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                          Jesus:  Everlasting Father


                              By Phil Scovell






          I  was  in a  prayer session  about  five years  ago.   We prayed
     through many  situations relating to  my relationship with  my father.
     Of course, most of you know he died when I was only 11 years old.  How
     could  I be so  well connected, so  bonded, with  my father at  such a
     young age?   My father was my  hero.  More than that,  he was, sort of
     speak, my  Biblical hero.   I  often would  awaken at  5 to  5 in  the
     morning and stumble downstairs  to get in bed with my  folks.  At that
     hour of the morning, although dad  left for work around 6 o'clock,  he
     was already up.   The bright kitchen  lights would be on, and  I would
     blink from their harshness  as I passed through the kitchen  on my way
     to the bedroom  of my parents.   I  never failed to  see what dad  was
     doing, however,  at that early  hour.  He  always got  up a couple  of
     hours before  work in order  to study the  Scriptures and to pray.   I
     would see his Bible, an opened notebook for his notes, various colored
     pens and  pencils, and sometime other books he  would be using to look
     up other  Biblical information all laying opened  and scattered across
     the surface of  the kitchen table.   I knew, without ever  being told,
     that God, and the Bible, were the most important things in my father's
     life.
          During this prayer session several years ago, to which I began to
     make reference, the prayer session became very painful.  I hadn't been
     allowed  to see  my father during  the last  three weeks of  his life.
     Children, in those days, weren't  allowed to go to the  hospital rooms
     of adults and not  even if it were  their parents.  So my  father died
     without me ever once being allowed to see him.  "It's just  the way it
     was back then and I would have to live with it.  Well, over the years,
     the pain remained.  I felt cheated, misunderstood, and broken for some
     reason.  "Why did you allow this to happen, Lord?" was in  my thoughts
     but I never knew it, nor spoke of it to anyone, because I didn't  know
     it was there.   These  old feelings,  locked into old  forty year  old
     memories from wounded and bruised emotions had  never gone away.  They
     were coming out now, rushing out, and the little boy inside  was still
     hurting and fearful and crying.
          As we  prayed, I felt  as if I were  in that hospital  room I had
     been denied forty years earlier.   I felt my mom  in the room, my  dad
     laying in the  hospital bed, and Jesus  standing near.  The  Lord said
     your  dad had  things  he wanted  you to  know before  he died  but he
     couldn't speak due  to the coma.  I  was allowed to hear  and feel the
     love and  concern my father  had for me.   He made  it clear the  Lord
     would take care  of me.  "He is  your Father now," was  clearly spoken
     into my  thoughts.  This  was totally amazing to  me as a  child and a
     grown man at the same  time.  I heard the  Lord say, "I'm your  Father
     now."   Isaiah 9:6 suddenly jumped  into my thoughts  and made perfect
     spiritual sense to me for the first time in my life.
     For  unto us  a  child is  born,  unto  us a  son  is given:  and  the
     government shall be  upon his shoulder:  and his name shall  be called
     Wonderful, Counsellor,  The mighty  God, The  everlasting Father,  The
     Prince of Peace.
          I  have  no problem  now,  since  I  experienced the  reality  of
     Scripture, calling Jesus my Father because He now is.