I was inspired by Family Christian to write this blog post based on Kyle Idelman’s newest devotional “40 Day’s to Lasting Change” . I am breaking the book down into weekly devotional entries and making it a series of posts that will be posted every Thursday. If you would like to start at week one click here.
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A father to the fatherless, a defender to widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing. – Psalm 68:5-6
Who’s your daddy? Some of us have great relationships with our earthly father, others have a history they would never want to repeat. Our definitions of “Daddy” can vary greatly. I am sure if you start asking your friends what daddy means to them they each would have a different response based on their own personal experiences.
I think it is kind of crazy how my husband and I had such different definitions for daddy when we first met in 1994. They say opposites attract, they were world’s apart for us. First off my husband was the baby of six kids, and I was an only child. World’s apart.
My husbands father was never really home, he remembers him vaguely off and on during his childhood. He never knew if his daddy was going be home for weeks at a time, or gone for months at a time. His father was an alcoholic and was never really close to my husband. My husband remembers a few memories of his dad taking into the woods for walks, and showing him how to carve wood. My husbands dad died when he was ten, from that moment on My husband wondered what a normal relationship with a father would be like, he gave his life to Christ at twenty years old, and his world changed forever.
My father on the other hand was always the doting dad who took care of me like I was a princess. I was a princess to him. My parents divorced when I was six and I moved out-of-state with my mom, but I was always on the phone talking to him. I would stay months at a time with him in the summer, and I loved it. It was just him and I for a long time. As I got older I started to realize that not all dads were as special as mine. He would do anything for me, and I knew it. I was secure, and loved.
My husband and I have two very different experiences with our fathers, but there is one Daddy that we both know and He is the perfect dad. Our earthly fathers will never be perfect, they will always let us down, have faults and sin. They are human. Our human experience can sometimes jade our idea of Jesus our heavenly Father. Those experiences can cause us to see Him as an unpleasable Father, an uncaring Father, and an absent Father. I am thankful He is not.
Here are some verses 40 days to lasting change gives to show how Jesus loves us as His children:
He delights in us: For the Lord delights in His people; He crowns the humble with victory. Psalms 149:4
He rejoices over us: For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With His love, He will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. – Zephaniah 3:17
He hears and heals us: O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you restored my health. – Psalm 30:2
He loves us crazy: See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know Him. – 1 John 3:1
Maybe you struggle with who your earthly father was, or is. I encourage you to get your bible out and search your heavenly Father. He is everything we need, and loves us beyond what we can imagine.
In the devotion book “40 Days To Lasting Change“, Kyle Idleman encourages you to write the qualities of your earthly father down on paper and then study those to see how those shaped our view of our Heavenly Father, then find bible verses about God and Father and how he loves us. Write those down so you can be daily reminded that you are His child, and He will never leave you.
He loves you like crazy!
Crazy!
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