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The Father's Business Podcast
The Father's Business Podcast
Summer Series: Safe in the Father's Heart-Finding Your Place in the Father's Heart
Whether your relationship with your father was beautiful, broken, or somewhere between, we all carry father wounds that shape how we experience love, security, and belonging. For some, the phrase "God is Father" brings immediate comfort; for others, it triggers confusion, distance, or even fear. What if understanding the Father heart of God could transform these broken places?
In this series, Elizabeth Gunter Powell and Kimberly Roddy gently guide us through this healing journey, sharing their own unique experiences with their fathers and how those relationships continue to impact their understanding of God's fatherly love. Sylvia Gunter also shares her story of how abandonment by her father created a "daddy hole" that even wonderful surrogate fathers couldn't fill completely and her journey to understand that God is her true Father.
As we revisit this powerful message, we discover God not as a reflection of our earthly fathers but as the perfection of everything we've longed for—unwavering presence, complete acceptance, and unconditional love. Whether you've walked this path before or are taking your first steps, God has something fresh to reveal about his heart toward you.
Join us for this deeply personal exploration of what it means to be truly safe in the Father's heart. Get your copy of the book and study guide at thefathersbusiness.com and begin your journey from abandonment to belonging, from hiding to being fully seen and loved.
The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God. I'm Elizabeth Gunter Powell.
Speaker 2:And I am Kimberly Roddy. Welcome to the Father's Business podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us.
Speaker 1:Welcome everyone to the podcast. Kimberly and I are so glad you're with us today because we're going to bring back a special series that's very close to our hearts, based on the book Safe in the Father's Heart that was written by my mom and me a few years ago. We first released this podcast series a while ago, but as we entered this new season we felt the nudge to revisit it, because, the truth is, the message never stops being relevant and also all of us are in a different place than we were two years ago and maybe God has something new and fresh to say to each one of us.
Speaker 2:Right. Maybe you're walking through a season right now where the ache of not being truly seen or known is pressing in on you really strongly. Or maybe you're just now realizing that, no matter how good your earthly father was or wasn't, that there's a longing in you for more more security, more belonging, more love, more tenderness, more strength and the tenderness wrapped up together. So we want to re-release this series to help you wherever you are in that journey with the Father, heart of God, or your earthly father or your relationships and being truly known and seen and loved.
Speaker 1:And we've been doing a series based on Strength to Equal your Days and, as we talked about in our podcast last week, what really is this foundation that our deep roots need to go into is the concept of the Father Heart of God. So this is based on a book called Safe in the Father's Heart that is available on our website. But this is more than just a book study. This is a journey of healing the places in each of us that we've learned to hide, to strive to perform or to settle for less than what God has intended for us, and so many of those places go back to how we experienced, or didn't experience, the love from our earthly father.
Speaker 2:You know, elizabeth, the release of this podcast will come the week after Father's Day here in the US, and so the phrase father has a lot of different meanings to different people, depending on your story. And so the phrase God is father can also land really differently depending on that story. For some of us, it brings a lot of comfort to know that God is a father. For some of us, it brings a lot of comfort to know that God is a father. For others, it can bring confusion or distance, even pain and fear sometimes. In this series, we want to gently invite you to discover what kind of father God really is, not just in your head, but deep in your spirit.
Speaker 1:And to help us all understand that he's not a reflection of our earthly father. He's the perfection of every longing we've ever had for safety, for provision, for being seen and not dismissed. And sometimes, before we can fully receive all of that, we have to acknowledge the parts of our story that have left us guarded or grieving, and that's what this series helps us to do. There's going to be deeply personal stories, starting with my mom, sylvia Gunter. I remember when we were thinking about and praying about what to write next and really encouraging her to share her story, because it is amazing to me how well she understands and receives the father's love based on her own story. So if you've read this book or if you've listened to our podcast, you know this. But for those of you that are new, she shares her own journey from abandonment to belonging. It's a raw and real story and it sets the tone for what we hope is a healing experience for everyone who listens.
Speaker 2:You know, Elizabeth, it's been interesting to hear your mom's story and, through the years, to hear other people's stories as they have read this book. And I know for my dad. Even he did not have a father really present in his life, and yet I look at how he became such a good father and represented God the Father to me in a beautiful way not in a perfect way, but in a beautiful way. And so, as we reenter this series, our prayer is the same as it was the first time we started the series that Jesus will meet you right where you are. We do not want this to be information for you alone. We want it to be true transformation.
Speaker 2:If you have walked through it before, come again, Even as Elizabeth and I have shared our journeys along the way. Every time we come back to this series, God shows up and shares something new with us and enlightens something else that we're ready to hear on our journey. So there may be something new for you that he wants to show you this time. And if this is your first time hearing it, take a deep breath. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't even have to be ready. You just have to be willing to let God show you who he really is. He is a good, good Father.
Speaker 1:So let's step in to Safe in the Father's Heart.
Speaker 2:part one Thank you for joining us today on the Father's Business Podcast. We're glad you're here. We are kicking off a new series and we are going to be walking through the book Safe in the Father's Heart by Sylvia Gunter, co-written with Elizabeth. This one is a great resource. It's finding the Father's love that you always wanted. This book is an invitation to wholeness, peace and joy as you begin to sense and live in the fullness of God's delight in you as his child. The journey may be painful at times because of the wounds and the scars of our own stories, but the reward of experiencing the fullness of your father's delight is worth the fight. He is waiting to show you the depths of his love for you. So this is going to be a pretty powerful series. So, Elizabeth, we would love to hear a little bit about the origin of this book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is the book I had to kind of coerce my mom to write. I mean, obviously I've known her story of what happened with her earthly dad and the abandonment issues that she has had and just all the ins and outs of that story. And as we were kind of praying about what she needed to write next or what, looking back over all the things that she had written on prayer and other things, I just kind of kept coming back to this. You have learned so much about what it means to have God as your father because your earthly father was not really there for you, and so I just I've just felt like this is the, this is the piece, and so a lot of my mom's personal story is written into this book and I helped her form that story and also there's several things that she's taught through the years on the Father's Heart.
Speaker 1:But this is really her journey of first her dad not being around because of World War II, but then there's lots of other issues that happen in their relationship with the years and I was always so impressed, knowing her story, at how deeply she was able to relate to God as father, because I think in some ways, either you are drawn more towards God as your father because you don't have one or you have a very hard time seeing God as father because of what's happened in your earthly relationship. So it was a fun labor of love. There are parts of her story that are not included in this because she also is like my family's going, like extended family and other people are going to read this and so trying to walk that balance of being honoring of her whole family system but also being, I think, pretty vulnerable and talking about her own emotions, of dealing with her earthly father.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so all of our relationships with our earthly fathers affects our story, our journey, our view of our Heavenly Father. As we kick off this series, we asked Sylvia to tell us some of her story.
Speaker 3:I was driving down a tree-lined boulevard on the day of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II. It was a beautiful day, with the sun flickering through the leaves of the trees. Suddenly I blurted out loud from a deep place within me I refuse to be a prisoner of war, of a war that ended 50 years ago. Where did that come from? The country's mood that day was celebratory. The veterans of that war were still alive and were being honored in ways they richly deserved. My mind knew all of that to be true and agreed with the celebration. Yet somewhere deep in my heart there was another opinion. A rapid slideshow of images ran in my mind and heart of the backstory, of that sudden declaration. I was born in June 1941.
Speaker 3:Amid all the wars and rumors of wars, the news from Europe had been grim for years. In December 1941, the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor and entered the war. In the months thereafter every patriotic young man of fighting age volunteered or was drafted. My father volunteered and was shipped overseas when I was 18 months old. The men in that war were not promised a quick return home. After one or two year deployment, they were shipped out for the duration of the war Our family didn't know when or if my father would come home. In those days there were no cell phones, texts, emails or video chats. Going to war meant our family was completely cut off, without communication except by occasional letter, and the mail was slow and unreliable to the fighting front.
Speaker 3:Because I was so young, I don't remember many details of my day-to-day life. I was told my mother would show me a picture on the mantle and said that's your daddy. The man in the picture holding stiff and straight in his soldier uniform was holding me to his chest with a smile of obvious love and pride on his face. I was told I would pretend to call him on a toy telephone and say hello, daddy, bring me ice cream and then hang up giggling. My childlike mind couldn't comprehend all that was occurring, but I knew for a very long time he was out there somewhere. In fact, as long as I could remember, others filled in while my father was away. As the first grandchild had a unique position in the extended family we lived across the way from my father's parents. My granddaddy came by to see me on his way to and from his store every day. My other grandparents, uncles and aunts were very real parts of our lives, providing love and support. We became accustomed to our rhythm of life during those years. My mother and my brother were born six months after our father went to war and me but the daddy hole was there.
Speaker 3:I remember vividly the day, years after he left, when my father came home from war he was still dressed in his soldier's uniform. He walked across the front porch of the big white house, through the front door into the hallway where he dropped his olive drab sea bag. I ran and hid under the bed in the adjoining bedroom. Who was this stranger? How was he going to change the only family life I had known? I still remember the smell of the dust bunnies under the bed. He came slowly into the room. From my hiding place I could see his shiny soldier boots approach the bed, then a hand reached down with a roll of assorted color lifesavers, a loving bribe for a frightened child whom he had surely been anticipating holding in his arms. The bribe worked and I came out of hiding, but my heart never really engaged with him. Looking back I know he did not cause the war or have anything to do with the patriotic culture of the time that made it his duty to go to war. He did his duty as he saw it, as so many millions did. But that's a grown-up rearview mirror perspective.
Speaker 3:At the time I was a child incapable of understanding the big picture. The damage was done. Almost years ago when he left. In the very real worldview of that little girl, my daddy withdrew his presence and his love for me. In my experience, he abandoned me when he left my day-to-day life. For years the root of abandonment had been planted and it grown for all the life that I had known During the rest of my childhood. Somehow the emotional gap never closed. Other wounds occurred. My dad was in the family, but not really there. There was a lot of unsettledness and turmoil in the household, with an atmosphere of sarcastic comments and biting words. My heart did the only thing I knew to do. I built walls of self-protection to attempt to keep from being hurt again.
Speaker 3:In my junior year of college, another leaving pierced me. This time it was permanent. I was home for Christmas holidays. I was enjoying the break from school days to sleep late and eat home cooking. Two days after Christmas I was standing in the kitchen door when I saw my father get into his yellow Oldsmobile and drive off. I didn't realize it in that moment that he was leaving town with no forwarding address, without so much as a goodbye. He just disappeared, abandoned again. My adult mind knew that he left because of his own issues, wounded places and bad choices.
Speaker 3:So many emotions were swirling during that time, especially with my mother's devastation and the subsequent divorce on grounds of desertion. It was easy to keep my attention focused on her. Rationalization is an effective way to postpone dealing with your own stuff. So I dismissed it, saying the marriage was so bad. The divorce was a relief. I convinced my own heart that if I didn't acknowledge it I didn't have to feel it, and if I didn't feel it I didn't have to hurt. All of it was tucked safely away behind the walls I built in my heart.
Speaker 3:But bitterness was festering. Through the years. God supplied wonderful, loving surrogate fathers and my father-in-law, my granddaddy, my uncles, my stepdad. I love them dearly and I'm forever grateful for each of them. But deep down inside there was still something missing. I had a desperate daddy hole in my heart.
Speaker 3:All of this is the backstory to the moment on the tree-lined hoover ward when I declared out loud from a deep place within me. I refused to be a prisoner of war, of a war that ended 50 years ago. As I heard this cry come from deep in my heart, I realized that all the proper Christian responses I had tried in order to fix the problem, including forgiving, only satisfied my mind that I had done the right thing, but they did not satisfy the ache of my heart. What was at the root of this ache? I never would have used those words at the time, but the absence of my father left me orphaned. Most of us would push back on being labeled an orphan because in our mind, orphans are children with no parents, living in a group home in a third world country. That's not my story. I knew who my parents were. In many ways I was just as disconnected in my heart.
Speaker 3:Feeling like an orphan can be debilitating. It is sensing in your heart that we do not truly belong. It is believing we are not protected or cared for. It is seeing like we're not truly connected, not bonded to anyone. Orphans are on their own to make it in this world and have to fight to get a hit. If anything good is going to happen to them in this life, they will have to make it happen. Orphans live with an underlying fear and feeling of being abandoned. Whether they are physically abandoned or not, abandonment is excruciating and painful beyond words. So most of the time we busy ourselves to the point of distraction, but when we slow down we feel the ever-present eight once more.
Speaker 3:Even if we grew up with a good father, they're not perfect. No father is the best. Intentions of loving dads often get misinterpreted or botched in execution. Our earthly fathers may not have what we need or know how to give it to us in the way we need to receive it. Things that may not seem like a big deal to others can leave orphaned places in our heart. Many of us are living our lives with an orphaned heart, but because this is the only life we have known, it feels normal. God desires to heal the wounded places in our heart and open our eyes to experience what our true father is like. He is strong, he is kind, he is wise, he is caring. Most importantly, he is near and he is for us always.
Speaker 1:So that's just the beginning of her story and as we go through this podcast series, we'll hear more from her on that, and Kimberly and I are going to share our own experiences. We each have a very unique relationship with our dads and we look forward to sharing with you how our relationships with our fathers and the fact that we have both lost our dads Kimberly about 20 years ago and me more recently how that is also impacting how we see God as father and how he can fill in some of those gaps. So we are so excited about this series. It's going to be a great journey for all of us. At times it will be painful and we're mindful that for some of us, our relationship with our father has been traumatic. It has been abusive. Our relationship with our father has been traumatic. It has been abusive, and so we are praying for everyone who's going to be listening through this podcast with us that Jesus will meet you what God wants to do in each of our lives as we start this podcast series.
Speaker 1:So if you have not purchased a copy of Safe in the Father's Heart and want to follow along with us as we kind of go through the chapters of the book, it is available on our website at wwwthepfathersbusinesscom. You can also find it on Amazon, but I'm going to tell you you'll pay more for it there simply because of Amazon fees, but you can go to either Amazon or you can go to the Father's Business. It is not yet available as an ebook. That's something we're working on, so for now we only have print copies of it available, but we can ship anywhere in the world if anybody would like one. There's also a study guide that goes along with the book. So if you need to work through the book at your own pace or want to spend more time in depth on this book with a group or by yourself, we encourage you to check out those resources at thefathersbusinesscom or on Amazon.
Speaker 3:I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business.
Speaker 1:Podcast. This podcast is made possible through donations by people like you. To donate, go to wwwthefathersbusinesscom. Be sure to follow us at the Father's Biz on Instagram and Facebook.
