The Fatherhood Of God by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Wrong Ideology: Not Enough Good Works

One of the most damaging ideologies in prayer is the belief that your access to God depends on how much good you have done. This produces a legalistic prayer life — one that is hollow of intimacy and driven by transaction.

The Pharisee in Luke 18:9–14 listed everything he had done: fasting, tithing, moral superiority. Jesus said the tax collector who beat his chest and said "God, be merciful to me a sinner" went home justified, not the Pharisee. The strong reason you bring before God is not your performance — it is the blood of Jesus.

Fasting is not a transaction to make God give you something. It is a discipline to remove distraction so you can perceive what he has already provided. If you approach fasting as a tool to earn access, you are operating under the old covenant — still killing goats. The veil has not been taken away in your understanding.

God does not bless in reaction. I react to his invitation. If I do something, it is to appropriate what he has already done — not to activate him.

How Orphans Behave — and Why It Matters for Prayer

John 14:18 — "I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you." He came by the Spirit. But a lot of people still pray as though they are alone, as though God is indifferent.

Orphan traits include:

• Feeling abandoned, living with insecurity
• Believing no one cares, struggling with trust
• Lacking confidence in belonging, quick to suspect rejection
• Fighting for survival instead of resting in provision
• Seeing discipline as punishment, not love
• Living independent of help even when weak
• Interpreting silence as neglect

Do not say God is not a good father if you are not behaving like a child. A child is dependent. A child is as rich as his father. A child asks questions. A child is quick to forgive.

If you genuinely believe God is your father and you are connected to him by blood, then the next believer sitting next to you should feel as close to you as a biological sibling — because you share the same father. If that revelation has not landed yet, the fullness of his fatherhood is still waiting to dawn on you.

What Jesus Came to Reveal

John 1:18 — "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." That word seen in Greek is horao — to perceive, to experience. No one has experienced the Father at any time. Jesus came to make that experience possible.

Jesus came to do three things:

1. Reveal God to us — as love, as Father.
2. Deliver us from sin.
3. Reveal how we ought to be.

John 17:23 — "You have loved them as you have loved me." God loves you with the same love with which he loves Jesus. This is not sentiment — this is doctrine.

The Consciousness of Being a Child

Children don't name themselves. They carry their father's name and their father's identity. That consciousness — that the Almighty is your father, that you bear his name — is the very thing that got Jesus killed. They didn't kill him for his miracles. They didn't kill him for his message. They killed him because he said God was his father.

And yet Jesus, even on the cross, as he carried the weight of sin, said: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." He dropped many things in that moment. He did not drop his identity.