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The last rays of sun were going down as I sat in a friend's living room with seven other women. We'd prayed for our teens and college kids, one woman's rocky marriage, and other issues. Yet I still felt burdened about my finances, work deadlines, and a struggle my daughter was experiencing.
Sitting next to me, my friend Susan sensed my heaviness. "Just climb into God's lap," she suggested. "Let him put his arms around you and hold you."
Climb into God's lap? What an odd thing, I thought. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't visualize doing this. I could relate to a God I endeavor to please or serve. But a God I could snuggle up to when I had a really bad day? I had no grid for that.
Well-known author Max Lucado once said, "When I imagine a faithful, unchanging God who isn't temperamental, I can do it because I saw this in my father." Yet sometimes our earthly dad, despite his best intentions, confuses our picture of God. My friend Carly had a father who indulged her every whim. After she became a Christian in high school and even into her thirties, Carly expected God to meet her every desire—and became angry and disappointed when he didn't come through on her timetable.
My father was the silent type who didn't readily express praise; he showed his love by providing for and protecting us. Papa expected obedience—and when he was crossed, I saw his intense anger. So while I worked hard to be noticed by him, I avoided at all costs being the target of his disapproval. I acted as "good" as I possibly could to please him. But when I was 11, my father died in the middle of the night of a massive heart attack, leaving me with a profound sense of abandonment.
With my mother's remarriage less than two years later, the filter through which I viewed God got blurrier. My stepfather was more my mom's husband than a father; he was stingy, and it was very difficult for me to trust him or rely on him.
When I joined a women's support group as an adult to help me overcome roadblocks in my relationship to God, I gradually became aware that how I related to my father and stepfather impacted how I viewed my heavenly Father. When I felt negative or sad, I had difficulty taking comfort in his love. When something terribly stressful happened, I felt bereft—even though I knew all the right Bible verses on God's faithfulness. As I took a hard look at the leftover wounds that shaped the filters through which I viewed God, I began discovering ways to correct my flawed views and experience God's love afresh.
I immersed myself in Scripture to gain a true picture of God.God isn't like my father or stepfather, and he isn't exactly like your dad, either. Instead of having a performance-oriented relationship with the Lord as I had with my earthly father, I learned through God's Word that his love isn't available to me only when I measure up to rigid, hard-to-reach demands. God chose me when he planned creation (Ephesians 1:11-12). He isn't stingy, but is the great Giver who desires to lavish love on me simply because I'm his child (1 John 3:1).
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