If I am my daughter’s first and primary experience of what “father” means, then her ability to view God as her Heavenly Father will be shaped by how I live out that role.
Being Called Dad for the First Time
My daughter and firstborn child arrived via C-section on January 30, 2025 at 7:46 PM. I heard her before I saw her. The doctors had wisely given me a stool next to my wife Rachel’s head on the other side of the surgical screen.
In one moment, I was doing my best to stay calm, to talk to Rachel and distract her from everything happening on the other side of the screen – and then in the next moment, we were hearing our new baby girl cry – loudly – for the very first time.
Then a voice broke through: “Dad, do you want to see her?”
I stood slowly, having heard far too many stories about dads passing out in the operating room.
I peered over the screen and there she was, suspended in the air by our doctor with her arms spread wide for the first time. She was beautiful, healthy, and utterly disoriented—plucked from her previous living arrangements into the bright, cold air of the delivery room. I’ll never forget those first cries.
They whisked our new baby girl to the warming table quickly, and I followed the nurse over as she cleaned, diapered, and swaddled her for the first time.
I was transfixed on the tiny face that I had waited for so long to see. So many days and nights spent dreaming about what she would look like when we finally got to meet her, and here she was.
I hovered near the table at first, afraid to touch something so precious and fragile. The nurse gave me a knowing look once our baby girl was fully swaddled, and then came the words, “It’s okay, Dad, you can hold her.”
Dad. That’s a new one.
I scooped my right hand under her tiny neck and the left one beneath her swaddle, rotated her head into the crook of my arm, and just like that, one of the greatest gifts the Lord has ever given me was there in my arms.
I didn’t have long to hold her because I knew she needed to make her way over to her mother as soon as possible, but in that brief, transcendent moment, I remember softly speaking to her and, as one does when meeting someone very important, introducing myself.
“Hi. I’m… your Dad.” I said. And as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that in that now-spoken name, I was acknowledging something much deeper about my role in her life, as well as the magnitude of the responsibility I would now take on.
In that moment, I think the meaning behind those words went something like this:
“Welcome to the world. You are my child, and because of this and no other reason, I will protect you, cherish you, and love you for the rest of my life. Because that’s what Dads do.”
Understanding God as Abba, Father
This Father’s Day, I’ve been reflecting on the weight carried by the name “Father”.
God could have inspired any metaphor to describe how He relates to His people in scripture. A few of the names He did choose include Yahweh, Elohim (God), Adonai (Master), King, Judge, Creator, and Almighty One.
But read the most famous prayer of all time in Matthew 6 (“Our Father in Heaven…”) and also the most consequential, anguished prayer of all time in Mark 14 (“Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will.”) and you will see how important it was to God that he also reveal Himself to us in very relational terms.
I believe He does this to make it clear that in our lowest moments and greatest cries for help, it is a caring, consistent, and intimate father who answers us.
As a brief aside on the word Abba – it does not translate to “Daddy” as you may have heard from time to time. Reducing it to a childish term of endearment not only fails to revere God properly but also misses the richness of what Jesus conveyed.
When Jesus uses Abba – still the word you’ll hear used today when Hebrew speakers address their fathers – in the garden of Gethsemane, he is communicating two things:
- That in his darkest hour, Jesus knows his Father would draw near to him for comfort.
- That Jesus would be utterly obedient to his Father’s will because of how much the Son trusted Him.
Our ability to call on God and call Him “Abba, Father” is profound. It is both wholly intimate and wholly reverent, another impossible duality made possible through the Cross and God’s unfailing love for us.
The point is that God delights in being called Father, and His desire for us to delight in Him through this kind of relationship is evident throughout Scripture.
As a testament to this, today, the practice of referring to God as “Our Father” is so deeply entrenched in Christian tradition that you will struggle to find someone who doesn’t open their prayers with some reference to this intimate, familial relationship.
And if you’re like me, your reverence for The Father inspires the question: Who am I to share that same name, even if just to be called it by a few children of my own?
The Sacred Responsibility of Fatherhood
When I started to think through this topic and the fact that I would now share a name that God uses to relate Himself to us, feelings of extreme inadequacy appropriately abounded.
After all, if I am my daughter’s first and primary experience of what “father” means, then her ability to view God as her Heavenly Father will be shaped, at least in part, by how I live out that role.
When I think about having so much responsibility for her perception of the love of a father, it certainly feels like something I’m very capable of messing up.
But I don’t think God’s revelation as Heavenly Father is meant to cause flawed, earthly fathers to feel inadequate. Rather, I think it’s meant to drive us toward humility and admission that, without full obedience and submission to Him, our attempts at being great fathers are destined to fall flat.
No doubt, there are plenty of men who have misused and misunderstood this high honor. You may even read this as someone who has struggled to accept the image of God as a loving father, because doing so would mean overcoming an Earthly father who was anything but loving.
If that is your story, I pray that you would find joy, comfort, and restoration in a God – a Father – who will never leave you, never fail you, and never break His promises.
He is the ultimate standard by which we know what a Father truly is, and any deviations from this definition of fatherhood must then be moments of extreme selfishness when we, as men, were not really being fathers at all.
But I hope that for most reading this, you can easily call to mind an earthly father who instead, frequently gave you fragmentary glimpses into the all-encompassing love of your Heavenly Father.
I have been unimaginably blessed to have so many shining examples of heroic fathers who modeled this well as I grew up, and many more who continue to do so for me today. Though there are many incredible men that God has blessed me with knowing and learning from, I have a few to thank by name for giving me such an impactful cloud of father-witnesses – and great men – to look up to:
- My paternal grandfather, Bill Gentzel, who was called in his late teens to leave behind decades of generational brokenness and trust in Jesus to redeem his family’s future instead.
- My maternal grandfather, Don Scargall, who worked three jobs at a time for various periods of his career to support his family, took his family to church every Sunday to hear him lead the choir, and whose larger-than-life presence can fill a room without him needing to say a word.
- My father-in-law, Joe Crutchfield, who raised four girls on an immovable foundation of consistency and service to the Church, which I will directly benefit from for the rest of my life in the form of my wonderful wife.
- And of course, my father, Brent Gentzel, who stood on stage and preached sermons at the same church every Sunday for my entire life and believed in the utmost importance of being called father. You taught me the value of thinking outside the box, being persistent, and doing all things with excellence. Thanks for every lesson, Dad.
In each of these men and many others who have played critical roles in my spiritual formation over the years, there is a common thread of uncommon faithfulness that guided their hearts and actions across a longer period than I have been alive.
Though none were perfect, their steadfastness and faithfulness made it easy for me to understand God’s love as the love of a greater heavenly father.
The call to action from all of these thoughts, for myself as much as any other father, young or old, is this:
- To see the honor of being called “Father” for the holy calling and honor that it is.
- To believe that each father who puts their faith in Jesus will be equipped by God to lead his family well despite his own imperfections.
- To be completely obedient in faith so that you can be the father and hero that your family deserves.
- To point your family to their true and better Heavenly Father at every opportunity.
A Prayer for the Kind of Father I Want to Be
My daughter is four and a half months old now, and she still doesn’t understand the words I say. But she does know me. Every day, she sees my face, hears my voice, and smells my smell. She knows that she is safe with me. But she still does not have the word, or the name yet to describe me.
So it’s somewhat funny to reflect on the day she was born, and I told her she could call me “Dad.” She did not understand me then, so it wouldn’t have mattered to her what I called myself.
But there will come a point in the next year when she will put words to the people and things that she knows best. And, odds are, she will accept the name I first introduced myself as, since we’ve offered it to her many times since. It will probably come in the form of “da-da” at first, eventually followed by “Daddy” or just “Dad.”
Regardless of the form it takes, she will soon find a name for this person: the one who held her first, the one that sings her to sleep with his deep voice, the one who makes the silliest faces.
And once she finds that name for me, for the rest of her life, when someone says the word “Dad” or “Father,” she will think of me first.
I want to live my life as a dad in such a way that when she thinks of her earthly father, she knows how deeply she is loved. But more importantly, when she thinks of me, I pray that she will be reminded that she has a Heavenly Father who loves her infinitely more.