My last post marked the start of a new series of posts inspired by a teaching series called Lavished hosted by Vinelife Church Manchester, the church family to which I belong. Lavished is focussed on the Fatherhood of God, His love for us and our identity as loved sons and daughters. In the process of interacting with this teaching series I want to explore my own Father Heart journey and so in this post I am going to start to explain why this journey has become so important to me by looking at those three simple words: Father, heart, journey.
Father
One of the most striking aspects of my Father Heart journey is that it has led me into a more Trinitarian relationship with God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It seems to me many Christians have their favourite person of the Godhead and risk missing out on the richness of a relationship with God who is Trinity. I was converted in a Pentecostal church so my personal favourite was definitely Holy Spirit, He was the first person I met. I quickly realised that His job was to introduce me to Jesus but it took me much longer to work out that the reason Jesus came was to introduce me to the Father. In his book The Forgotten Father, Tom Smail does a wonderful job of reminding us there is a Father and suggests the significance, missed by many, of the Charismatic renewal in the 1970s was to reintroduce us to the “Forgotten Father”.
God’s Fatherhood is central not only to Christian doctrine but to Christian experience, and when it becomes so, it has limitless consequences in the life of the believer and of the fellowship to which he belongs. Tom Smail
Reading Smail’s book I was reminded that in many ways history was to repeat itself in the 1990s with the advent of the so called “Toronto Blessing” where seemingly once again the significance of the Holy Spirit outpouring as a reminder the Father loves us was lost in the noise of the manifestations experienced by some of those who encountered Holy Spirit, a sound that became a stumbling block for some. For more information on the Toronto Blessing in this context I’d recommend you read The Father’s Blessing by John Arnott.
You’d think that between the Charismatic Renewal and the Toronto Blessing we’d have got the message by now that “there is a Father who loves us”, but it seems not. One explanation for this is that as John Eldredge suggests we were born into a war and the object of the great and fierce battle is our heart. Every time Sarah and I speak to people about how much they are loved we almost always feel a tangible sense of opposition particularly as we go after people’s hearts not heads. I’ve come to believe that living in relationship with God as Father and experiencing his love matters so much because it is fundamental to our identity, security, maturity and crucial to our mental, emotional and spiritual health. My Father Heart journey has affected me in all of these ways. I’ll talk more about this in future posts.
Heart
The Father Heart journey is not just about the Father, it’s about the heart, His heart and ours. My own Father Heart journey has taught me we pay far too much attention to our heads and not nearly enough to our hearts. If I sound like I am over balancing I probably am. I lived for so long with a world view that valued head over heart and paid a high price for that. I’ve touched on the importance of the heart a number of times on this blog:
Pedras no camhino
Offence Post
Guarding the garden of my heart
Leading with the heart
In my experience relating to God exclusively with my head can result in a lack of transformation caused by a long distance and superficial relationship with God as an idea as opposed to a transformational intimacy with God as Father. In one sense this heart journey is a very short one – 18 inches to be exact – the distance between your head and your heart. The irony is this short journey takes a long time, in fact a lifetime.
The Father Heart journey doesn’t just move us it moves love from our heads – where we have an intellectual understanding and appreciation that we are loved by God, where love is an idea, an attribute of God, to our hearts – where we have an experiential encounter and feel loved by Father God who is love. This distinction makes all the difference in the world – it changes our identity, transforms our personality, shapes our character, it allows us to embrace our brokenness and that of others, it means we live from love not for love, from acceptance not for acceptance, it dissolves fear in all of its many forms, it enables us to enjoy new levels of intimacy with God who is both immanent and transcendent and new levels of vulnerability with each other because the people around us are no longer a threat. The transformational nature of the Father Heart journey is that it doesn’t just change the way we think it changes the way we feel, about God, ourselves and others.
John Eldredge in his book Waking the Dead does a brilliant job of explaining the significance of our hearts on our journey.
What more can be said, what greater case could be made than this: to find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God. you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with all your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart. John Eldredge
Journey
I suspect the word journey winds some people up. It’s become a widely used maybe overused word in recent years but I use it unashamedly and often because if I’ve learned anything in my 49 years it is that life is a journey!
While I was sitting in the dust and darkness of the valley of a nervous breakdown a good friend of mine recommended a book to me – The Road Less Travelled by Scott-Peck. I am sure I am not the only one but this book changed my life. It’s the first time that I can remember coming to terms with the fact that life is a journey, at times a difficult and complex one. Scott-Peck encouraged me to pick myself up, dust myself down and get back on the road. Years later Brennan Manning would teach me that on that road I am not alone but surrounded by an eclectic mix of fellow travellers. (Manning’s book Abba’s Child is a must read for the journey).
The word journey speaks to me that I am a work in progress and invites me to embrace the process of faith which requires patience with myself and others; it tells me that life is not just about the destination (heaven) it is about the journey (here and now) and invites me to be present; it encourages me with the thought that on a daily basis my goal is progress not perfection, and invites me to enjoy the journey as well as embrace the process (thanks to my friend Gary I have a mug that reminds of this daily). I unashamedly and unapologetically love the word journey!
A long post for three words but three words that have shaped my life more than any others.
