Your Concept of God Can Look a Lot Like your Dad
/The parent-child relationship is perhaps the most critical metaphor of our relationship with God. Why? Because it’s in our relationship with our earthly fathers that we begin to form our concept of God our heavenly Father and ourselves as persons — for good or for ill.
But all is not lost if our concept of God is askew, filled with false beliefs of what God is really like and how He feels about us. There is an Abba Father who fathers us with unconditional love and acceptance, tenderness, and the “loving sternness” that comes with being parented in truth.
I think the following passage gives amazing insight into the importance of our human fathers. And it also gives us hope that our perfect heavenly Father will affirm us no matter what we may be lacking from our earthly fathers.
In the human family, it is the father who affirms us as male and female and as persons. It is the masculine voice we are listening for at puberty and thereafter, that time when we are separating our sexual and personal identities from that of our mothers.
But when we’ve failed to get the needed affirmation, we can rest assured that there is available to us the healing needed … in the Presence of God the Father, when we learn to listen and obey Him, we are affirmed as real men, real women, real persons … God the Father, who has the Power of Being, heals and affirms us.
In God’s Presence, we’ve come before the One who speaks worlds into being, who delights in speaking new worlds of “being” into our very souls, affirming, as He does so, those very parts of ourselves that have (for whatever reason) not been called forth and blessed in our families and earthly relationships.
The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ, Leanne Payne
As we think about our dads, and maybe for the first time, come to grips with forgiving them and moving on, let’s turn to our Abba and receive our true Identity from HIM, our Creator God who loves us and made us in His image.
Because I am in Christ...
I Am Loved
I am a child of God-John 1:12
I am beloved-Romans 9:25
I am chosen-Colossians 3:12
I am loved by God as much as Jesus is-John 17:23, 26
I am Jesus's friend-John 15:15
I am inseparable from God's love-Romans 8:37-39
I Am Acceptable
I am accepted by God-Romans 15:7
I am righteous-2 Corinthians 5:21
I am a saint-1 Corinthians 1:2; Ephesians 1:1 (NASB)
I am not condemned-Romans 8:1
I am completely forgiven-Colossians 2:13
I am holy and blameless-Ephesians 1:4
I Am Valuable
I am God's masterpiece-Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
I am adopted-Ephesians 1:5
I am God's treasure-Matthew 13:44
I am God's pearl-Matthew 13:45-46
I am a new creation-2 Corinthians 5:17
I am designed by God-Psalm 139:13-16
I Am Secure
I am more than a conqueror-Romans 8:37
I am complete in Christ-Colossians 2:10
I am safe in Christ-Colossians 3:3-4
I am seated in the heavenly realms-Ephesians 2:6
I am eternally in Christ-John 10:28
I am united with Christ-1 Corinthians 6:17
(From God's Best-Kept Secret: Christianity Is Easier Than You Think
by Mark Maulding)
