We all need a caring human father (or an equivalent) as early as possible in our lives to help us understand what God the Father is like as a Person. Remote, indifferent, unavailable human fathers can lead us to believe that God also is detached, unconcerned, and uninvolved in the daily cares of our world. However, the Psalmist (10:14) praises God as a loving Father:
"Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation." Hosea writes (14:3) that the fatherless find mercy in Him. God is described in Psalm 10:14 as the one who helps the fatherless. King David says, "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up." (Psalm 27:10).
It is the father who teaches his daughter that she is lovable to men, that she is worth his protection, time and concern. When he is absent physically or emotionally or father did not validate but was cruel, things happen:
• a daughter senses that she is not worth caring about
• There's no feeling of wholeness
• There's an unnamed but severe emptiness
• Are you angry at the world and don’t know why
• Inadvertently sabotage relationships or smother those closest to you
• There an undercurrent of anxiety in most tasks you perform
• There is a struggle to connect with God?
• You have little or no self-confidence–or minimal self-worth
• You are insecure, distrust men and feel they must be independent.
• Usually can't respond sexually and their marriages often end in divorce.
The absence of your father has impacted on a woman’s entire life–your attitude, your actions, your beliefs, your decisions, and your identity.
A good father helps her to understand that he is spoken for and prepares her for another man. But if he leaves, her idealization of her father can become frozen in time.
If a woman does not have a loving dependable father, due to his own arrested development or a divorce, she may seek men who reject or deny her needs. She may recoil from love altogether. Always she is haunted by the thought that she is essentially unlovable.
A women may become sexually active prematurely to try to compensate. They may fear intimacy. The common theme is "an inability to trust, to believe that a man won't go away."
Women with absent fathers feel rootless and aren't sure they belong anywhere. They close up emotionally and tend to have rocky relationships.
Most of these daughters tended to test the men in their lives starting fights, finding flaws, expecting to be abandoned, or looking for excuses to walk out themselves.
A good father affirms his daughter's innate femininity. But if he is absent, she compensates by becoming masculine. This of course undermines her future relationships with men.
Please take the time to answer the questions below. There is no need to turn in questionnaire to J2W. This is for you to see the need of Father’s Love.
Questionnaire 1:
1. My dad and I spent lots of quality time together.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
2. My dad was very supportive.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
3. Friends used to say that they wished their dads were more like mine.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
4. Dad seemed to enjoy the time we spent together.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
5. I admire my dad and would like to be more like him.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
6. Dad attended as many of my school functions, recitals, games, etc. as possible.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
7. I always felt I could talk to dad about anything.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
8. Dad praised me for my accomplishments.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
9. Dad showed me unconditional love.
Strongly Disagree ___ Disagree ___ Agree ___ Strongly Agree ___
Questionnaire 2:
1. Do you or did smoke cigarettes? Yes ___ No ___
2. Have you ever had unprotected sex? Yes ___ No ___
3. Do you or did binge drink? Yes ___ No ___
4. Have you ever shoplifted? Yes ___ No ___
5. Have you ever driven while under the influence? Yes ___ No ___
6. Have you ever taken illegal drugs? Yes ___ No ___
7. Have you ever hitchhiked or picked up a hitchhiker? Yes ___ No ___
8 Would you consider becoming romantically involved with someone who had abused
a partner in the past? Yes ___ No ___
The Good News For Those Who Have Not Had a Dad - We become a child of God by placing our trust in Jesus Christ as Lord so that our sins can be forgiven and removed and our spirits regenerated. God receives us into His family, one by one, by the dual process of
(1) spiritual birth and
(2) adoption into His family. Each one of us may therefore make a choice to belong to Him and to benefit from His loyal-love.
Those who have not yet trusted Jesus for access to the Father enjoy "common grace." God is kind, merciful and gracious towards all humanity. He is kind to His enemies and withholds judgment in long-suffering love for the fallen world. "He make His rain fall on the just and the unjust." John 3:16 says that God so loved the entire world that He gave His only Son in order that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. This great passage of the Bible is yet another proof of the Father-heart of God towards His lost and fallen creatures. He gave His most prized possession, in only Son, to buy us back to Himself.
You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake." (1 Peter 1:18-20)
God does not merely place us in a certain family setting and then disappear from the scene of our daily lives! He does not wait until we have grown up before He interacts with us. He would like to be with us intimately every day of our lives whether we begin to know Him at age 6 or 60.
"See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." (1 John 3:1-3)
What is perhaps most remarkable about the story of the prodigal son, is that it was told to us by our Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ introduces us to the Father. Jesus, being the only son who has ever truly obeyed God and pleased Him, ends our estrangement from God. We were once God's enemies but are now brought near and reconciled to God by the obedience of His Son. Jesus shows us the Father by the life He lived. He said, "He who has seen me, has seen my Father." Jesus is our Elder Brother as we grow up in the family of God.
He is our daily Mediator with the Father. Many find that the Lord Jesus is especially compassionate and caring towards those who have never known a loving, caring human father.
Because of the Father's love for us and His earnest desire for us to know Him, Jesus took all our sins upon himself two thousand years ago. He opened a wide door for sinful men and women to come cleansed of sin and defilement of every kind into the presence of the holy God. This same Jesus, now alive from the dead, is fully acquainted with human weakness, sorrow, grief, suffering, and alienation. He helps us through all the forms of evil enticement we face: "He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin."
Jesus, the Christian's great high priest, is our Advocate and Healer who undertakes and champions our cause, defending the righteousness that He himself has given to us: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16)
The New Testament says that there are "not many fathers" in the churches of Jesus Christ. This apparently means that spiritually mature male Christian leaders eligible to be surrogate fathers are rare. We can not expect to find every older male in the congregation, nor every pastor, to have a father's heart for God's children.
Even pastors who love the sheep dearly and know them one by one, may not by nature feel truly fatherly towards them all. This is all the more reason for us to center our lives around Jesus and to not merely identify with a pastor, youth leader, friend or teacher as the role model of a caring father.
Posts
