Our concept of God is shaped largely by the relationship we have or had with our fathers. If your father is or was encouraging, trustworthy, caring, approachable, and loving, chances are excellent you will view your Heavenly Father much the same way.

But encouraging, trustworthy, caring, approachable, and loving are not the adjectives many of us would use to describe our fathers. Some have dads who are abusive. Some have dads who drink too much or are drug-addicted. Some have fathers who have made work their top (and sometimes only) priority. Some don’t have dads at all. Our father may have died. He may have left by choice. And some have no idea who their father is.

As a result, our concept of God (a.k.a. our Heavenly Father) gets skewed. We come to experience our Heavenly Father much as we experience(d) our earthly fathers. We see God as:

• Angry–our spiritual life resembles our home life; we find ourselves walking on eggshells, trying not to do or say anything that might upset our Father.

• Preoccupied–we believe that God, like our dad, always has more important things on His mind and doesn’t want to be bothered by us.

• Distant–we think that fathers--including the Heavenly Father--are emotionally cold and incapable of intimacy.

• Impulsive–experience tells us not to get too close to the Heavenly Father because fathers could pick up and leave at any moment, for any reason.

• Non-existent–since fathers are not a part of our reality it’s less painful to simply go on as if they didn't exist at all.
  

Let me state this clearly based on the authority of God’s Word: these are false beliefs that will not only block the path to emotional healing, they will bring ruin to our spiritual lives. And I speak from experience.

For much of my life I held beliefs about God that were based on my “father experience”; beliefs that I discovered were downright lies. It wasn’t until the truth about my Heavenly Father was revealed that I found healing for my wounded soul. The journey to find who my Heavenly Father really is led me to these truths:

• He “abounds” in love for me–The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love. (Psalm 103:8, NIV)

• He is never too busy for me--God’s there, listening for all who pray and mean it. (Psalm 145:18, The Message)
  

• He wants to be close to me–The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18, NIV)
  

• He will always be there for me--Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5, NIV)
  

• He encourages me on the journey–Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9, NIV)
  

We have a Heavenly Father who wants to provide healing for our father wounds. That cannot happen until the barriers of false belief are removed. Find out who He is. Who He really is. It is when we know the truth that road to recovery opens before us.  

Fatherlessness encompasses much more than a father not being physically present in the home. Many children are growing up with dads who live under the same roof, but who are distant, preoccupied, addicted, or are clueless about what it means to be a dad. Author and former NFL coach Tony Dungy states it clearly: "We have a whole generation of men who don't understand how much they mean to their kids."

As a former preventionist, I have been exposed to a number of different strategies designed to curtail adolescent drug and alcohol abuse. Some focus solely on building children's self-esteem. Some are all about cracking down on kids; creating tougher laws and school policies for those who use. Some drug and alcohol programs are fear-based, designed to scare kids with statistics and simplistic messages like alcohol kills brain cells, marijuana is addictive, and drugs can kill you. And speaking of simplistic, years ago, children were told the solution was to "just say no."

I've got a theory about how to prevent our kids from engaging in reckless and harmful behaviors. How about men stepping up the the plate and learning how to be good fathers? How about dads understanding their God-given role and being actively involved in their kids lives--spending time with them; listening to them; loving them; taking every opportunity to show them that they have value; teaching them, as the Proverb says, to choose the right path. 

Instead of telling our kids to "just say no" to irresponsible behaviors, perhaps we should be teaching men to "just say yes" to being responsible fathers.  

 I'm thinking it just might work.

It is wise for anyone who is going through difficulties in life--whatever they may be--to build a support network. Just as our pain comes through relationships, our healing comes through relationships.

The key is finding the right people to be a part of our recovery team: people who are going to encourage us, build us up, and help us to heal. Our support base may include friends, mentors, pastors, counselors, or a 12-step group. Look around. Who is it that God has placed in your life to be His voice, His ears, His arms? Identify them. Draw strength from them.

That being said, this process of building our support network also involves identifying and keeping our distance from those who we know from past experience will not help us to heal. We all have toxic people in our lives. People who don't encourage us, but discourage us. People who don’t build us up, but tear us down. People who don't help us to heal, but who cause us even deeper hurts.

Sadly, our own family members may be toxic. It is true that we can't choose our relatives. But we can choose to put a healthy distance between us and them. 

When it comes to investing in people, we must choose those who are going to pay huge dividends in our lives, not those who continually drain our account.

Our Heavenly Father provides a road to recovery for every one of His hurting children who seeks it. It's a road that leads to peace, joy, forgiveness, contentment, and healing. But before we set out on our journey, we must surround ourselves with healthy, hope-filled people who are committed to helping us arrive at our destination.

As a parent, I cannot imagine a pain greater than the heartache of losing a child. That is the very pain our Heavenly Father chose to suffer to show His great love for us.

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace--
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
                                  
Amazing love! How can it be, that Thou, my God, should die for me?--Charles Wesley

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts"--Isaiah 55:9, NIV.

"Quit whining and getting stressed out when things don't go exactly as you think they should go. Do you really think I haven't thought this all through? My plans for you have not changed. You remember my plans for you--to prosper you, to give you hope and a future. I will not allow anything to stand in the way of that. Will you?"--Isaiah 55:9, DKV (Dan Kuiper Version).

As was his daily ritual, a man opened his front door to walk out to the driveway to get his morning newspaper. He was surprised to see strange, little dog on the porch, his tail wagging, the man’s newspaper in his mouth. 

Appreciative of this unexpected “delivery service,” the man stopped down, petted the dog behind the ears, and told him he was “good dog.” He gave the dog some treats from the fridge and sent him on his way.

The following morning, the man opened the door to find the same dog sitting on the stoop, tail wagging, surrounded by about a dozen newspapers.

He spent rest of that morning returning the papers to his neighbors.

A little encouragement goes a long way. We know from being on the receiving end that a compliment, an affirmation, or well-timed words of praise can put a spring in a person's step and hope in their heart. We have no idea to what extent our kind words can impact those around us. Perhaps, we should resolve to be a bit freer with phrases like:

• good job
  
• I appreciate you
  
• you can do it
  
• you mean a lot to me
  
• I'm expecting great things from you.
  

It could be that the only thing that stands between a person and the accomplishment of their goals is your encouragement.

Praise as many people as you can today. You will be blessed as much as them.

In a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, it was determined that the deadliest job in America is commercial fishing. It is more dangerous than being an iron worker, a truck driver, or a miner. Even repairing power lines is a safer job than being a deep sea fisherman. 

When Jesus began assembling His church He invited His followers to be fishers of men. His disciples, some of whom were fishermen, understood the tremendous risk involved. It was clearly not a calling for the weak the heart.

If we Christians fully understood the scope of what Jesus asked His followers to do and actively pursued being fishers of men, I would suppose today's church would resemble a rescue ship. We, as followers of Christ, would always be at-the-ready; eager to go out and save those who are in spiritual distress. Nothing--not even high seas or forging into uncharted territory--would prevent us from carrying out our God-given mission.

People who work on rescue ships are very clear about their purpose. They are focused on one thing and one thing only: saving people. 

That is what Jesus had in mind when He asked His followers to become fishers of men. 

But, all too often, today’s church looks not so much like a rescue ship as it does a cruise ship. The primary concern of those on board is our comfort, our enjoyment, having our needs met. We sit back on our reclining pews, reading our favorite Bible translation, and expect to be waited on hand and foot. We have a sense of entitlement, reasoning that since we paid for it with our offerings and acts of service, the voyage should meet our every expectation.

On a cruise ship, if a need or a problem arises,  passengers demand that the “help” solve it immediately. We even complain when the seas get a little choppy and expect the captain and crew to steer us back toward calm waters so we can be comfortable once again. If our experience does not meet our satisfaction, we simply find another cruise line. 

Meanwhile, people all around us are dying. And so is the church.

It's easy to blame steadily declining church involvement on a cultural shift from biblical roots, time pressures, an anti-Christian media bias, children's sports programs, and boring and irrelevant worship services. But if we, as a church, were doing what we were called by Jesus Himself to do, there wouldn't be so many stained glass windows being boarded up. In fact, if we were serious about reaching out to those in need with the love of Jesus we'd need to build more churches.  

Everywhere we look, there are people in danger. People who are crying out for help as they struggle to keep their heads above their marital problems, addictions, depression, debt. Some have observed many a ship cruise by without so much as throwing out a life line. They have given up hope that they will ever be saved. 

The single biggest difference between a rescue ship and a cruise ship is that the people on a cruise ship are not all that concerned with what is going on outside the boat. We cannot possibly fulfill our commission to lovingly and selflessly respond to the needs of others if we see the voyage as all about us. 

We Christians can’t miss the boat on this. This is about our very purpose. This is about being the people that God wants us to be. This is about showing unconditional, non-judgmental, Christ-like love to others who Jesus thought enough of to die for. Jesus isn’t interested in our being comfortable. He is interested in our being committed.

(excerpt from When Father is a Bad Word)

The Bible is basically the story of a Father pursuing a relationship with His children. Take a moment to consider that word: pursue. It means to follow; to chase; to hunt; to strive for. We don’t pursue something we merely have a mild interest in. We only pursue things that really matter. Now let me say it again: The Heavenly Father pursues a relationship with His children.

Some of us still blow that statement off faster than a campaign promise. That is an unfortunate result of either what we choose to believe about ourselves or what we choose to  believe about God.

Tobey Maguire in Spiderman 3 offered these words of wisdom: “Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us we always have a choice. It’s the choices that make us who we are.”

Perhaps a more credible source of encouragement is Scottish minister and teacher J. Oswald Chambers who once said, “We are at this moment as close to God as we really choose to be.” 

Choosing to believe that our Heavenly Father pursues us is also choosing to believe that we are worth being pursued; that God not only follows us, He chases after us; that He isn’t just mildly interested in a close relationship with us, He strives for it. Why? Because we matter.

We live in freedom when we acknowledge our sin but focus on our Savior. We live in bondage when we acknowledge our Savior but focus on our sin.

My dad was one of 13 children. My mom came from a blended, yours-mine-and-ours family with 15 kids. I have a lot of relatives. I don't claim all of them. But one family member I'm proud to acknowledge as such is my cousin Konnie.

Konnie is an all around nice guy. He lives his faith. He is also a collector of antiques. He's acquired an impressive fleet of vehicles through the years: cars, firetrucks, steam engines, even hearses (lest you think that's morbid, he's a funeral director).

The crown jewel of Konnie's collection is a stagecoach he happened upon a few years ago. Most people, at first glance, would have seen a common, rickety, old buggy that one might see in an old western. Konnie saw much more. He saw what was beneath the surface.

Turns out this particular stagecoach was one of only 12 of its kind in existence. Two were on display in museums in Africa, nine had been accounted for in the U.S. This was the missing one.

But the real value of this vintage vehicle didn't come to light until it was tenderly and painstakingly brought by a trained professional through a restoration process. For 13 weeks, the restorer restored. He methodically and meticulously peeled away the effects of aging and abuse. The dark and dingy exterior eventually gave way and the true splendor of the coach was brought to the surface. In the hands of a master restorer, the stagecoach was transformed from a rickety, weather-worn wagon into a stunning, incredibly intricate piece of art. 

The verb restore is used over 1,000 times in the Old Testament. Very simply, it means to return to its original condition. More than simply "touching up" or "painting over," the restoration process brings something back to what it was meant to be.

In Psalm 23, David paints a wonderful picture for us—a Father in Heaven who tenderly provides for the needs of His children like a shepherd cares for his sheep. David writes that this Father causes us us to lie down in green pastures. He leads us beside quiet waters. He restores our souls.

The soul is the deepest part of us; our innermost being; the spiritual “me” that was created in God’s image and will live forever. The soul is the very core of who we are. Although today's magazines would tell  us otherwise, it is the soul that gives a person value and worth.

That is the part of us that our Heavenly Father wants to restore. He longs to return our souls to their original, pristine condition so that we may be in a more perfect union with Him.

When our souls bear the effects of the wear and tear of life; when we’re scratched and worn and the luster is gone; our Heavenly Father won't settle for a touch up job. He isn't satisfied to simply slap a new coat of paint on us and send us on our way. He seeks to restore us. To strip away our scratches and scars. To return us to what we were designed to be. 

When God created humankind, He designed us in His image. And while our bodies and minds reflect His handiwork as well, His signature is our soul. It is our soul that is the essence of who we are. It is our soul that sets us apart from all creation. It is our soul that gives us infinite value.

Every human being suffers the effects of living in an imperfect world. We all, at times, experience downpours of discouragement. Winds of worry. Droughts of doubt. Life’s journey can bring about damaging wear and tear on our souls. But all is not lost. God is in the restoration business. 

The Creator is committed to getting to that which is underneath. The Designer is dedicated to proving that our value to Him is never diminished. The Restorer is resolute to return us to what we were meant to be--highly valued, deeply loved children of a Heavenly Father. Lie down in His green pastures. Allow Him to lead you beside quiet waters. Let him restore your soul.