Last night I shared a message at our church about identity.

This morning I find myself ankle deep in acidic fecal matter.

It was a pretty good message if I do say so myself. For thirty five minutes I spoke about who we are, and to whom we belong. A.W. Tozer says, "what comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us".

Does how we view & think about God matter more than anything else? Some may argue the importance of Tozers' comments, I however cannot.

The liquid substance eating at my ankles was once drain blockage, composed of only God knows what three children and two adults can dispose of down the shower drain. Dinky cars or dolls, loofahs and Lego maybe. I do remember a few occasions recently where it was the easier option to simply shower the fecal matter from my toddler rather than wipe and powder it.

As hard as it may seem when you are holding at arms length a baby girl, screaming from the burning sensation the strawberry infused stool is causing to the small of her back, I am regretting that decision right about now. I do try my hardest to make decisions that aren't going to sabotage my own future, but I missed this one.

I invested two jars of caustic 'draino' into the pipe, and warned the kids about staying clear to avoid burns to their skin. This involved explaining acid burns, which I'm sure left a graphic image in their 5 and 6-year-old minds. With still no improvement from the quick fix option, I now find myself standing in the plumbing aisle of my local hardware warehouse on a Saturday morning with a half eaten sausage in one hand, my sons' drink in the other, scouring the shelves for a fix to my problem.

I come to the 'you've got a serious problem' aisle between the 'you need a new toilet' and the 'lets install a DIY kitchen' sections. Seven different types of drain plungers ranging in both price and size, and no doubt efficiency greet me on the bottom shelf. My son, in his eagerness to help starts to test out each model on the smooth concrete floor underfoot. And it's not long before we have four plungers suctioned to the polished corridor cement which he's now weaving though like an Olympic slalom skier.

After much testing and deliberating, together we choose the $7.95 option. It's cheap, yet should fit nicely over the drain. And it has damn good suction hold. So much in fact that our test model had to stay right there on the slalom course.

Now returning to the problem site, not only am I ankle-deep in bubbling faeces and hair, the caustic has made me acutely aware of every possible microscopic breach in the skin of my feet. With my feet melting away beneath me I start plunging right way, and within a few motions, the fluid around my feet begins to subside. I add more fresh water to wash away the 'matter' that starts to come up and infuse the air in the cubical. We have a no farting policy in the shower for good reason, steam and methane is never a good combination so I keep the water temp cold to minimize the brain damage. More plunging, more draino, and more fresh water is required before the problem is fully resolved and the air begins the clear.

Finally the job is complete, and I let the kids know that the drain is unblocked and the acid is gone making the area completely safe once again. Following this I move to the back yard to peel 25 layers of caustic softened skin from the soles of my feet.

I find myself learning about God through the most unusual of circumstances sometimes.

Later that night, my son came inside for a shower excessively burnt from the afternoon sun. I helped him into the shower, and at first all was as usual. I walk out and within a few steps down the hallway, I about turn and speed back to my son's screaming and wailing.

He was seemingly confused, and evidently in pain.

He was shouting at me that the acid was burning his skin. Huddled in the corner of the cubical afraid of even the smallest drop of 'acid' touching his skin, I can see the image I laid in his mind was playing out in his present reality. Or was it? Unaware of the severity of his sunburn, which the warm shower water exasperated, my boys believed that somehow, and for some reason, I was inflicting this pain on him.

As adults, we too can live out our lives like this, confused about what our father is really putting us through. We have our own visions and ideas of what might come of our situation, unaware that all the way through our father is trying to protect us. Confusion and fear take hold and we live our lives huddled in the corner, with zero belief that a small, simple adjustment could actually bring us relief.

I leaned in, and turned the hot water tap down to cool the water flowing from the shower head. I then came down to my boys's level, and in a soft gentle voice assured him that he needed to trust me. As he argued, I gentle drew him nearer to the cool water, which relieved his sun burnt skin and the crying stopped.

I could have easily just turned both taps off, ending the situation instantly, and bringing my sons' pain to an end. But what would he have learnt? That crying get things solved? Hardly. The real issue was not the acid, or the sunburn. It was his unbelief. If my son had honestly believed that the moment I told him the acid was all gone, it truly was all gone, we would never have gone through this ordeal in the first place.

But attaching doubt to my words, he really didn't believe that no matter how painful his present situation was, I had made the shower safe for him. More so if he had paused for just a moment to hear my voice, he would have heard me offer a solution.

Our view of our eternal father matters. And His word matters. I believe more so than anything else. But do we really believe our fathers words? And if I didn't, or my view of Him was skewed, how do I even change this?

We all need to allow God to place faith in us, and grow our faith through experiences with Him. This process is almost always painful. Do you really believe that no matter what you are going through, that it's not in vain, and it's not just pain? What if you honestly believed today, that in every single situation you find yourself, God is working all things for YOUR good. Really. Do you believe that?  Most of us don't, we're so busy complaining about the fact that things aren't going the way we had planned (even though there probably better than what you had planned) that we can't hear His voice and we forget the most important thing.

God is MY father.

He wants to protect me, to bless me, to guide me and to prosper me. It's the natural will of any father, let alone a perfect one. But your present situation argues with this, and eventually you'll find yourself saying things like this... "how can God do this to me" or "why would God make us go though this". The answer is simple. 

Because He loves you THAT MUCH.

When I became a father overnight I discovered something very quickly. No father, under any circumstances, ever wants to discipline their child. You just don't want to do that. But you know, deep down inside, no matter how hard it will be for you, and for your child, that because you love them THAT MUCH, it has to be done.

That's the beauty of God allowing us to go through suffering and pain. He simply loves you THAT MUCH that no matter how confused you are, you must understand that He is shaping your view of Him.

From sadist, to father? Maybe  it's not that extreme for you, or maybe it is.

My prayer for you is that you would accept this kind of love from your eternal father, not if, but when He shows it to you, and that you believe, though it seems simply too good to be true, that it really is THAT GOOD.