Abraham's original name was Abram. Later God changed his name to Abraham (Gen. 17:5). Within both of these two names is the root Abra, which in the original language means "father." Abraham was a father himself, and the lesson he learned was to know God as the Father. Throughout his whole life, he learned this one lesson—knowing God as the Father.
What does it mean to know God as the Father? It means that everything is from God. The Lord Jesus said, "My Father is working until now, and I also am working" (John 5:17). He did not say, "My God is working until now," but "My Father is working until now." For God to be the Father means that God is the Creator, the unique Initiator. The Son was sent from the Father. "The Son can do nothing from Himself except what He sees the Father doing, for whatever that One does, these things the Son also does in like manner" (v. 19). This must be our experience. We must receive grace from God to realize that we cannot initiate anything. We are not worthy of initiating anything. Genesis 1 begins by saying, "In the beginning God..." In the beginning it was not us, but God. God is the Father, and everything originates from Him.
The day that God shows you that He is the Father will be a blessed day. On that day you will realize that you cannot do anything and that you are helpless. You will not have to try to hold yourself back from doing this thing or that thing. Instead you will ask, "Has God initiated this?" This is the experience of Abraham. His experience shows us that he had no thought of becoming God's people. Abraham did not initiate anything. It was God who initiated. It was God who brought him from the other side of the Euphrates River (Gen. 12:1-5). God wanted him, and He called him out. Abraham never thought of this. Hallelujah! God wanted him and God did the work.
God is the Father. Abraham did not volunteer to go to the land flowing with milk and honey. God said it first, and then Abraham went and possessed it. He did not know anything about it beforehand. When he was called to go out, he did not know where he was going (Heb. 11:8). He left his father's land without knowing where he was going. This was Abraham. God was the Initiator of everything for him; he had nothing to do with it. If you know that God is the Father, you will not be so confident and will not say that you can do whatever you want. You will only say, "If the Lord is willing, I will do this and that. Whatever the Lord says, I will do." This does not mean that you should be indecisive. It means that you truly do not know what to do and that you only know after the Father has revealed His will.
This was not all. Abraham did not know that he was going to beget a son. He even had to receive his son from God. Abraham could not initiate anything. His son was given to him by God. This was Abraham.
Abraham knew God as the Father. This kind of knowledge is not a knowledge in doctrine. It is a knowledge in which one is brought to the point of confessing, "God, I am not the source. You are the source of everything, and You are my source. Without You, I cannot have a beginning." This was Abraham. If we do not have Abraham's realization, we cannot be God's people. The first lesson we have to learn is to realize that we can do nothing and that everything depends on God. He is the Father, and He is the Initiator of everything.