{"id":35789,"date":"2023-05-11T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T17:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/father-she-yearned-for-was-already-there\/"},"modified":"2023-05-11T17:08:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T17:08:00","slug":"father-she-yearned-for-was-already-there","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/father-she-yearned-for-was-already-there\/","title":{"rendered":"The Father She Yearned for Was Already There"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tori Petersen grew up in the foster care system where she absorbed a message that she was worthless. Although the rules were strict, she was allowed to go to church which gave some relief from a sterile group-home environment. She writes:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The pastor&rsquo;s messages about forgiveness gave me the first stirrings of hope I could remember. I even asked Jesus into my heart, though I didn&rsquo;t understand what that entailed. I only went up to the altar because I thought that I&rsquo;d find relief from the pain of foster care and the continual sense of feeling unwanted.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>As she moved through a succession of foster homes, her heart grew increasingly callous toward God and other people. Her peers would poke fun at her, saying she had &ldquo;daddy issues.&rdquo; At the time, Tori &ldquo;believed having a father would solve lots of my problems. Perhaps someone would have been there to love me. If God was so good, I couldn&rsquo;t help wondering, then why hadn&rsquo;t he granted me a father?&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>During many lunch periods, she enjoyed secluding herself in the English teacher&rsquo;s classroom. For one of her art classes, she received permission to paint a mural on his wall. While she painted, they talked. He never shied away from a good debate or hard questions.<\/p>\n\n<p>Tori said, &ldquo;One day he asked if I believed in God. I replied that I didn&rsquo;t. From my perspective, it seemed like people claimed belief in God due to social consensus more than any genuine faith.&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;If most people in society didn&rsquo;t believe in God, would people still believe in God?&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>He paused for a long time, and then responded, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; She appreciated his candor, which was rare among the Christians she had known. Instead of telling her what (and how) to believe, he admitted he didn&rsquo;t have all the answers.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>My teacher&rsquo;s honest admission of uncertainty encouraged me to start asking more questions, because deep in my heart I was searching for the Father I&rsquo;d always yearned for. My heart was so drawn to the character of Jesus that I posted a YouTube video asking people to forgive me for being a mean and angry person.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Around the same time, a youth leader she&rsquo;d barely seen since junior high reentered her life. She began asking her and her foster mom questions about God, which they answered patiently and kindly. Tori said, &ldquo;The one question I couldn&rsquo;t shake revolved around innocent children: If God is so good, then why do they suffer? All they could answer was, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know.&rsquo;&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I didn&rsquo;t know either. But I did know that when I looked at Scripture, I saw a God who didn&rsquo;t shy away from pain but embraced it so that others would know love. And when I looked at the lives of those who most reminded me of Jesus, I could see how they had sacrificed on my behalf. I didn&rsquo;t want to waste their suffering, or my own, but I wanted to receive it all as a gift&mdash;as a call to love others as they had loved me.<\/p>\n<p>My salvation did not happen in a single grand moment, but through small miracles that gradually chipped away at the scales of skepticism. I saw God more clearly the more time I spent around people who pursued godliness, who told me who I was in Christ despite what I&rsquo;d done and what had been done to me.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the father I&rsquo;d always wanted turned out to be the Father who was always there, the Father who revealed himself to me in his own perfect timing.<\/p>\n<p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[433],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3517,3558,3596,3689,3819,3897,3967,3969,4161,4386,4400,4699,4787,4877,4903,5139,5283],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,381],"class_list":["post-35789","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-born-again","tax_ctp_tags-changing-lives","tax_ctp_tags-christian-walk","tax_ctp_tags-conversion","tax_ctp_tags-divine-love","tax_ctp_tags-evangelism","tax_ctp_tags-fathers-day","tax_ctp_tags-fatherhood-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-homelessness","tax_ctp_tags-longing","tax_ctp_tags-love-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-presence-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-regeneration","tax_ctp_tags-salvation","tax_ctp_tags-security-in-god","tax_ctp_tags-testimony","tax_ctp_tags-witness"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Father She Yearned for Was Already There - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/father-she-yearned-for-was-already-there\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Father She Yearned for Was Already There - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tori Petersen grew up in the foster care system where she absorbed a message that she was worthless. 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