What are your thoughts about God as your heavenly Father? People often form their opinion of God the Father based on their experiences with their own earthly fathers.
If a person is fortunate enough to have a Christian father, those experiences bear some resemblance to God as Father.
There are many, though, who had very bad models of fatherhood.
Their perception of God as Father is quite different from someone who had a Christian father.
However, all comparisons fall short of who our Heavenly Father really is.
Backward Thinking When we apply our father's attributes to God, we get it backwards.
God came first.
He created our earthly fathers.
They needed salvation, just as we do.
God Himself is the model Father.
Our error in thinking about the family of God, and God as our Father, comes from our perspective.
When we view God as Father through the filter of family as we know it, we will always have faulty thinking.
For instance:

• If we are reluctant to take responsibility for disciplining our children, we may judge His commandments as harsh and resent His disciplines.
  
• If we were never able to have a good conversation with our own fathers, we may have trouble approaching God as "Abba, Father.
  "
• If our father was selfish and did not work to provide adequately for his family, we may be hesitant to believe that our Father can and will provide for our needs.
  
• If we had an absentee father, we may have difficulty knowing that God the Father will give us protection and guidance and be there when we need him.
  
• If we had a father who did not keep his promises, we may have problems believing He means what He says.
  
• If we had a father whose comments tore us down instead of building us up, we may not see God as trustworthy and loving.
  
• If we had a godly Christian father, we may still limit God in our thinking because our father had limitations simply because he was human.
  

God is able to do far more than our earthly fathers were capable of doing.
Still, God instituted the family.
He gave us fathers as examples.
He instilled in them the desire to provide for, protect and guide their children.
We just need to make sure that in our thinking about God as Father that we do not limit Him in any way.
How does God become our Heavenly Father? To be part of God's family is to have come to a point in your life where you have believed in His Son with all your heart.
"But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus...
For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father" (Ephesians 2:4-6,18).