The Father's Heart

For some time now I've had doubts about my love for God. I have come to realize that the way I want to love God is not the right way to love him. Even though God keeps correcting me, I seem to always forget. I always pray and cry out to God that I want to love him more, but rather I feel unworthy, I can’t seem to feel it, I can’t feel my love! Most times this makes me sad and moody. I am going to dwell on the revelation I had tonight but that wasn't the first time God shared this with me. Love is Active not Passive. Love is not emotional though emotions can stimulate love. For example when you love someone you feel like having sex with them, sex is the highest form of expressing romantic love, but it becomes bad when it is done outside God’s standard.

Love is an expression and then you act what you feel not in the exact same way of the feeling but in a way that helps to release the hormones attached to that feeling. Our feelings or emotions are actually storage of hormones epinephrine, progesterone and testosterone e.t.c. So then what did I learn again tonight that I had been taught before and I forgot? God taught me in a strange way how to express love for him and feel satisfied. And I realized it was something I knew that I hadn't really practiced and thought of consciously. I had been influenced by secular culture unknowingly and I felt that was all there is, but there was also the other side of love. You cannot love by feeling it, you love through expression.  Love is an action not a feeling. This is the challenge with many people’s love they claim to love because they feel it. But then they are handicapped because they do not know how to show it. That’s not love that’s infatuation.  Any love that ends with feelings alone is not love. If you feel something and you can’t express it then you feel nothing. We are not awarded marks for having ideas; we are awarded marks for expressing our ideas. No matter how much our brain lights up we can’t be taken serious until we reveal what is in there.

Now I want to propose a theory that all the aspects of love have a piece of unconditionally in them. For example: agape, philia, storge and eros. Philia is family or friendship love, what real man or woman would not eventually forgive his sons or friends of wrong they had done. What true romantic love is not embedded in forgiveness and compromises? So we all have the ability to love unconditionally.

The other side of love is the agape, the selfless self serving. Agape is love in action, Love in service. We might have lost a bit of the glory of love because of modernization and enlightenment. Now this is what happened to me, I had just finished listening to a message and it exposed the weakness of my heart, I want to love God more I know I do love him but yet I wasn't satisfied because deep in my heart I didn't feel the love enough. As I was praying I started to cry. It was as if I was faced with the love of Christ literally but my love was not found, it was like Christ was saying this is my love where is yours?

Read this part carefully! As he did this I began to think about someone I was in love with and how my thoughts towards her were always to express my hearts love. As I thought about the ways I wished to express my love to her, I found out he didn't scold me or conscience prick me for my thoughts. The more I thought of expressing my love the happier I got and excited then all of a sudden a name flashed through my mind, a lady I was ministering to. I had slight doubts about God touching her the more I thought of her the more I wanted clarity about her healing and then it struck me that while I believed I needed more time to pray with her I was scared if the best option for her was not to visit the hospital, as I thought much on this God clearly spoke to my heart that I was supposed to stand for her and not waiver in faith, I do not need to hear from him if she would be healed or not, I was supposed to proceed praying based on my confidence in his ability and he wouldn't fail me. I was much at peace hearing this and then I realized that my feeling of inadequacy had vanished and disappeared it was as if I had a new found love for God, then he spoke he said I wouldn't compare my own love, with Christ’s love I wanted to separate my love and Christ’s but God made me understand that Christ’s love is my love. So all I needed do was to believe. He said the reason why I prayed for her or paid attention to her was because of my love, by even praying for her I was expressing my love; I noticed when I begin to express my love for others the feeling of inadequacy disappears. And when Christ made me understand also that those moments I feel my love for him was inadequate it was because I didn't want to utilize his love, like I felt his love should be more than it was. Christ love is simple so it beats our imagination. But all we need is to express we need not feel it the Holy Ghost does that for us he sheds the love abroad.

Having faith in the love of Christ is where many seem to fail, because they are not ready to experience the totality of Christ’s love, as long as we don’t believe in Christ’s love there will always be a feeling of inadequacy. Responding to Christ’s love is simple, it’s by faith. The love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. If we are born again the love of Christ is in our hearts. It is the Holy Ghost that administers Christ’s Love according to our faith. Someone who Christ’s love drives crazy will never experience this feeling of inadequacy. I have also come to realize that this feeling of inadequacy we feel towards God does not originate from our sinfulness but from our relationship with our earthly parents especially our fathers. Go and mark it, if you see anyone who has a good relationship with his father such a person will naturally carry this kind of mentality into his relationship with God. Many of us have being deprived of a father’s love when we needed it most so in a way when we heard God can also become our father we naturally switched this mentality into our relationship with God. So each time we go into his presence we go with the feeling of inadequacy and also expecting to be rebuked for all the wrongs but we've forgotten that no one condemns us again. We have a perfect conscience before God through Christ Jesus.

The most profound thing I learnt is that our love for Christ is expressed as we love others first and also as we worship him.

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Father Hood

I have being wondering why many claim to have fathers they don't trust.

As I discussed and poured out my mind recently I discovered many use men they don't and can't trust as their spiritual Father.

Then it hit me! If the one person you see as your father can't command respect in you, won't this also reflect on your relationship with your Heavenly Father. The closer I thought the more I realized it to be true. How can you claim to have a father whom you cannot trust, whom you are suspicious of. How can you make such your father who can't command respect in you? He has not thoroughly been formed. Our development as Christians is greatly influenced by our Fathers. Paul said though you have many instructors but you have just one father.

Fatherhood is a place of passion and harmony. I remember my search for a father....

When I was in school I wasn't one of the elite spiritual brothers, so all of a sudden when people saw me ministering in God's power, opposition arose everywhere. I was questioned who is your Father? Who mentored you? Because I didn't really have a physical father or mentor doors where closed against me. I was so sad, the persecution was so much, everywhere I went I was accused of having pride. This made me to become sad and moody. All I wanted was to be accepted, because my heart was always filled with love, I love carrying people along. Well I might have also instigated the persecution because I knew all those who claimed I am fatherless wanted to father me. But I didn't want them.

My search for a father led me to harvest house, but it wasn't for long, then winners’ chapel, after some months I realized I didn't flow with the style of worship. By this time I had become weary, the persecution of not having a father had gotten too much so that I found a post graduate student invited him to minister in one of our meetings and because he was an alumni of my fellowship, it looked acceptable to man. Although the relationship was imbalanced because we only discussed what I felt he was comfortable with. We rarely discussed about the supernatural. He was a good big brother but I wouldn't really call him a father. My search for fatherhood also didn't stop. Even though at first it was meant to weigh me down I had sincerely sensed that I really needed a Father, so when I had to leave school and spend an extra year to get my degree, I moved into town. Because of the pain and hollow of my heart, my heart cried for Fathering.

I became involved with a church I had eyed. And then after so many months; by then I was confused, ministry was a distant call, I just needed clarity. I sought the Pastor of this Local Assembly Just to pour out my heart and ask for direction, this became a great decision because for the first time I expressed myself to man without fear of hurting his ego. I told him who I was, where I had come from and what brought me here. He listened with rapt attention; he spoke a little and then encouraged me. I was so blessed! This was the beginning of a spiritual Fathering. As I was leaving his office that day he asked me if I would love to come every week to see him, so we made it a date every Wednesdays, between the hours of 1-4pm I was in my pastor’s office.

I can't really say all that transpired but I can say this I got almost all my wisdom from him. He gave me an insatiable thirst for the scriptures, he encouraged me, and he even gave me money and bought things for me. Though I was going to his office on wed. Some people in church started calling me Revs Son. This is a Father and that is Fatherhood.

To be sincere he took care of all my needs, spiritual, emotional and financial. He was the reason I went to church. Though I met other believers Rev was my major motivation and excitement for being in church. His teachings, ooooooh his teachings, the depth! He was such a Father as none! He was more real to me. Some people said Rev is tough ooo, I never saw it. I just wanted his leading, his direction, for I was once lost. I really needed him, my life depended on him. Because of the troubles I had faced. So each day when I went to see him I went with the mind of having my problems solved. That is a Father.

He was not just a spiritual father; He was also a physical father. He understood everything, even my emotions, he treated everything. I didn't think about his words I took them as final, because I could trust him. I trusted his leading and guidance because of the time we had spent together; I knew his labors over me. As at when I was at the church I never did anything without him. Everything, I told him. There was no point hiding things from someone who's got your whole life figured out.

Who is your Father or rather may I ask are you a Father?

I have another father; Rev Isaac Adewale like Rev Tunde Amosun. People say Daddy is hard actually I've witnessed it, he is. But still I can refer to him as my Father, because I understand the place of a Father. It is to guide and to direct. I have come to learn how to utilize Fathers. Daddy gave me the needed push and motivation I needed for ministry, he played a vital role in my decision to embrace ministry full time, his love and counsel and fatherly admonition, his covering and his making me to share out of his life and family. I love his ministries and his anointing, if God has lead him to where he is, then I trust God, daddy can lead me too. I love my Fathers. They are a blessing to me. I do whatever they say I never disobey them; I have learnt how to submit totally to fathering. My Fathers have helped me a lot they have prevented me from sorrow. Even when it seems they have asked me to make a decision based on their own personal view it ends up working for me. Do you know why the relationships with my fathers work, it's because I trust them and I know they won't lead me astray.

I ask this question and I pose it to you. How can you have a Father that you can't trust? Are u sure he is really your Father or Just an Instructor.

Who is an Instructor? An instructor his one who guides but you are not under any obligation to follow is guidance. You only have to sit and listen to him.

It puzzles me how you can sit under the ministry of someone you can't trust your life with, then why are you there? Also know that your development as a Christian is determined by your father’s growth. A servant cannot grow beyond the master. As long as you don't trust your so called father then you can't also be trusted because you are a reflection of who he is.

Be careful who you make your father. Fatherhood is very significant in a person's development. Also know that your relationship with your father also mirrors your relationship with God. If you don't trust your father, it won't surprise me if you don't trust God. Check your lives have you made instructors your fathers? Instructors, no matter how deep they are can never become a father; because they lack something essential and that's fathering. A father sows in you and invests in you, a father is patient for the harvest, a father is ready to take blame for you, a father loves to associate with you, a father gives and does not take.

Who is a Father? A Father is a Leader; your leader, your personal guide in life, your eyes, your direction.