God's Father's Heart
Have you ever thought about what God thinks of you? Is it difficult for you to think He loves you as much as the Bible claims? God is vast and appears distant at times, but what is He actually like? Do you really know who he is? You've heard his orders, but do you know anything about his feelings or personality?
The fact that God is our Father is one of the most magnificent insights in the Bible. What comes to mind when you hear the term "father"? Do you immediately think of safety, provision, warmth, and tenderness? Or does the word "father" conjure up different images for you?
The Bible portrays God as a compassionate, forgiving Father who is intimately involved in every facet of our lives. It is not only a lovely picture, but it is also true. However, everyone appears to have a different idea of what God is like because they automatically tie their feelings and perceptions of their own earthly father to their concept of their Heavenly Father. Each person's experience with human authority typically carries over to how they connect to God. Good experiences bring us closer to knowing and understanding God, whereas unpleasant experiences distort our concept of our Father's love for us.
What was God thinking when He created the family? "God makes a home for the lonely," the Bible states (Psalm 68:6 NASB). A family is a circle of relationships that includes an adult male and female into which tiny, dependent human beings are born and reared.
Have you ever wondered why God didn't create a reproduction system that would produce a physically complete person like His original creation, Adam and Eve?
I believe God intended for us to be born totally dependent and helpless in order for the family unit to be a place where His love is demonstrated to both parent and child. As parents, we begin to truly understand God's heart towards us as His children, and as children, God's will is for us to see His love revealed through parental tenderness, mercy, and discipline.
But what if the ideal did not come true? What if parental authority failed you in some way? So many people have been hurt and rejected by their families that it is difficult for them to see God as He truly is. Understanding God's character is essential if we are to love Him, serve Him, and be like Him.
For the sake of clarity, I will refer almost exclusively to God's qualities of fatherhood. However, a full revelation of God's parental love is incomplete without the presence of the male and female attributes of parental affection. "And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27 NASB)
Parental Control
Have you ever pulled into a friend's driveway and been greeted by the family dog? The foolish mutt will either cower away from you, trembling with fear, or leap upon you with an unwanted display of affection, demonstrated with its tongue, tail, and dirty paws. The browbeaten puppy that cannot be induced to trust you has clearly been mistreated. The exuberant mongrel attempting to give you a facial with his tongue has clearly come from a loving home.
So it is when God approaches man; our past experiences shape our response when God approaches us. A weeping prophet named Hosea heard God say, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. However, the more I called Israel, the more they strayed from me. They offered sacrifices to the Baals and burned incense to their pictures. I taught Ephraim to walk by holding their arms, but they had no idea I was the one who cured them. I guided them with strings of human compassion, ties of love; I took the yoke from their necks and knelt down to feed them. (Hosea 11:1-4 LB) God's leadership is not harsh and vindictive but rather unfathomably loving and patient.
I was doing some invoices on the computer when my five-year-old son Oscar repeatedly blew his shrill tin whistle, despite my repeated commands to stop. There was a period of silence followed by a deafening blast right next to my ear, including a spray of saliva. I reached around, swatted him with the back of my hand, and bellowed at him in anger. Immediately, I felt that the Spirit of God had been grieved.
Our Heavenly Father is currently being slandered and misrepresented all over the world as a result of man's cruelty and selfishness, not only in the home but in all forms of human government. His laws of love have been ignored, and our mangled hearts continue to perpetrate injustice to all those smaller and weaker than ourselves.
What tragedy is God witnessing right now? A bedroom door bursts open. A tiny boy is slapped awake in the middle of the night by a drunken and angry guy. " The sprinklers are still on. There is a flood. I'll teach you, young man!" The terrified boy is cruelly thrashed by the dark, hulking shape of a guy he calls "Daddy."
A 15-year-old prostitute with blank, dead eyes mechanically performs on Hollywood Boulevard, unconcerned about what happens to her; she hasn't felt clean since the night she was violated by her own father.
A wounded generation stumbles through their youth, only to inflict the same wounds on their own children. Is there no one to console us? Who will father the children of men? Whose arms are big enough for all the lonely children of the world? Who weeps over our pain? Who will comfort us in our loneliness? ONLY GOD. A broken-hearted father who is rejected by the little ones he yearns to heal Instead, raise children with the gentle discipline that the Lord Himself approves." (LB)
Parental Trustworthiness
Every promise of God will be honoured, and He is consistently loving. His one-heart motive remains constant throughout time and eternity, and He never changes. He simply wants to express love and forgiveness.
Do you have doubts about God? Our doubts pain him greatly. Imagine coming home to my wife and children after a long trip, and they ran away as I opened the door and shouted their names. I would be devastated.
You are God's child, and even now He calls your name, but maybe deep down you doubt His faithfulness. As a child, you may have experienced the complete absence of a father due to death or divorce. Perhaps you were orphaned by the demands of your parents' careers? Or is it just the childhood memory of broken promises or neglect that haunts you?
Is your heart gentle towards God or hardened with cynicism and distrust? Look up into His eyes and witness His love for you. "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. I will be with you until the end of time. (Hebrews 13:5; Matthew 28:20)
"But if He loved me so much, why haven't I felt or seen Him?" you may ask. "It is not God who has failed you, my friend, but I and those who know His love personally. Too many times we have failed to be His voice and His hands to those who do not know Him. Far too few allow themselves to be driven by the broken heart of Jesus into the dark corners of this world, where the poor and needy wait. Jesus is not attracted to pleasant places but to hurting people.
Your Heavenly Father was present when you first walked as a child; He was present through hurts and disappointments; and He is present now at this moment. You were briefly loaned to human parents who were supposed to shower you with love like His for a few years, but you are and always will be a child of God, made in His image. Your loving Father awaits you even now with outstretched arms.
Many of us are like the thief who died on the cross next to Jesus. Outwardly, he saw a bloody, disfigured body, but soon began to perceive the true nature of Jesus and, at the last minute, entered by faith into the family of God. We, too, must see past the religious and commercial mutations of Jesus and behold the God of Love, who still stands with open arms, saying, "I came that you might have life anew."
"Even when we are too weak to believe, He remains faithful to us, who are a part of Himself, and He will always keep His promises to us." " (11 Tim. 2:13 LB)
Generosity on the part of parents
Years ago, when serving with YWAM, I was standing in a hamlet in Sisaket, Thailand, on extremely poor earth floors, watching the children play, and it came to me that these youngsters would almost never hear the words, "Don't touch it! Keep it alone! Take care!" Their homes were simple, with earth floors, thatched roofs, and mats that rolled down at night to serve as walls."
In contrast, our modern homes are crammed with expensive and fragile furnishings and appliances that represent a minefield of potential rejection and rebuke for inquisitive toddlers. How many mothers have erupted in rage at a child who has damaged a treasured object of great expense or sentimental value?
"Things are more important than me," a repetitive and damaging chant, is infiltrating our children's subconscious brains. Things take precedence over me! Should we abandon our modern homes? Obviously not, but we must recognise that our understanding of God's kindness may have been hampered by our childhood experiences.
The truth is that God is innately generous. Creation demonstrates an extravagance of colour, complexity, and design that extends far beyond simple functional value. At this moment, high in the Italian Alps, a tiny white flower glistens in the sunlight. It has never been seen by the human eye in all of its seasons of bloom. It is not an essential part of the food chain. It was created by God in the hope that one day a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve would
The greatest demonstration of God's fatherly heart appears to be His attention to the details of our lives when He surprises us with those extra things, those little pleasures and treasures that only a father would know we yearn for. God is not stingy, possessive, or materialistic.
My family is not wealthy, and we rely on God to meet our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. We serve a truly generous God! The Psalmist wrote, "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will grant you your heart's desires. Commit your path to the Lord, and He will guide you. Psalm 37:3-5 
Parental Attachment
Do you realise how appealing you are to God? One of the biggest impediments to our walk with Him is a sense that our flesh is repulsive to Him because of sin. When my son is covered in mud from the back yard, I pick him up and clean him off with the garden hose. I reject the mud, not the boy. Yes, you have sinned. Yes, you have broken God's heart. But you are still the centre of God's affection.
Because of our false concept of masculinity, we are told, "Don't cry, son; boys don't cry. Jesus is not like that. His compassion and understanding are limitless. He feels our hurts more deeply than we do because His sensitivity to suffering is far greater.
I once had to hold my screaming son while a doctor stitched a large gash in his leg. Henry, whose foot had wrapped around the chain of a bicycle, He quickly forgot his painful experience and fell asleep in my arms, but I was tormented by the experience and grieved for hours. You have forgotten most of your pain, but God has not. His tears are still mingling with yours at this very moment.
When you were four, you got lost at the football game and wandered terrified through the huge crowd, and it was God who turned the heart of that kind lady who helped you find your mother. "I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. (Hosea 11:4 NIV)
Your parents may proudly display bronzed baby booties on the mantle, pictures in an album, or trophies on the wall—but how does that compare to God's infinite capacity to be overjoyed with your every success? It was actually God who heard you speak your first real word. The hours you spent alone exploring new textures with baby hands were a delight to your Heavenly Father.
Moses once said to one of the tribes of Israel, "You shall dwell between the shoulders of God. What a fantastic blessing! But that is also where you dwell. Whatever you become in the eyes of men, even a person of great authority, fame, or title, you will never cease to be more or less than a babe in the arms of God.
Parental Attention
There is one attribute of God that not even the best parent can hope to imitate: God's ability to be with you all the time. As parents, we simply cannot give constant attention 24 hours a day because we are finite beings who can only focus on one thing at a time. Not only is God with you all the time, but He gives you His complete attention. "Let Him have all your worries and cares, for He is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you."
"How does he do that?" you ask. God is continually thinking an unbroken stream of love thoughts towards you as though no one else in the world exists. How can he be directly connected with billions of people all at once?" I don't know, but I know it's not a problem for the creator of the world. Perhaps the explanation is the speed of His thought. There are 6 billion people on this planet. God has created things in nature that pulsate at incredible speed. I've heard that the quartz crystal's molecular structure vibrates at a speed of 9 billion movements per second. If God could only think that fast, He could think a loving thought towards you about twice every second without straining his mind.
Your parents were often preoccupied with their activities and sometimes showed no vital interest in the small events of your life, but God is not like that. He cares. He is a God of detail. Why does the Bible say that God has numbered the hairs on your head? It's not because God is concerned with abstract mathematics. He's not a computer looking for data; it's just that He's trying to tell us how well He knows us and cares about our lives.
A little boy has spent the afternoon pounding nails into scrap wood. He finally emerges from the garage and shows his mother a three-level battleship. He can't wait until Dad gets home. Dad is late. At 6:30, a tired, preoccupied man finally arrives. A cold dinner is waiting, as are the income tax forms. The excited boy proudly displays his handiwork to a daddy who barely looks up from the calculator.
Acceptance by Parents
We live in a performance-oriented society, where acceptance is always conditional—if you make the football team, if you bring home a good report card, if you look pretty, if you have money, if you win. The kingdom of this world is a kingdom of rejection, whereas the kingdom of God is a kingdom of unconditional love. God's promises are conditional, and we must obey Him to see blessings, but His love is unconditional.
Many of you are unable to receive God's love and approval, and you are trapped in a slave-like relationship with the harsh god of your imagination. A true love relationship involves the giving and receiving of loving responses. I will never forget the night I proposed to my wife, Julie. I kissed her and asked her to marry me. What if she had responded, "I'll wash your socks, clean your car, and type your letters?"
What is your response to God when He simply says He loves you? Can you "be still and know that He is God" without rushing into frantic activity to earn His approval? (Psalm 46:10, KJV) One of the most beautiful images of human peace and contentment is that of a baby sleeping in the arms of a mother after being fed at the breast. The child no longer squirms and demands but rests in the embrace of loving arms.
Don't be too restless in God's presence. Corrie ten Boom, who suffered so much at the hands of the Nazis yet went on to enormous spiritual victory, once told my friends and me, "Don't wrestle. Nestle." What a profound but straightforward reality!
God already loves you. You've had to perform and compete your entire life. Even as a tiny baby, you were compared to other babies. People said you were "too fat," "too thin," or had "his legs" or "her nose," but God delighted in your uniqueness and still does. It's when you bask in the love of the Father that God "rests in His love and joy over you with singing."
Yes, there is much to be done in and through your life. There will be days when God comes to you with a deep conviction of sin, showing you areas of your life that need to be changed, committed, and submitted to Him. But God is not always demanding changes. He knows our limits, and He gives us the grace and power to do the things He asks of us. He is tender and compassionate. Most of the time, he simply says, "I love you," and softly speaks your name.
Conclusion
If you see that you have been hindered in your relationship with God due to some kind of failure of parental love, then take these things to the Lord. You must find forgiveness in your heart for anyone who has hurt you. If you don't, your bitterness will consume you, and you will find no peace with God. Realise, too, that you are not alone. I haven't met a perfect person yet or a parent who hasn't made mistakes. Everyone has suffered some kind of hurt in their life. One of the keys to release is forgiveness. The important thing is that you go forward and get to know God for who He really is, not who you think He is. He is the perfect parent. He always disciplines with love. He is faithful, generous, kind, and just. He loves you, and he longs to spend time with you. He wants you to receive His love and know that you are a special and unique person to Him. Will you receive God's love and affection? Won't you open up and enter into an intimate relationship with your true father? He is patiently waiting for you to come. It is my prayer that you will realise His love for you and respond to the Father's heart.
The Mother Heart of Father God
"As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you, and you will be comforted."
(Isaiah 66:13)
When I was a young Christian, trying to sort my life out and struggling with the idea of God as Father, I desperately wanted to know that God had a tender, nurturing side that I could trust. My father had left the family; my mother was the one who stayed. I wanted to know that God the Father had something of a mother’s love in Him. I wanted God to be able to identify with me as a woman.
I am not saying that all mothers have brought love and nurture to their children. As James and I travelled, speaking about the love of God the Father, we met many people who would come up to us afterwards and say, "I didn’t really have a problem with my father; my problem was with my mother. But, whether we have difficulty opening up our hearts to a masculine figure or a feminine figure, we all really want to know the tender love that comforts and nurtures.
The Image of God
"So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:28).
It takes a man and a woman to fully display what the image of God is like. In Genesis 1:28, the terms "male" and "female" are not speaking primarily about biological and sexual characteristics. God does not have a body. He is a spirit. But there is something in the way that He has formed us as human beings that gives a revelation of what His character is like and what His desire is for us as individuals within a home and a family. God’s image in mankind can be more accurately described in terms of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity.’ All the traits of masculinity and femininity are supremely and originally in the nature of God.
Father put within the heart of the feminine—feminine that is within both the man and the woman—the tender longings and the tender heart of Himself. It is important to recognise that men also have the ability within themselves to
express these tender longings that come from the femininity of God. There is, however, a way in which more of God’s femininity resides within the female body. The female body is made for nurturing. The female body is a prophetic expression of who God is in His feminine attributes. There is something about a mother nursing that speaks of comfort and nurture.
Love is a response to love.
I always think of it like this: it is the mother, or feminine love, who puts the heart into the human race. A mother who is whole enough within herself is the one who teaches her children how to both love and be loved. She puts within that child the ability to receive and contain love—a container that can overflow to others. As human beings, we have to be taught everything: how to walk, how to talk, and how to eat, among many other things. But we also need to be taught how to love.
Storge—a Nurturing Love
Love is a response to love. We learn how to love as a response to being loved with a particular kind of love—a nurturing love—known in Greek.
as storge. Separate from other forms of love, storge is "family affection" and conveys the idea of tenderness and care. Strange love is the type of love that builds the foundation of our lives. It primarily comes from the mother because we grow within her womb and are comforted and nourished by her body from birth onward. However, strength also comes from the father. A father can show affection to his offspring by surrounding and protecting the household.
keeping it secure and free from fear and anxiety. Storge love is also richly conveyed through the wider family, through siblings, grandparents, and beyond.
We are made for love. The truth is that God intended our first experiences of this life to be (in the words of Paul the apostle) "rooted and grounded in love. We are meant, from the very beginning, to be established in this story of love so that we might grow up into His image—God is love!
Femininity in the Image of God
A woman’s body is made for nurture and tenderness. I am not saying that this is the limit of what a woman can do; of course, there is much more that a woman can do. Neither am I saying that she has to be confined there, but the point I am wishing to emphasise is this: What we are finding in contemporary culture is an outright rejection of this reality and a denial of the fact that a woman’s body is designed for nurture. So we find that we are departing more and more from the image of God.
There is something that God has put within the feminine that a baby really responds to—the softness of the feminine. When a father holds a baby, he gives the baby a whole different impartation than what the mother gives. The baby feels the strength of his arms, the solidity of his chest, and the safety and definition within the man. What the father gives is meant to convey the sense of a defined world out there, a feeling of the essential "other. But when a
When a mother holds a baby, the baby feels gentleness and tenderness—that "sinking into" feeling, which is a feeling of oneness.
This is the oneness that we are born to feel. We were never meant to feel alone. God never created us as humans to ever feel that we were on our own. One of the tremendous needs that we as human beings have is to feel that deep sense of belonging—that this is where I, as an individual, am supposed to be. To feel that this is my true home. It is a mother who first gives us that feeling of the essence of belonging. She does this through her gaze and as she communicates the deep welcome verbally—through words but also through the tone of her voice and the cadence of her speech. God has intended that we would hear the sound of the mother’s voice and receive her words as words of life—words to soothe and comfort.
Feminine love is the only love that can give us the foundation that we need. The reality is that for many, the roots of their lives have not gone down into the pure and holy love that God intended them to have. And God is coming to reveal Himself, not only as Father but also as "Mother. You can receive nurture that is not going to destroy you but rather build you up in life. His feminine love will establish your ability to live in holiness because now you can have a source of intimacy and belonging.
The Brokenness of the Fall
This is the written account of Adam’s family line. When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them, male and female, and
blessed them. And he named them "Mankind" when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image, and he named him Seth. (Genesis 5:1-3)
Adam and Eve were made in the image of God. But then came the fall. After Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, when life as it was intended became broken and distorted, we read that something significantly changed. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, but their children were created in their image. Now, a fallen masculinity and a fallen femininity have entered the lives of man and woman. This brokenness has distorted the true nature of love and has been passed down from generation to generation. When the roots of our psyche do not go deeply into pure love, there will be negative results in our lives. I believe that is the reason for much of the anger, hostility, insecurity, and depression that are so prevalent in our culture today. There is an emptiness because there is not the rich soil of nurturing love. This has not happened for many of us through our own natural conception, birth, and infancy, but the wonderful reality is that God the Father can come, and He can root and establish us in His love.
You and I were conceived in God’s heart long before we were conceived in our mothers’ wombs. He is the very source of our lives. We can trace our origins back even further than our own natural conception and meet God in that place of original love. We can meet Him at the fountainhead of all belonging. He, the Source, can come to us and minister that primordial nurture that our hearts so desperately need.
Throughout Scripture, we have seen wonderful miracles of healing in the lives of different people as God the Father has come—as a mother—and touched deep in the human spirit. He has come and ministered to the very foundation of human life, the very ground of our being. He has shown himself not only to be a father but also to have the tenderness and nurturing of a mother’s love.
The Heart of a King Established in Love
King David, the shepherd-king of Israel, knew what it was to avail himself of the nurture of the mother heart of Father God. In Psalm 131, burdened with the awesome responsibilities of military command and nation-building, he says,
My heart is not proud, O Lord, and my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with its mother, my soul within me
He speaks here of himself as a child at the breast of his mother. Israel’s greatest king sees himself in this way. He does not speak of being "weaned" in the sense of being weaned off the breast in order to eat solid food. The word "weaned" in this context carries with it the sense of a child being fully sated, engorged with its mother’s milk, so that it lies milk-drunk and sleepy on the breast. Picture this king with the heavy burdens of statecraft laid down and satiated at the breast of El Shaddai.
The mother's heart of Father God
In Isaiah 49:15, we read,
"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!"
Here, God the Father is comparing Himself—not only to a mother but to
a nursing mother. In these words, he is expressing the kind of love that will rise up one hundred times in the night for you—the kind of love that will even die for you. If you are crying from sickness or fear, this kind of love will always be available for you. This is the kind of love that knows no end. It will go on and on and on!
With fallen motherhood, it is actually possible that a mother is capable of forgetting and lacking compassion. But God cries out, "Even though she may forget, I will not forget you! He is a greater expression of motherhood than a human mother in the full flow of her nurturing. He is the original source and expression of motherhood. He is saying, "I have an infinitely greater capacity to comfort you and love you tenderly!"
Much later in this prophecy, in Isaiah 66:13, we read:
"As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you, and you will be comforted.
As a mother comforts her child! Isn’t this amazing? The way that a mother comforts her child is different than the way that a father comforts his child. When a little child, for example, falls over in the garden and runs indoors
crying with a grazed knee, the father—if he gets there first—will generally bend down, perhaps give the child a pat on the back, and say, "You’re OK. Off you go, run, and play. Everything will be fine! A mother will stoop down and scoop the child into her arms. She will hold her child, soothe them, and let them cry. She will comfort them.
The Father loves you with perfect love.
If we are not rooted and established in this nurturing love, in this depth of holiness, we will always be searching for it. We will never, ever be satisfied with anything else. We will continually be on a quest for it. Our romantic relationships may go some way towards assuaging it, but there will always be a deeper need gnawing at our soul. We all have a constant need for God—not only expressed in the masculine but also in the feminine. He loves you not only as a father loves but as a mother loves. You can come to Him now and deeply receive His nurturing love.
Denise Jordan