#3 | The Love of the Father - Part 2 | I Will Not Settle - Series
Psalm 93:4 “Mightier than the waves of the sea is HIS love for you”.
2 Cor. 6:18 “and I will be a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty.
Many of us didn’t have a good relationship, or maybe did not have one at all, with a father as we grew up. As a result we lacked knowledge, wisdom, confidence, understanding and many of the necessary ways to grow into healthy individuals prepared to handle life challenges. Many of us still don’t understand the love of a father. So I hope to encourage us all with God’s Word and to speak more about His love in our own lives.
God has always been Father, and is eternal.
In our recent podcast, the subject was The Father's Love. Pastor Kris and I discussed this wonderful and awesome love the Father has for us. Maybe you would like to refresh your memory and watch again and reference what we discussed. I will be using some of the scriptures I used in the podcast.
1John 3:1 -“ Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
We are His children when we receive His Son, Jesus.
I will tell my story in the next blog as a follow up to this one, about how I finally knew the Fathers love for myself.
This subject is so important for our foundation as Jesus followers. It’s an important part of our walk each day to know who we are in Christ. Our Heavenly Father chose us to be in His Kingdom, we did not choose Him (John 15:16 you did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you).
When we really know we have received Jesus, and then the Fathers love, we can begin to know who we are in Him.
We can be healed of all past emotional hurts that robbed us of healthy relationships with our own fathers. It takes time but only God can make us whole emotionally and create a healthy, loving and reverential relationship with Him. Which is exactly what we need and have always looked for - most likely not knowing that for ourselves. But He gave us His perfect Son as a perfect example of what a Father/Child relationship can look like.
There is no lack of love in our Heavenly Father!! He’s the perfect “family Man” that can model for us what our own families can look like. He created us and our families. He is King in our homes and knows the answers to all problematic situations. Nothing is too hard for King Jesus. And we can go to the Father and ask for His grace and favor every day.
Lamentations 3:22 “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. 23: they are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness. 24: The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “ Therefore I hope in Him!” God IS love. 1 John 4:8 “he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. “
I will leave off here and encourage you to watch the 5 people sharing their stories on the website “Father’s LoveLetter.com”. Don’t miss listening to the “love letter from Dad” narrated by Barry - it is so touching as well.
When you access this site, scroll down to the recorded stories of 5 people each telling their story and testimony. They all tell how they did not know the love of an earthly father. I have listened and typed here each one’s testimony of how their lives changed once they accepted Jesus. Please note, their stories I have typed, reflect the manner in which they shared - not my words but theirs. I just believe having it in writing, along with hearing them each share, will impact our own lives more significantly.
1. Jim - had a hard working father, no time to play with his kids. Dad understood providing for and being consistently bringing home his paycheck to pay the bills - he saw that as his primary function, and saw his relationships as being secondary.
As he was moving into his teen years, on his 16th birthday, he was feeling closer to his mom, and it was a shock when he came home; there on his sister’s bed was a note saying his mother was leaving with another man. Suddenly in one afternoon, his whole life was torn apart. It really took him years to get through that, to get to a place of talking with his mother, before he could process what that meant in his life. “It came to a point where I took most meaning in my life from the sports I played and the teams I played on, the awards I won, and the championship teams I was on. For me it was a place of proving ground, being smaller than many other competitors, I saw an opportunity to prove myself and to receive accolades from other people and win awards, a way of feeling I was worthwhile and I could accomplish something.”
2. Keyla - “every little girl wants to know that she’s daddy’s girl, that she’s beautiful, she wants to be held in daddy’s arms, told wonderful things”. Her dad was not that kind of man, no physical touch or affirming words. “Being the 4th child, I was the baby, and my parents took care of me, but when the 5th child came along, I felt displaced, and felt I wasn’t belonging. Because my sister was a very ill baby. But when you’re 7 or 8, you don’t see it like that - its a form of rejection. “When everyone found out, my brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, that I was getting paid to have my photographs taken, they thought it was the greatest thing on earth, then I of course thought it was the greatest thing on earth. Because everybody else thought it was the greatest thing that I was getting money for it. But then I thought - that’s how I’m going to be accepted. So the only way I was going to be accepted now was to live up to that expectation that I have to make a lot of money, I have to be on magazine covers and on commercials - that led to eating disorders, I had no control over my weight, I was probably 2 sizes smaller than I am now, I had to lose 15 pounds, I had to use drugs to stop myself from eating and to curb my appetite. When my husband or my friends would show me a picture or photograph they wanted me to be like that person, so I would almost take on the identity/persona of that person, to be something, because I was not good enough to be myself.”
3. John - “My dad struggled with alcoholism. He came from a home where his dad and mom separated at an early age, and it was devastating for him. My father was into judo, a martial arts sport, he was quite good at it..he got hurt in a demonstration when he couldn’t be in the sport any longer. When my brother was 10 and I was 7 years old we got into judo. It was kind of like we were living my dads dream for him. We trained for 1-2 hours a night for 7 days a week. We were tournament fighters. And so I can remember that we would go into these tournaments and we would fight, looking at an opponent, and bowing down and ready to fight. Every fight wasn’t about the love of the sport, but the love of my dad. I felt that every time I lost a fight,I felt that I was letting him down - there were times I cried like a little boy - you might think I was a poor sport, but I wasn’t - my heart was really broken that I would have let my dad down, and that he wanted me to win. For my dad, most of my childhood and into my adult life, I just wanted to please him. The way I thought I could please him would be through performance, and if I could achieve enough, that somehow I would gain that love and acceptance. But unfortunately it seemed no matter what I did, and certainly was more about me, than it was my father, no matter what I did it just didn’t seem like it was enough. It was just like one more thing, so I became very driven, I became a type A personality. I had to measure success in the things I did, but the motivation was a need for love and affirmation from my dad.
4. Sally - “both of my parents were raised in families where the fathers of their fathers died before my father was born. Moms family lived in a difficult situation as well, 11 children came very quickly. My grandmother was not a happy woman because of that. It was a hard life in the depression and so just survival is what mattered. They came into parenting probably not equipped. I was a surprise for my parents, and I felt that growing up, not so much that I wasn’t wanted, but a sense that I should never have existed. Not that my parents rejected me in any way but a spiritual thing I carried that was unintentional on anybody’s part. But I knew I was a surprise all my life so I grew up feeling like I should never have existed. And I don’t think I realized that I felt like that until I was an adult, I realized I was always trying to make sure I wasn’t rocking anybody’s boat, or making anybody uncomfortable, so I wouldn’t push myself on them, like - I shouldn’t be here anyways. Largely out of the fear of being abandoned, I had the feeling of - I shouldn’t have ever existed. I grew up looking for something permanent I could hang onto, and I really looked for that in relationships. As I grew older the things I had used to make me feel secure, one by one, they disappeared on me. I started to have really serious problems with depression and anxiety attacks that would last for a very long time.”
5. Lyla - “My mom was a fearful person of people. I never saw the affection and warmth, because she couldn’t give me what she didn’t have. It was a very lonely time, because a girl gets her ideas about femininity and warmth and tenderness from her mother. I didn’t get any of that from her. I had no memory of my father at all, totally blocked out for whatever reason, it must have been too painful. My whole family life, his image is like an empty picture frame.” She didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine what he looked like except from old photos. Doesn’t have a live picture of him. “My father got very ill, and he died of cancer when I was 7 years old. All I knew is that my life came crashing down. My mother on the day of the funeral, she looked at me, and said, almost like pronouncing a very bad prophecy over me, you and I will always be alone. Just remember you will always be alone, and I felt a sense of independence right then and to be strong.
Every little girl needs a father, every little girl wants to stand before her daddy and say ‘look, accept me, if the whole world rejects, it rejects me, tell me that I am pretty, I’m smart, I can twirl before you and be silly, and it's a safe place to go. If nobody likes me, kids make fun of me, my daddy is there for me’. So I crave protection terribly. I looked for boyfriends for that and I used them for affection. And of course if they wanted to go further,into a healthy relationship, then I would cut them off so I would throw them away, cause I needed the affection from a male. I had this fantasy I would find them somewhere, a dentist, counselor, teacher - maybe they would be kind to me. Of course my whole life became about sexual abuse later on, because I was a target, a primary target - for men had other ideas, not what I wanted.”
I feel certain we all have one or more of these background experiences, that we could also talk about. All of us have a story to tell about how we came to know Jesus and the Father.
Some have more horrific pasts or challenges than others. But we all have one. With Jesus as our own Savior and our Lord, we can have hope that our lives will be victorious to the end, if we cling to the ONE that gave His very life for each one of us. If there’s someone who is reading this and doesn’t know Jesus as their own Lord and Savior, I invite you to ask Him into your heart and life and to follow Him all the rest of your days. Ask Him, Jesus, to forgive you all of your sins and put Him first in your life. Once you have done all that, trust Him with your life and watch what He will do for you. Eternal life is our promise and life here more abundant. He loves you and all of us so much. You will be blessed and loved by the Father, more than you can know….
Until the next time be blessed.
Lucy Baretta
The On God Blog
✝️❤️
2 Cor. 6:18 “and I will be a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty.
Many of us didn’t have a good relationship, or maybe did not have one at all, with a father as we grew up. As a result we lacked knowledge, wisdom, confidence, understanding and many of the necessary ways to grow into healthy individuals prepared to handle life challenges. Many of us still don’t understand the love of a father. So I hope to encourage us all with God’s Word and to speak more about His love in our own lives.
God has always been Father, and is eternal.
In our recent podcast, the subject was The Father's Love. Pastor Kris and I discussed this wonderful and awesome love the Father has for us. Maybe you would like to refresh your memory and watch again and reference what we discussed. I will be using some of the scriptures I used in the podcast.
1John 3:1 -“ Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”
We are His children when we receive His Son, Jesus.
I will tell my story in the next blog as a follow up to this one, about how I finally knew the Fathers love for myself.
This subject is so important for our foundation as Jesus followers. It’s an important part of our walk each day to know who we are in Christ. Our Heavenly Father chose us to be in His Kingdom, we did not choose Him (John 15:16 you did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you).
When we really know we have received Jesus, and then the Fathers love, we can begin to know who we are in Him.
We can be healed of all past emotional hurts that robbed us of healthy relationships with our own fathers. It takes time but only God can make us whole emotionally and create a healthy, loving and reverential relationship with Him. Which is exactly what we need and have always looked for - most likely not knowing that for ourselves. But He gave us His perfect Son as a perfect example of what a Father/Child relationship can look like.
There is no lack of love in our Heavenly Father!! He’s the perfect “family Man” that can model for us what our own families can look like. He created us and our families. He is King in our homes and knows the answers to all problematic situations. Nothing is too hard for King Jesus. And we can go to the Father and ask for His grace and favor every day.
Lamentations 3:22 “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. 23: they are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness. 24: The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “ Therefore I hope in Him!” God IS love. 1 John 4:8 “he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. “
I will leave off here and encourage you to watch the 5 people sharing their stories on the website “Father’s LoveLetter.com”. Don’t miss listening to the “love letter from Dad” narrated by Barry - it is so touching as well.
When you access this site, scroll down to the recorded stories of 5 people each telling their story and testimony. They all tell how they did not know the love of an earthly father. I have listened and typed here each one’s testimony of how their lives changed once they accepted Jesus. Please note, their stories I have typed, reflect the manner in which they shared - not my words but theirs. I just believe having it in writing, along with hearing them each share, will impact our own lives more significantly.
1. Jim - had a hard working father, no time to play with his kids. Dad understood providing for and being consistently bringing home his paycheck to pay the bills - he saw that as his primary function, and saw his relationships as being secondary.
As he was moving into his teen years, on his 16th birthday, he was feeling closer to his mom, and it was a shock when he came home; there on his sister’s bed was a note saying his mother was leaving with another man. Suddenly in one afternoon, his whole life was torn apart. It really took him years to get through that, to get to a place of talking with his mother, before he could process what that meant in his life. “It came to a point where I took most meaning in my life from the sports I played and the teams I played on, the awards I won, and the championship teams I was on. For me it was a place of proving ground, being smaller than many other competitors, I saw an opportunity to prove myself and to receive accolades from other people and win awards, a way of feeling I was worthwhile and I could accomplish something.”
2. Keyla - “every little girl wants to know that she’s daddy’s girl, that she’s beautiful, she wants to be held in daddy’s arms, told wonderful things”. Her dad was not that kind of man, no physical touch or affirming words. “Being the 4th child, I was the baby, and my parents took care of me, but when the 5th child came along, I felt displaced, and felt I wasn’t belonging. Because my sister was a very ill baby. But when you’re 7 or 8, you don’t see it like that - its a form of rejection. “When everyone found out, my brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, that I was getting paid to have my photographs taken, they thought it was the greatest thing on earth, then I of course thought it was the greatest thing on earth. Because everybody else thought it was the greatest thing that I was getting money for it. But then I thought - that’s how I’m going to be accepted. So the only way I was going to be accepted now was to live up to that expectation that I have to make a lot of money, I have to be on magazine covers and on commercials - that led to eating disorders, I had no control over my weight, I was probably 2 sizes smaller than I am now, I had to lose 15 pounds, I had to use drugs to stop myself from eating and to curb my appetite. When my husband or my friends would show me a picture or photograph they wanted me to be like that person, so I would almost take on the identity/persona of that person, to be something, because I was not good enough to be myself.”
3. John - “My dad struggled with alcoholism. He came from a home where his dad and mom separated at an early age, and it was devastating for him. My father was into judo, a martial arts sport, he was quite good at it..he got hurt in a demonstration when he couldn’t be in the sport any longer. When my brother was 10 and I was 7 years old we got into judo. It was kind of like we were living my dads dream for him. We trained for 1-2 hours a night for 7 days a week. We were tournament fighters. And so I can remember that we would go into these tournaments and we would fight, looking at an opponent, and bowing down and ready to fight. Every fight wasn’t about the love of the sport, but the love of my dad. I felt that every time I lost a fight,I felt that I was letting him down - there were times I cried like a little boy - you might think I was a poor sport, but I wasn’t - my heart was really broken that I would have let my dad down, and that he wanted me to win. For my dad, most of my childhood and into my adult life, I just wanted to please him. The way I thought I could please him would be through performance, and if I could achieve enough, that somehow I would gain that love and acceptance. But unfortunately it seemed no matter what I did, and certainly was more about me, than it was my father, no matter what I did it just didn’t seem like it was enough. It was just like one more thing, so I became very driven, I became a type A personality. I had to measure success in the things I did, but the motivation was a need for love and affirmation from my dad.
4. Sally - “both of my parents were raised in families where the fathers of their fathers died before my father was born. Moms family lived in a difficult situation as well, 11 children came very quickly. My grandmother was not a happy woman because of that. It was a hard life in the depression and so just survival is what mattered. They came into parenting probably not equipped. I was a surprise for my parents, and I felt that growing up, not so much that I wasn’t wanted, but a sense that I should never have existed. Not that my parents rejected me in any way but a spiritual thing I carried that was unintentional on anybody’s part. But I knew I was a surprise all my life so I grew up feeling like I should never have existed. And I don’t think I realized that I felt like that until I was an adult, I realized I was always trying to make sure I wasn’t rocking anybody’s boat, or making anybody uncomfortable, so I wouldn’t push myself on them, like - I shouldn’t be here anyways. Largely out of the fear of being abandoned, I had the feeling of - I shouldn’t have ever existed. I grew up looking for something permanent I could hang onto, and I really looked for that in relationships. As I grew older the things I had used to make me feel secure, one by one, they disappeared on me. I started to have really serious problems with depression and anxiety attacks that would last for a very long time.”
5. Lyla - “My mom was a fearful person of people. I never saw the affection and warmth, because she couldn’t give me what she didn’t have. It was a very lonely time, because a girl gets her ideas about femininity and warmth and tenderness from her mother. I didn’t get any of that from her. I had no memory of my father at all, totally blocked out for whatever reason, it must have been too painful. My whole family life, his image is like an empty picture frame.” She didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine what he looked like except from old photos. Doesn’t have a live picture of him. “My father got very ill, and he died of cancer when I was 7 years old. All I knew is that my life came crashing down. My mother on the day of the funeral, she looked at me, and said, almost like pronouncing a very bad prophecy over me, you and I will always be alone. Just remember you will always be alone, and I felt a sense of independence right then and to be strong.
Every little girl needs a father, every little girl wants to stand before her daddy and say ‘look, accept me, if the whole world rejects, it rejects me, tell me that I am pretty, I’m smart, I can twirl before you and be silly, and it's a safe place to go. If nobody likes me, kids make fun of me, my daddy is there for me’. So I crave protection terribly. I looked for boyfriends for that and I used them for affection. And of course if they wanted to go further,into a healthy relationship, then I would cut them off so I would throw them away, cause I needed the affection from a male. I had this fantasy I would find them somewhere, a dentist, counselor, teacher - maybe they would be kind to me. Of course my whole life became about sexual abuse later on, because I was a target, a primary target - for men had other ideas, not what I wanted.”
I feel certain we all have one or more of these background experiences, that we could also talk about. All of us have a story to tell about how we came to know Jesus and the Father.
Some have more horrific pasts or challenges than others. But we all have one. With Jesus as our own Savior and our Lord, we can have hope that our lives will be victorious to the end, if we cling to the ONE that gave His very life for each one of us. If there’s someone who is reading this and doesn’t know Jesus as their own Lord and Savior, I invite you to ask Him into your heart and life and to follow Him all the rest of your days. Ask Him, Jesus, to forgive you all of your sins and put Him first in your life. Once you have done all that, trust Him with your life and watch what He will do for you. Eternal life is our promise and life here more abundant. He loves you and all of us so much. You will be blessed and loved by the Father, more than you can know….
Until the next time be blessed.
Lucy Baretta
The On God Blog
✝️❤️
Posted in I Will Not Settle