Through Your Father's Eyes

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" — 1 John 3:1

How do you see God?

Psychologists tell us that our first image of who God is will come through the grid of our relationship with our earthly father. That's a problem for many of us.

I grew up in a broken home. After my parents got a divorce, I only saw my dad two more times before he died. As a result, I wrestled with the issue of eternal security. I had the mentality that God would leave me. I was set up for that.

If you came from a troubled home, you probably did not have a strong, godly male influence in your life. Maybe your father was absent. Maybe he was abusive. Maybe he was emotionally distant. Maybe he made promises he didn't keep.

And now, unconsciously, you project all of that onto God. You assume God will abandon you like your father did. You expect God to let you down. You believe deep down that His love is conditional—that if you mess up enough, He'll walk away.

But God is not your earthly father.

If you were raised in a family where there was physical abuse, or an environment of fear, you might feel that way about God. Many of us wrestle with being loved and secure in the Father's arms forever and ever.

God wants you to be secure. He wants you to know that nothing can separate you from His love. He doesn't leave. He doesn't abandon. He doesn't change His mind about you.
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).

Your earthly father may have failed you. But your Heavenly Father never will. Stop seeing God through the lens of your wounds. Start seeing Him through the lens of His Word.

He loves you. He's not leaving. You are secure.