get baptized if you know the Lord and haven't yet
Pastor Bill encourages anyone who knows Jesus but has never been baptized, or who comes to know Him today, to go get baptized right away.

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all understanding. If you if you don't understand what those words mean, you hear fear, you think father, you think abuse, you think control”
Read the whole chapter →
From the transcript
“so it starts off here when he stops and he goes in verse five of chapter six. He goes, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in synagogues where everyone can see them”
From the transcript
“But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father in private. Then your father who sees everything will reward you”
From the transcript
“He goes, when you pray, says another thing, don't pray this way either. Don't babble on and on as the gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again”
From the transcript
“He said pray like this. Our father in heaven may your name be kept holy. He starts with honor, the honor, the respect of look to who God is, he's holy”
From the transcript
“he goes, may your kingdom come soon, may your will be done on earth as it is heaven. It's so funny how many times people pray that”
From the transcript
“But then it goes, give us today the food we need. Now you're talking needs. What do I need to accomplish what God's made me for”
From the transcript
“And then he goes from that right into the super relational, because then he says, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us”
From the transcript
“like I said in first John it says, we love because he first loved us. We can love God back only after he loved us, but it says we can love”
From the transcript
“And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. He's saying, don't let us don't let me fall for the lies, God”
From the transcript
“Abba, father, he cried out. Everything is possible for you. This is when he's sweating blood, by the way. He is so stressed out”
From the transcript
“Please take this cup of suffering away from me. So if that kind of conversation with God, if that kind of openness with God is is a sin, then Jesus was a sinner”
From the transcript
“But then look how he finished it. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine. He trusted. And he got up and he did it”
From the transcript
“he said, I'm the way, the truth, the life, and the only way to the father is through me”

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Day 1

Before we can talk honestly about who God is as Father, we have to reckon with something the sermon named plainly: most of us already have a picture of God in our heads, and that picture was painted — at least in part — by the men who raised us. If your dad was harsh, God probably feels like a judge waiting to catch you. If your dad was absent, God may feel like a distant idea more than a present reality. If your dad was a pushover, you may struggle to take God seriously at all. None of those pictures is the real one. First John cuts right to the foundation: 'We love each other because He loved us first.' God's love toward you is not a response to your performance. It is the starting point. He moved toward you before you had any category for Him. That is the ground everything else gets built on. This week is an invitation to let that truth do some renovation work — to notice where your picture of God has been shaped by human fathers who, however good or broken, were not perfect. The Father you are being invited to run to is not a projection of your past. He is something altogether different, and He loved you first.

For reflection

Where do you notice the clearest gap between how you picture God and what 'He loved us first' actually means?

Pray

Pray for honest awareness of where your picture of God has been shaped more by your past than by Scripture.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

God invites us to call Him 'Father' — but what we picture when we hear that word matters more than we might realize. This message digs into what the Bible actually means by that name.

Discussion questions

1
The message pointed to two biblical words behind the idea of 'father' — pater, meaning nourisher, protector, and upholder, and Abba, which pairs deep intimacy with willing obedience. What picture of God do those two words together paint, and how does it compare to the way 'Father' is often talked about in everyday life?
2
The message described three distorted pictures people carry of God — the angry father, the permissive father, and the absent father. Where do you think those distortions tend to do the most damage in how people actually relate to God day to day?
3
In Matthew 6, Jesus gives His disciples an outline for prayer that moves through who God is, what He wants, what we need, where we've gone wrong, and where we need protection. What is different about approaching prayer as a conversation following that kind of roadmap versus treating it as a recitation?
4
In Mark 14:36, Jesus uses the word Abba — the most intimate Aramaic word for father — while also surrendering completely to the Father's will in the hardest moment of His life. What does that combination of honesty and surrender tell us about what a real conversation with God can look like?
5
The message drew a distinction between forgiving a broken earthly father and being reconciled to that person, saying the two are not the same thing. Why is that distinction important, and how might it change the way we think about what forgiveness actually requires of us?
6
The message closed with an invitation to 'run to the Father' rather than perform, manage, or simply recite words. What might it look like, in an ordinary week, for a person to move from managing God at a distance toward that kind of honest, relational prayer?

Pray together

Approaching God honestly as a good Father — bringing real needs, real failures, and real surrender, and trusting that He is already waiting

Topics

Distorted Views of God God the Father Healing Earthly Relationships Jesus as Access to the Father Prayer and Intimacy with God

Names of God | Week 3 | Bill Bush | Full Service

Big Idea

Key points

Application

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

7-day devotional

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Small-group discussion guide

Open

Discussion questions

Pray together