Mark DeJesus once said: “Your two greatest needs are to know you are loved and to know who you are.” “Am I loved?” deals with “how well you can give and receive love in experiencing loving, fruitful relationships with God and others.” “Who am I?” is all about “your ability to live securely from your identity in Christ as Father God’s child”, and “seeing your unique design and living powerfully from the identity God has given you.” “Everything in life – all our battles and struggles – come down to how we answer those two very important questions.” (DeJesus).
Do you truly experience the unconditional love of Abba Father in your heart? I am not asking if you possess a head knowledge that God loves you – many Christians can easily quote various Bible verses about God’s love but daily fail to experience a close, intimate love connection with God. This is unfortunate because our “greatest need in life is to have an ongoing experience with the love of God in a real and personal way” (DeJesus).
“When we experience God’s love, we realize how significant we are in God’s eyes. It is being loved by God, the Father, that defines our identity” (Mark DeJesus).
Countless children have failed to receive proper love from their earthly father, producing a father’s wound in those kids. Satan attempts to use this father’s wound in a Christian’s life to sabotage their success in truly experiencing love from Father God. Because their father unloved them, too many Christians with a father’s wound, therefore, perceive themselves as being unloved by God and others, and struggle with identity and self-image issues.
When you look at yourself in the mirror, do you see a good person? Can you truthfully say: “I am me, an okay individual?”
The Father’s Wound Defined
(https://www.focusonthefamily.ca/content/understanding-and-healing-the-father-wound)
Father’s wound is “a deficiency of love from the birth father and or predominant father care-giver, whether intentional or unintentional”. Potential ways a father can cause this deep emotional wound in a child include:
- Neglect – I am unimportant
- Absence – Divorce, separation, death
- Abuse – Mental, physical, sexual, spiritual
- Control – Oppressive domination
- Withholding – Love, blessings, and/or affirmation, deficiencies that lead to a profound lack of self-acceptance. love and/or affirmation
Father Wound symptoms could be any of the following:
- Your father didn’t have time for you
- You felt scared of your father
- Your father withheld love or food or money as punishment
- Your father was physically or emotionally absent
- Your father was highly critical of you
- Your father had painfully high expectation for you
Things a father should have done to his child but didn’t or things he shouldn’t have done but did can both make a child feel unloved, incorrectly delivering a message to the child that he or she is a “hopelessly flawed person rather than something being inherently wrong with the parent”. Every child badly needs to hear they are loved, be verbally affirmed in their identity, and need to hear their father is proud of them.
Living daily without love, people will eventually “erode spiritually, emotionally, and physically.” God designed us to know what love is and to genuinely experience it. Those who failed to receive it from their earthly father greatly need it even more from their Heavenly Father, whose perfect love can heal any father’s wound. Unfortunately, it can be really hard to trust God’s love when bad portrayals of what His love and character are like are being modeled by bad parents to their children.
“The biggest impact on how we see God is not our knowledge of the Scriptures but the representation or misrepresentation of God that we saw mirrored in our parents.” Jerry and Denise Basel
Children usually develop their own definition of what love and what a father is like based on their earthly father experiences. Since God is both a father and the very essence of love – from those experiences with their earthly father – a child normally formulates an observation of what God is like. Depending upon that perception, their observations can potentially sabotage their relationship with Abba Father.
God designed human relationships to be sinless, giving children an accurate representation of what God and His love is like. Unfortunately, everyone sins and is an imperfect model of God and His love.
A father models Abba Father by his actions and words said, and in how he treats his child. Children come into this world knowing little about anything; they need fathers to do their best to be a quality representative of God and His character to their children. They do that by daily seeking the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and empowerment to be a good father and a good model of God, in which daily abiding in Christ is essential. Demonstrating to their children the tenderness, unconditional love, and forgiveness of God through example is a responsibility God has given to every father. Unfortunately, too many fathers have enormously failed in their roles of being a representative of God to their children, with the father’s wound being the consequence of their failures.
If something isn’t done about this, bad fathers will beget father’s wounds to their children, and their children could potentially pass the father’s wound problem to their children as it gets passed on from generation to generation. If you received a father’s wound from your father, strive to your fullest through God’s power, not to pass it on to your children!
How our father’s behavior influence our relationship with God?
(http://overcomingfatherwounds.com/2015/07/how-fathers-affect-our-view-of-god/)
Understanding the different types of fathers can give us a new perspective on God.
AUTHORITARIAN FATHERS ARE:
- Concerned with complete control or obedience.
- Not interested in your opinions, ideas, or desires.
- Intent on their own way
- Characterized as being strict
Authoritarian fathers can inadvertently influence their children to rebel against God.
ABUSIVE FATHERS ARE:
- Inflict emotional, physical, or sexual pain.
- Destroy a child’s sense of worth and trust
- Skew the daughter’s or son’s view of intimacy.
Abusive fathers can inadvertently influence their children to have difficulties trusting, being vulnerable and emotionally relating to God.
DISTANT OR PASSIVE FATHERS:
- Show little to no affection.
- Rarely demonstrate emotion.
- Interact little with their children.
- Display no interest in the child or their activities.
Distant or passive fathers can inadvertently influence their children to view God as uninvolved and disinterested in their lives.
ABSENT FATHERS ARE:
- Unavailable due to work, divorce, death, remarriage or abandonment.
Absent fathers can inadvertently influence their children to believe that God is inaccessible or nonexistent.
My Father’s Wound
I used to have a father’s wound, being abused as a child by my stepfather for not being perfect. When I made a mistake in front of my stepdad, I would get abused, making me feel guilty and shameful and causing me to feel bad about myself and my identity. Desperately seeking the love and affirmation of my stepfather, I would continuously try harder through performance to prove to him I was good.
In my relationship with God, I used to struggle with similar issues with Him as I did with my stepdad, believing the lie “God was the same as my stepdad.” The truth is that God is a perfect version of my stepdad, not the same strict, angry father as my stepdad. Until a few years ago, I greatly feared God would punish and abuse me when I repeatedly sinned or did what I perceived was an egregious sin. My poor definition of the character of my Father in Heaven, derived from my experiences with my stepdad, deterred me from truly experiencing God’s love as my Heavenly Father. creating severe roadblocks in getting close and truly understanding who God was and how He viewed me as His child. Fortunately, today I know I am eternally loved, completely accepted, totally forgiven, and considered valuable by Abba Father.
Three objectives of Satan’s spiritual warfare tactics, used against us, are: 1) create in us a sense of separation to God’s love; 2) make us forget who we are in our identity in Christ; and 3) to make us come in agreement with believing in his lies, implanted in our thoughts.
We must break agreement with Satan’s lies, influenced by your father’s wound, that God is the same as your imperfect earthly father who failed to love you properly, and also the lie, that God sees you daily as a hopelessly flawed bad child. This is the first step in knowing you are loved by God, and knowing who you are truly in Christ.
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32).
Please read next articles:
Justification And Adoption Articles
Sources:
Experiencing God’s Love As Your Father, Mark DeJesus
Experiencing the Rejection Mindset, Mark DeJesus
The Heart Healing Journey: Awaken, Heal, and Transform Your Life, Mark DeJesus
Seeing God As A Perfect Father, Louie Giglio
https://www.focusonthefamily.ca/content/understanding-and-healing-the-father-wound
The Missing Commandment: Love Yourself, Jerry and Denise Basel
https://www.therebelution.com/blog/2019/06/knowing-gods-love-when-your-own-father-was-absent/
http://overcomingfatherwounds.com/2015/07/how-fathers-affect-our-view-of-god/