Counteracting the Lies We’ve Believed (Part 6)

Truth #6: God is your heavenly Father, not your earthly father.

This week I ministered to a couple of new friends in my life. One of them never knew her father. The other had an abrasive, mean father who she thought did not love her. As far as I could tell, neither had embraced a close, vibrant relationship with their heavenly Father, and who’s to blame them? Their earthly father figure image is not positive and it’s easy to transfer those non-appealing characteristics to Father God. But good or bad, we have to realize that God is not the same as our biological fathers, and when we place those attributes on our loving, good and holy heavenly father, we create a lie. 

Here’s the truth: Dear sisters and brothers, God loves you with an incomprehensible love and desires to be the Father you never knew.

Your heavenly Father wants you to embrace His deep, unconditional love. The Bible says “nothing can separate us from the love of God”— nothing. If you are feeling unloved right now, it’s because the enemy of your soul is whispering that into your ear. Rebuke it!

On our own, we cannot put our minds around how much our heavenly Father loves us. In Ephesians 3:17 says that we cannot comprehend the width and depth of God’s love for us on our own. It takes God’s power to understand it. Paul wrote, “And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

When we give our lives to Him, like a proud Papa, God holds us close to His heart. Isaiah 40:11 says, “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” We are those lambs!

Your heavenly Father desires to build you up, not tear you down. Through His Holy Spirit, He is our encourager and our advocate. Sometimes if we grew up with a critical father, we think God is critical. If we had a distant father, we think God is distant. If we had an angry father, we think God is angry with us. King David said, “Be my rock of refuge to which I can always go, give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress” (Psalm 71: 3). Our Father is a strong place of refuge and His arms are always waiting for us. He wants to be the first place we go, rather than the last, in an act of desperation.

Your heavenly Father’s love for you is unconditional and forever. No matter what mistakes you have made, or will make in the future, God’s love for you will never change. In Romans 8:38–39, the Apostle Paul said, “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

For the past four weeks, I have been teaching my new Bible study, Knowing the Father. Last week a woman shared that she grew up with a very difficult, angry dad and that it had always been hard to think of God as a loving Father, but she said that because of the study, she has experienced breakthrough and is beginning to look at her heavenly Father in a different light than ever before. Will you also be open? Ask God to reveal Himself to you in a way like never before, and today choose to believe He is a good and loving Father. It’s the truth.