Experiencing the Love of the Father

Many of us have complicated relationships with our earthly fathers. While some had fathers who reflected the attributes of our Heavenly Father, others experienced fathers who were preoccupied, too busy, angry, abusive, or completely absent. Unfortunately, all too often, we superimpose our earthly experiences with our dads onto our Heavenly Father. This can make experiencing His love more complicated than it should be.

I believe that to truly begin to understand and experience the Father’s love, we need to separate our real-time experiences with our earthly father from those with our Heavenly Father. Even if our dad was the best father we could have hoped for, he is still human and makes mistakes.

A few years ago, I began to wonder what it might be like to truly experience the Father’s love. I suppose I knew, in a cerebral way, that He loved me—I had an intellectual understanding from the Word that this was true. But to know the Father’s love experientially? Not so much. Intellectually, I knew His love was unconditional, but if I were honest, I often felt it was conditional, angry, and not for me. I knew this wasn’t true, yet it shaped how I related to Him. When something went wrong in my life, I interpreted it as God punishing me for some sin I must have committed.

Then, a few years ago, I felt the Lord inviting me to ponder what it meant to be His child. What does it look like to walk as a child of God? How do I develop a parental relationship with Him? There were many questions, but in the midst of it, the verse came to mind: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” I began to think about being adopted into a family. As an orphan entering a new household, you must learn the ways of that family. What are the rules? The values? How do we treat one another? What are the privileges, boundaries, and benefits of this new home? As you grow, you understand that your place in the family is solid and secure. You start to reflect your family’s ways, understand what is expected, and value what your family values.

I felt the Lord’s invitation to lay down everything I thought I knew and to approach Him as a child. A child doesn’t need to perform to earn their parents’ love—they are completely dependent on their parents for care and provision. They flourish, often unaware that it is because of their parents’ care and protection. I laid down my right to my own ideas about who God the Father was and invited Him to begin to parent me. In the midst of this, I began to truly believe that He was good. I chose to trust that even in difficult times, if God is good, He would use everything for my benefit. I began to wonder if hardships were less about punishment and more about formation. If God is truly my parent, He would not allow anything to happen to me needlessly. His Word says He supplies all my needs, so what if some struggles were exactly what I needed to become who I was meant to be?

As I continued to surrender to my Father, the lies I believed about my relationship with God began to fall away. I discovered that in allowing God to love me and in receiving that love, I could be more real. I didn’t need to be “a good little girl” to be loved. I didn’t need to “succeed” to be loved. There was nothing I could do to earn His love and nothing I could do to quench it. In that moment, I began to understand the rest of this passage: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

When I chose to surrender fully to the Father, my life became yoked to His. He took the lead. In doing so, I began to experience rest—not the kind of rest that comes from a vacation or doing nothing, but rest in fully trusting that God is for me and loves me. I could rest because He was leading, parenting, loving, and caring for me.

Life is full of hardships. Yet now, in the midst of challenges, I recognize and fully believe that God is carefully shaping me into His image. I trust that I am His prized daughter and that He is keenly aware of my frailty, my strengths, my struggles, and my victories. I know He is with me and will never leave me. I experience His love because I have chosen to rest in it.

(Photo by Petra Reid on Unsplash)