Do you know anyone who struggles to trust God? They can’t see the logic in His commandments or how they apply to them. Maybe you’ve felt like your heavenly Father has more important situations to handle than your needs. Why do some people trust God easily while others struggle in their relationship with God?
I believe one reason traces back to the relationship we had with our earthly fathers. Jesus said, “They [His sheep] won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice” (John 10:5 NLT). Can a misunderstanding of God make us view Him as a stranger and hinder our willingness to follow Him (1 Corinthians 13:12)?
When my son released his children’s picture book, he learned daddy wounds abound. Look What I Found illustrates a loving relationship between a boy and his father. “Your book is really good,” a woman said. “But it made me sad. I didn’t have a good relationship with my father.”
The Impact of an Earthly Father
A counseling instructor asked our class to fill out an inventory to evaluate how we viewed our earthly father in a variety of areas. I zipped through the list checking the appropriate columns. Later in the course, we filled out the same inventory, this time as it related to our heavenly Father. I whizzed down the columns until I recognized a familiar pattern in my responses. I flipped back to the earlier inventory and stared. The patterns were identical.
I pictured God chuckling in situations my father had found humorous. Where Daddy had been strict, I saw my heavenly Father frown. I expected God to respond to me in the same way my earthly father had. Unknowingly, I looked at my heavenly Father through the lens of my earthly father.
I believe the attack on men and the family is a direct attack on God. Children who grow up with absent, abusive, or irresponsible fathers often struggle to trust their heavenly Father. Nurturing fathers soften their children’s hearts toward the heavenly Father. Disengaged fathers erect barriers their children must scale to experience closeness with their heavenly Father.
How we view God affects how we process loss and disappointment, our willingness to trust Him, as well as how we see ourselves. One of the residual effects of losing my mother as a teen to cancer and my father, first to grief and then his new family, was feeling orphaned. I projected those feelings onto God. What loss would cause Him to abandon me?
Healing Our Daddy Wounds
God sent Jesus to heal our father wounds by showing us the Father (John 10:30).
“Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, “Show us the Father”?’” (John 14:8-9 NASB 1995)
If you struggle with feeling God cares for you and about you, look at your relationship with your father. Your feelings may reflect a real experience—just not the truth about God and who you are to Him.
Hebrews 11:6 says those who come to God “must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (NASB 1995). Ambivalent feelings can motivate us to renew our minds, be transformed, and experience God’s “good and acceptable and perfect” will (Romans 12:2 NASB 1995). If God feels like a stranger, ask Him to help you experience Him as your loving Abba.
Strength Finder
“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; …
And His name will be called … Eternal Father” (Isaiah 9:6 NASB 1995).“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15 NLT).
“Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6 NASB 1995).
- List adjectives that describe how your earthly father related to you growing up.
- List how you believe your heavenly Father relates to you.
- How do your lists compare?
- What tone of voice do you hear God using when you read the Bible?
- Read the Gospels and picture Jesus speaking in love.
Closing Prayer
Dear Father, I know that You are a good father, all-wise, all-loving, and all-powerful. But sometimes I don’t feel protected or valued. Certain situations tap my past wounds. Please use them to motivate me to continue the work of renewing my mind, forgiving those who wronged me, and receiving Your love. Thank You for the promise to transform me as I renew my thinking. There is no fear in love. I want to live as Your beloved child, because that is who I am.
Unlock a Deeper Connection with Your Heavenly Father #connection, #trust Share on XResources
- Experience the Freedom You Already Have in Christ by Paula Neall Coleman. I’m enjoying Paula’s book and she addresses our father wounds in it.
- Father Care: A Fresh Perspective on the Character of God by Jim Craddock
Blessings,
Sometimes I link with these great sites:
#MondayLinkUp #InstaEncouragements, #TellHisStory, #Let’sHaveCoffee, #Grace&Truth
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Amen! This is so important and so often overlooked. I had a wonderful dad. He didn’t talk about his faith or what he believed. He grew up without a father but even though he was not an affectionate, lovey, dovey father – he showed his love for us in a million ways. When we had to close our business and he was very stressed – I shared with him how I trusted my Heavenly Father because I grew up knowing I could trust him and I wanted him to have that same peace. Fathers are so important.
Ann, how sweet that you could give that encouragement back to your father! My father lost his father when he was two. As I look back I can see how that may have impacted his rather formal relationship with God.
I’m so grateful for God’s healing power as he mends our hearts from all the brokenness that comes with our childhood hurts!
Me too, Michele. And He uses those hurts to press us closer to Him.
I loved, “I pictured God chuckling in situations my father had found humorous. Where Daddy had been strict, I saw my heavenly Father frown. I expected God to respond to me in the same way my earthly father had. Unknowingly, I looked at my heavenly Father through the lens of my earthly father.” I did the same thing. My adult children did the same with me.
Jimmy, that’s rather sobering, isn’t it? Thanks for sharing your experience.
In my childhood, I had a mental image of a soft-spoken father in a cardigan and slippers with a newspaper in one hand and a pipe in the other. That wasn’t my father! I realized later it was Fred McMurray’s character in a TV show we watched, My Three Sons. My own father was angry much of the time, so I am thankful God gave me this other view. C. S. Lewis said something about the fact that we have an idea what goodness and justice should look like is evidence that there is goodness and justice somewhere (can’t find the exact quote). I think that may be true of fathers as well–even when ours are flawed, we have an idea what a good father would look like. It did take me a long time to realize that God was not like my father in many ways. How we need to know Him through His Word.
Barbara, how sweet that God gave you a picture of a loving father when you thought of Him. I like how you connected that with Lewis’s thought.