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The Father's Business Podcast
The Father's Business Podcast
Summer Series: Safe in the Father's Heart-The Father Delights in You Before You Delight in Him
What does it mean to truly delight in God, beyond duty or obligation? In this final episode of the Safe in the Father's Heart series, Elizabeth and Kimberly explore the profound difference between serving God and delighting in Him—and how recognizing His delight in us transforms everything.
Delighting in God, they explain, isn't about manufacturing happy feelings. "Delighting isn't something you've got to muster up." It's recognizing God's joy in you first, then responding. The hosts share practical ways to cultivate awareness of God's presence—from personalizing scripture promises to finding songs that speak His truth, from inviting Him into mundane tasks to simply making space to enjoy His company like you would a friend.
The episode culminates with the powerful truth that our woundedness, when healed, becomes our greatest ministry tool. As "wounded healers," we can represent the Father's heart to others from a place of authenticity rather than obligation.
Have you recognized God's delight in you today? How might that awareness change everything?
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. Hey friends, this is Kimberly. I want to personally invite you to join me and my dear friend Elizabeth for the Rooted and Resilient Conference, october 3rd and 4th in Charlotte, north Carolina. This weekend is going to be all about helping you get refreshed, realigned and rooted in who you are in Christ. It's going to be a mixture of practical teaching and space to hear from God so you can exchange, striving for rest, fear for sonship and depletion for a spirit-led life. It's $95 to register or if you bring a friend, it's just $80 each. I would love for you to come together, grow together and leave stronger in your faith by being with us this weekend, october 3rd and 4th. Spots are limited. Grab your seat now at thefathersbusinesscom. Go to our events page. It's Rooted and Resilientlotte october 3rd and 4th. I can't wait to see you there. Praise jesus like the shortest and hardest one.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right, one moss right, yes, this is, uh, you're blessed to be. A blessing is the real name of it, not delight and legacy. So, um, you started the last one, so I'll start this one, right, okay, and I have another random thought that I'm to throw in here that is not on the page, so just hang with me.
Speaker 2:It's Tinder, though it is not Tinder.
Speaker 1:I know it's not Tinder. It's hot, it's chewy, okay. Do we talk about what it means to delight in God? I'm not sure that we do, okay, if you join us. Okay, sure that we do, um, okay, if you join us. Okay, it's not tender and triumphant.
Speaker 2:No, no, okay, oh do you want me to see if we talk about delighting in god? I have the transcript.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, if we do, I mean it's got to be picking up the word from the transcript, because I didn't, I didn't tell it, make up a oh, I didn't do transcript of 11. Never mind, I mean you might have it did so yeah, it should still be on buzzsprout because I didn't ever delete them. Oh okay, can you open another tab and buzz?
Speaker 2:I got it right here already. Well, I keep it open all the time. Of course you do transcript it's live.
Speaker 1:I just I can't ever figure out how to open it edit, I can edit it, but I can't. If you can edit it, you can look. Can't? If you can edit it, you can look at it. How I don't know. I'm saying things that I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh, wait, here it is here it is, but I don't know how to search. Let me see. Oh, I know how to search. Hold on, I got it. I got it. I got it. We did call it delighting in him. You. Delighting in him, you are a father. Oh, okay. So today we're looking at chapter 12 in the book, which the title of the chapter is delighting in him.
Speaker 1:The chapter I thought was you're blessed to be a blessing, is it not? I don't have the book in front of me, I just got to reach over, or maybe that's the name of the blessing at the end of it is you are blessed to be a blessing.
Speaker 2:Chapter 11 is chapter 12 is delighting in him okay, alright then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talk about delight. So we're going to talk about delight, delight, delight there you go okay, alright, okay, we're not tender and triumphant.
Speaker 1:All right, here we go. Oh, it's Friday. The final episode brings together themes of healing, identity, joy, legacy, right up there into a deeper relationship with the Father, who not only heals but delights in us and calls us to delight in Him. There you go. All right, here we go. Welcome back to the podcast. Everybody, kimberly and I are so glad that you've joined us today. We are at our final episode in our summer release series of Safe in the Father's Heart, and today we're going to be kind of tying together a lot of the themes and talking about the invitation to go deeper with the Father, who not only heals us but delights in us and calls us to delight in Him. So if you've journeyed through this series with us whether it's taking you 11 weeks or 11 months, it's okay, because we invited you to take it at your own pace You've probably realized that walking through healing and understanding who God is as your Father is not a linear process Healing rarely is. It is about trusting God as Father and that doesn't happen overnight. So this final conversation is about something more than just healing. It's about joy, it's about delight, it's about stepping into the legacy God wrote for you long before you were even born. I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 1:In this episode we talk about what it means to delight in God and not just serve Him, obey Him or try to impress Him. And you know, kimberly, before we started this series, we were doing this Strength to Equal your Days series and we kept talking about this analogy of a tree and wanting our roots to go deep and we said that the understanding God as Father was kind of the foundation and the soil that our roots get to go in. And I was thinking back to that tree analogy just this week and about the oak tree and how oak trees give off a ton of acorns and how we get more oak trees is those acorns then get planted and they become more trees out in the forest. And I really was just struck with a thought An oak tree doesn't really do much of anything to plant those new trees, right? The tree's job is to stay rooted in the Father's love, to stay rooted in who God is, to stay rooted in who I am, in Him, and the acorns just kind of get produced and over time they drop down on the ground and sometimes a squirrel will pick them up and go bury them somewhere, or in many different ways.
Speaker 1:Those acorns then produce new trees, but it's not a striving process for the tree itself. And I was just God just really kind of spoke tenderly to me this week about fruitfulness and about wanting to, and I was talking to him about wanting to leave a legacy, and he's like your job is to be the tree. Keep yourself rooted in me, in the Father's heart, and the acorns will get produced because you're in good soil, and then the acorns will be taken away, meaning God will step in and do what God's going to do with the things that we produce, and he's the one who allows the trees to grow, with the things that we produce, and he's the one who allows the trees to grow. So we're going to focus in on this episode about delighting in God and allowing him to delight over us, and then out of the overflow of that comes the fruitfulness and the legacy that we get to leave.
Speaker 2:Just a moment, uh-huh, have a thought, hang on, okay. Okay, that idea of the tree, like we talked about in our previous series. In Psalms, like you said, it says, the person that meditates on the law of the Lord and whose delight is in the law of the Lord, that person is like a tree planted by the water. And that person, what Psalms says, right before describing it like a tree, it says that that person delights in the Lord, right, and so there's a I'm thinking like, like you said, that tree. It's just existing and I think sometimes we think I can barely exist. How can I even think about delighting? But see, that's the thing. Like See, that's the thing. Delighting isn't well.
Speaker 1:It's not an emotion you have to muster, like happiness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, delighting isn't something that you've got to muster up. Being in Christ, part of our growth and maturity as believers is learning that delight just comes as a choice of following him, of just existing, of just being with him. And so this episode holds space for that conversation, for the conversation that delighting may not be a feeling that you have, but what do we do? How do we realize that God delights in us and therefore of that overflow of Him delighting in us and realizing who we are in Him as His children? Then we also get to choose to delight and just exist and just be and just be present in life because of Christ. So you don't have to earn His affection, you don't have to force yourself to delight, but there is a journey of spiritual maturity that starts with recognizing his delight in you and that he has already set his love on you emotion, like you know, sometimes when someone will ask me would you do this for me?
Speaker 1:I'd be delighted to. That doesn't mean that I'm going to enjoy doing it for them. It's not about happiness or a fakeness that I'm just trying to be so delighted to be here. I think it is a much deeper word of I am willing to step in and do a thing for you because of my love for you, because I know it will be helpful to you. Even if it's not my first choice of something. An action to take is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:So this idea of delight is not necessarily saying that life is always going to be rainbows and butterflies and no trial or troubles, but it's. Even in the hard days, even in the hard places, can I have my eyes open to see little winks from God or little touches of who he is? So even in the midst of a very hard day, I'm going to choose to have a heart that's looking for God. I know you're here because you've promised me that you will be. So how do I look for you in the small things and how do I open up my heart to receive your love for me? Because that's part of it.
Speaker 1:Girl and her dad comes to her class and she realizes that because he's in a costume and he's supposed to be there to read story time for the kids, and immediately she knows who that is and just the joy she takes in realizing her dad's there, that's my dad. That's my dad is what she kept saying over and over again. And so how do we whether it's a good, easy, fun day or it's a harder day how do we have those that's my dad moments in the midst of our days? And that's what delighting is all about.
Speaker 2:And you were just talking about legacy as well. That's something that we talk about toward the end of this episode. When we know who we are, when we realize how much God delights in us I'm sure when we realize how much God delights in us and we begin to grow in delighting in Him, then the overflow of our life in this world is going to make an impact. It can't not at that point, because we are living out of who God has made us to be and it's kind of like you're sharing. When dad walks into the room you know he's thinking and he's going to read story time but he's in a costume. You know he's thinking, hey, that's my daughter, you know. And then she's realizing that's my dad, that's my dad, you know, like there is just natural delight. You know like there is just natural delight but there's also a legacy, because that story is remembered.
Speaker 1:That story is continued, and it is.
Speaker 2:Just take my line on the next page if you want to. That's what it means to be the phrase co-laborers with Christ, Like we are working with him, in conjunction with him. We are who he made us to be as his children. We are ambassadors of him and we get to bless others from that own. From we get to bless others and I hear stories't broken parts. Can we become a source of hope for someone else?
Speaker 2:I feel like I said it early on but then I got convoluted.
Speaker 2:I just I think it's really powerful, as you, as we get to this final episode and you start putting all the pieces together, to start to really see again I say it again to know how God sees us, how he delights in us, how he loves us, how he chooses us, and then to realize that we can live out of that overflow and we can delight in Him, and then we can delight and bless others.
Speaker 2:We are experiencing that healing and we've said it's a journey. It's not a one-time thing, it's continual, it's ongoing. But the more we walk out that picture, the more we know our own story and even the broken parts, the more that we can allow, the more that we allow Jesus to heal those broken parts and allow Him to delight in us and allow ourselves to take delight in the work he's doing and who he is. That is when we become a source of hope for all of those around us. That is where delight and understanding of who God is and His delight in us turns into truly having a legacy and an impact in the world that we live in and, like that oak tree example I was saying at the beginning, I think all of us are doing it a whole lot more than we even realize.
Speaker 1:We're dropping acorns all over the place because I think about my mom's story. What if she had never written the book so that people could know what she went through with her own father, betty? Just because, out of her love that she has learned to receive from her heavenly father and her understanding of what it means to be his daughter and that he delights in her, she was already impacting so many people's lives before she shared the more broken parts of her story and it took a while I mean, she was in her I want to say late 60s, maybe even 70 years old before she was ready to tell that part of her story. So we are in no way saying to everyone hey, you know all right now that you've done this study, now, immediately, you need to be ready to bless others, and that I think there are some people that have read the end of Safe in the Father's Heart and kind of felt that pressure to do so, and we're like, absolutely not, you are on your own journey with God. And we're like, absolutely not, you are on your own journey with God, but when a time comes that God wants to use part of your story to bless and help other people come to a deeper understanding of who he is through your story.
Speaker 1:It's such an honor to be able to share that, and I know, kimberly, you and I both have done that through the years in many different ways where we've been vulnerable and allowed other people to hear parts of our story and how God has shown up for us in those places. And so this is the end of a series, but it's also kind of a commissioning for everyone that go and be, first of all, a beloved child of God Most High. That's the most important thing you can do is to know who God is and who you are in Him and live deep from that and then just trust that in different people's lives, in different areas of your circumstances, whether that's work or home or church God's going to use you as that mighty oak and he is going to allow those acorns to fall into other people's lives and your story of healing will become a place of inspiration and hope for others. So we hope you enjoy this last episode of the Safe in the Father's Heart series.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to our podcast this week as we are nearing the end of the book Safe in the Father's Heart, we are looking forward to today's conversation. Last week, elizabeth and I shared a lot of our personal stories about our fathers and our Heavenly Father and how the moon is round, so check out last week's episode if you have not yet. But for the last two weeks we have tried to talk about how we can that many of you are not yet in that space Throughout the series we have said we want you to pace yourself and work through this book and through this podcast series as you're able, wherever you are on your journey. And so today we're looking at chapter 12 in the book, which the title of this chapter is Delighting in Him.
Speaker 2:And so we want to delight in God. We want to delight in our relationship with our father, and that is a hard thing If you are in a place where things are difficult. We again want to be sensitive to that and gentle with that, with wherever you are. And yet, at the same time, we recognize that choosing to delight in our father is something sometimes we have to encourage or push ourselves to do, because it is a discipline. So, elizabeth, I know you and I both love discipline, right oh?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know me Exercise, dieting, all those things.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:I don't like anything that asks something of me that I don't feel like doing. I'm very much run by my emotions, and I'm aware of that, and so, yeah, sometimes I have to choose to focus my thoughts and my energy and my time towards things that I know are good for me. You know, kimberly, you know me. If I was allowed, I would have brownies or donuts or cupcakes or something sweet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I keep waiting for a scientist to decide how to make sugar a vitamin so that I will be the healthiest person alive. But that's not how it works, and so oftentimes, regardless of what I desire and what I feel, I have to choose to eat something healthy or go and exercise when I don't want to.
Speaker 1:And so sometimes, as you were saying, kimberly, sometimes we do have to make a choice that chooses God, regardless of what's going on in my life today, I'm going to delight in you as a good father, whether it feels like it or not, and I have found that it's much easier to do that if, in times when life isn't as difficult or hard, I have practiced and learned to fold into my life and my lifestyle this idea of delighting in God and enjoying Him, not just serving Him, not just obeying Him, but really Jesus came so that we could have a relationship with God. And so, just like in human relationships, if I don't spend time with my friends or my spouse or my family, if I don't invest in the relationship, I'm not going to get much back out of it. So part of what we want to talk today is just some creative ways that we can choose to delight in God and understand how to enjoy His presence.
Speaker 2:When you say that, Elizabeth, the other thought that comes to mind is why do we need to delight in Him? And I think that's I don't want that question to sound crass or whatever, but I think the point that we often also have to consider with this is to actually consider that our father delights in us, yeah Right, and so the father takes great pleasure in us and who we are as people. And when we understand that, I also think that shifts it a little bit from duty to relationship, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You were just alluding to that, and that's what made me think of that. Why do we want to put time and effort into spending time with the people in our lives who we have relationships with? We want to do that because there is a mutual investment there, and so when you think about your father delighting in you and taking pleasure in you and just who you are, what kind of things come to mind when you think about that, elizabeth?
Speaker 1:When I think of God delighting in me, I go back to. I remember I talked with mom about this on a podcast a couple of weeks ago, where she really set the tone for what you're talking about, kimberly, that it's not just we serve Him, but that he delights in us. He wants a relationship with us, he wants to be a part of our day. She would often ask where did you see God in your day-to-day? And so when I think of God delighting in me, I think of all the things that are unique. I think of all the things that are unique about me, the way I think, the way I feel, the way I process the world, and I realize that all of that are things that Him is, that I know that he knows me better than I know myself and that he looks at what he created and he says that's good.
Speaker 1:I like the way. I like our humor, I like the way you know God might joke about things all the time, and that's not to take away from the holiness of God at all. But I mean I'll just be riding my car and say, god, can you believe that? And be laughing about something, and I can almost feel God laughing along with me in those moments. And so there's a story that we share in here of a dear friend of ours named Matt Brinkley, and it makes me feel really old, because I remember when Mary Beth was five. Now Mary Beth is grown, married, has kids. I'm not even sure how old her kids are. Maybe they're graduated from high school by now, maybe they're in the youth group, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But probably as old as she was when you met her. Yeah, right, yes.
Speaker 1:So I feel ancient when I think back to this story, but I so remember it very clearly that Mary Beth was three, four, five years old when I first came on staff at a church where Matt Brinkley was the lead youth pastor and I was on the team and I remember him going to her school because it was his day to read a story during story time and he dressed up like this silly farmer and took his guitar and was totally in character. But from the minute that he walked to the door, mary Beth knew exactly who it was. She just kept saying that's my dad, that's my dad, that's my dad and got everyone calmed down and he started to tell a story and he recounted to us when he got back to the office that every minute or so she just kept creeping closer and closer and closer to his feet, to the point where he's sitting there playing his guitar and she's tapping on his shoe and turning back to all of her friends and saying this is my dad and just that pure delight that she had in him. But, as you're saying, why was she delighting in him? Because he took the time to dress up like a funny farmer and take his guitar and show up in her world and show delight for her and her friends.
Speaker 1:And I think why do we need to spend time delighting in God? Is because, quite honestly, I can be very busy. I can wake up in the morning, see the eight text messages that are already on my phone and the four emails and the problem I got to fix with this person's order, and I can rush into my day without even a good morning, jesus, how are you If I'm not careful? And so by saying that we need to enlighten him, it's doing what you were just talking about, kimberly. It's just we're going to have to create the space where we slow down enough to allow ourselves to hear and feel and see that God is delighting in us, and so it is a two-way thing.
Speaker 1:I know how much Mary Beth adores her father and I think that is so precious and that was very healing for me to watch, because that I mean, that wasn't my story growing up. My dad was a very good provider but was always so busy with work that he didn't show up in funny costumes with the guitar at my kindergarten, and so it was very healing to me for me to watch the way Matt was really a daddy to his daughter and I took that as a way of going. You know what, regardless of what's happened in my human relationship with my dad, he showed love in different ways, but not in that way. God delights in me and he sings over me and he loves showing up at the middle of my day.
Speaker 2:I love that story too and just the idea that that brings to our mind.
Speaker 2:And in this chapter you guys give a list of suggestions that can help you on the journey of delighting in God. And I'm going to jump to the last one, because you just shared in that story, because I think that it displays it very clearly. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So a lot of us know we're supposed to glorify God, but it actually says enjoy him forever. And so that picture right there of Matt and Mary Beth, it's a picture of enjoyment, and so one of the practical ways to help us delight in God is to learn how to enjoy Him. And, Elizabeth, I think you were alluding that to earlier when you were talking about just talking to Him in the car or joking with Him, hearing songs from Him. There's a relational dynamic with your Father and a lot of people don't understand that or have that, and so to think about enjoying him, enjoying relationship with him is to think about the relational context of what that looks like.
Speaker 2:What's it look like to enjoy other relationships? How can you go and spend time with God? For me that's something I've learned too over the years is just really talking to him in the car. A car is kind of a safe and fun space for me. I enjoy driving, I enjoy music, and so I will just converse with Him in the car sometimes and enjoy Him like that. If you could think about our listeners, could think about how do I enjoy some of my human relationships and then how can I translate that into maybe what it looks like to enjoy a relationship with God? That would be a challenge to give yourself to help you along this journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Kimberly, I remember I mean way back in the day before you. Actually you own a convertible now and have for years, but before you ever owned one. You and I are living in Atlanta and we got the spur of the moment idea to go run a convertible for 24 hours and yeah, we, we drove it several hours down to Savannah and had a great day and came back and I mean we just enjoyed being with each other doing something that you are like really love, like I think convertibles are fun. You love a convertible, but I got so much joy out of being with you writing in the convertible and I think that's a simple example, but a true one of you know I love finding a swing, either at a park or an old swing on a tree somewhere and I can.
Speaker 1:I could swing for a long time and I, early on in my relationship with God, I realized you know what it's not. I sit in my bedroom with my Bible and read my Bible and pray and that's my time alone with God, and then the rest of my day I just go on and do my thing. I quickly learned you know what God's with me when I'm on the swing and that's actually part of my story is I became a Christian on the swing but and I didn't tie that all together until much later. So now it's like, okay, if I have time to go to the park, come on, jesus, let's go. And sometimes I'll listen to worship music when I'm on the swing, and sometimes I just enjoy being on the swing and telling God thank you so much for creating this beautiful day and this time to be with you and in the silence of just being on the swing, sometimes he just allows me to feel his love, and sometimes he may even bring a verse to mind. I mean, it's different every time, but there's this idea of I'm going to choose to bring you into my day or set apart part of my day to spend time with you doing something I love.
Speaker 1:Each of us is wired differently. Each of us feels like we hear from God differently, and so I think for all of us, the foundation has to be God's word always. I mean, if you want to know who your father is and how he feels about you, you take time to read through the scripture and you will hear his heart, not only through his words, but through the words and actions of Jesus, who came to show us the father. Also in the back of this book, in the appendix, there are several things where we do an alphabet of the Father, heart and God, all based on scripture. There's lots of other lists of scriptures in the back and the appendix of this book to help you be able to hear from the Word of God who God is.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then taking those scriptures and then making personal applications of those promises to you and keeping those promises in front of you. I've had several people that put post-it notes in places, or you have reminders on your phone that pop up throughout the day, or just little things, that whatever works in your routine where you can apply God's word to the promises and connect those to your own heart and mind. So, example in the book that we give, I read God is my father. He's not just everyone's father, he's my father. So, remembering that he'll never leave you nor forsake you, he promises to give you ground to stand on. These promises can become that shield of trust when you're doubting and you can rest in those.
Speaker 2:So again, journaling about those post-it notes, index cards, whatever you can do to keep those promises in front of you, and then also you can connect those, or this can also be separate, but knowing the names of God, knowing God through each of his names. Elizabeth, you were just saying that you really knew that your earthly father was a provider, and that was one that was for me too, like I could trust God as Jehovah Jireh, our provider, because my earthly father really modeled that for me. But going deeper into some of who. What are the names of God? How can I know those and how can I cling to them and look for him to fulfill those names to us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, to fulfill those names to us. Yeah, and just this week, kimberly, we released the audio devotional podcast. He Is the I Am For Our Every Need, and in that is a list of God. Is this when I need this? And it's about 20, 30 of them.
Speaker 1:So even if you're like I don't even know who God is, I don't know the names of God, going and listening to that podcast or getting into prayer portions, or he Is they, I Am where we have lists and I think even in the back of the type of the Father's Heart book, there's another list of the characteristics of the Father's Heart and just beginning to understand who he is Because, as we always say, at the core of all of this is once we know who he is, then we understand who we are and our identity is secure and we don't have to keep chasing things to try to figure out who we are. And does someone love me? No, you know you're loved because you are the covenant daughter or son of a very loving father who is there for you, and so things just become more settled in your heart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your mom's book Revealing the Treasures is a great resource for people to do that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so there's I mean, there's many other ways you can do it. Perhaps there's certain songs. I have songs both that are worship songs and secular songs, like the Billy Joel song Just the Way you Are is one that I love to hear, and when I hear it, I don't I don't hear Billy Joel singing it to whatever woman he was singing it to. I take that as a song of God saying that to me I love you just the way you are, and really the one of the opening lines of it is you know, don't go changing to try to please me.
Speaker 1:I like you just the way you are, because a lot of what I heard growing up from different people in my life is I was too much, I need to be more like this, or why can't you be more nice? That's one that I heard a lot of because I'm pretty bold and a pretty strong leader, and so it was very healing for me for God to say I know how I created you and I like the way I made you, so maybe there's songs that speak to you, or a lot of this is just going to be each of us having conversations with God going God, can you show me? Can you show me where your hand's been moving in my life? Can you show me where you're trying to speak to me through music, through movies, through the Bible, through other people and just kind of tuning our heart in to being able to listen and to hear Him?
Speaker 2:Another way that we can delight in God is to invite Him into our day. I think sometimes I think you alluded to this earlier also, elizabeth sometimes reading scripture in the morning or whatever, having a quiet time and checking it off the list can feel that it's just an obligation or it's out of duty, or it's just a discipline. It's what we're supposed to do. But even just being a little bit more intentional than that, it is a discipline, it is an obligation and a duty in some ways, and that's not a bad thing. But turning that into an invitation, god gives us an invitation to delight in Him, but we also get to invite God into our day. We can invite Him into being with us throughout, again, throughout the day, enjoying conversation with Him, thanking Him, being aware of His presence. I think that that's a small thing to do, but it's really critical. And then investing in time with your Father Again, just making time to be with Him, like we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2:You have to invest in relationships in order for them to grow, and so this is where sometimes we may not feel like investing in that relationship, but it will be beneficial, it will produce fruit, it will cause a shift and a change in us as we invest in that relationship.
Speaker 2:It will cause a shift and a change in the way that we we see things, the way that we see God, the way that we see our daily circumstances, and so sometimes we just have to remind ourselves that we need to invest time with our Father and be patient with yourself when you stumble. Just being patient with yourself and understanding hey, I'm not perfect in this, it's that progress more than perfection, right? Like how do I just keep moving forward and how do I keep recognizing that God is for me and he loves me and he delights in me and I want to delight in him? And there's gonna be days where it doesn't feel right or days where we're just struggling to do it, days that we have doubts. But being patient with yourself and that knowing it's a journey, it's a process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kimberly, with all these that we've talked about so far, the word that just keeps coming to my mind is the word intentional, and it's for each of us. I can almost like listen to this list. It's like, oh my gosh, now I have eight more things I've got to try to do, and I mean, I'm just struggling to make it to Walmart today. Come on, all of us have very busy lives, and so it's wherever you are in your journey. You may not even be at a point where you want to say God is Father, because you've been very wounded. Okay, take that one baby step, choose one little thing. Wake up in the morning and ask God to give you a song to sing, whether it's about Him or it's just a song. Just do something simple, whatever. But for each of us, let's be intentional. So, like when I'm going to Walmart, or I'm folding laundry, or I'm doing something mundane that I'm not really excited about doing and I may probably have a cranky attitude about doing so, it's stopping in that moment and going okay, god, you're going with me to Walmart, you're right here with me while I'm folding the laundry. So what can I do to be intentional about spending time with you while I'm also having to do the mundane tasks of things that I don't really want to do. It's not do it all at once. Like you said, kimberly, it's not about perfection, but it's about, okay, how can I be a little more intentional today to be aware that God is moving and active and wants to be more a part of my life than I think he does?
Speaker 1:But there's also a few things on this list, kimberly, that are a little harder, that are in there, and I think they are very important in the book. The first one, the title of it, says Don't Let Pain Become your Identity, and by that we mean, for some of us, we've been on this journey for a very long time and we've been working towards healing, and we've been working towards healing and we've been working on forgiveness and we've been working on release. But if we're honest, if someone says, tell me about yourself, one of the first things we want to bring up is our history. Well, here's the people who have wronged me, and here's the pain that I've been through in my life and these types of things, and I'm guilty of it. I think I shared on a previous podcast that I was like well, you know, just a few years ago, so-and-so did something to me and I realized it had been eight years and I was still holding on to it.
Speaker 1:But for each of us, we've got to come to a place and it's going to be in our own time, in our own way, and only by God's grace that we're able to do this. We've got to come to a point in our relationship with our earthly fathers and with God as father, where we say you know what? You didn't do it well, and there is some pain and some wounding. That has happened. But I'm going to release you from that and I am going to choose to still pursue a relationship with you.
Speaker 1:And again, for some of you, you can't pursue a relationship with your dad, either because he's no longer here or he's not a safe person. But I'm talking more about relationship with God here. God, I feel like you've let me down and you've wounded me and it's really hard for me to trust you. But I'm going to almost like a turtle sticking my head out of the shell. I'm going to stick my head out of my shell again and just trust you and invite you to show yourself strong to me again, because if we choose to keep our history as our identity, we're never going to be able to move forward. More than anything, we're never going to be free, because we're going to be held hostage by the wounding that has happened in our past. It takes time, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of grace and mercy, but there is a way forward for each of us, because Jesus came so that we can be set free.
Speaker 2:It may take some time for you to let go and live from your true wholeness in Christ. It's a hard thing to do, but that's okay. We can start off every morning by declaring I choose to live today as a covenant child of God. I am deeply loved, totally accepted and fully pleasing to Him. And the last piece, I think, is that at times we want to resist God's dealings in our lives. Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to ignore stuff and just move on.
Speaker 2:God hasn't promised us an easy life. He's promised that he will be with us in this life and sometimes those challenges and those wounds are leading us to a place of being able to seek Him and find Him. And that's the hard thing to grasp, it's a hard thing to realize, it's a hard thing to. I mean, we've wrestled with that idea in several of these podcasts. In this, I think what we have to remember is that God is extending that invitation to us to trust him. He ultimately wants us to trust him. He ultimately wants to heal us and to speak to us and he wants us to find him. The question for us is are we going to choose to allow it or do we want to resist him, and a lot of times we want to resist him and so fighting against that, not resisting him.
Speaker 1:Kimberly, what I love about God is he's outside of time. Yeah, he's got all the time in the world, so he's not, like you know, looking at his watch or his cell phone going. Can you hurry up? He is quite a loving and kind father. So if you aren't at a place where you're ready to fully let go, if you're like you know what the pain's too deep and I'm not ready to move forward, god's like that's all right, I'll sit here with you until you are.
Speaker 1:And we've each shared in our own journeys, kimberly, that there's, I mean, a lot of what we share over the course of a podcast was years of us working through things, and he was so patient and is still so patient and so kind. He knows what's good for us, he knows what will bring healing and freedom, but at the same time, he doesn't demand it. I like the way you keep using the word invitation, because it is an invitation and there is a place of more freedom and more hope and more healing. But he's never going to look at you and demand that you take a step towards it, but he's going to be like the father in the prodigal son story, waiting with open arms to lavish love upon you as you take those steps towards him.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that we didn't address yet that this chapter starts off by talking about, is recognizing that we are also co-laborers with Christ.
Speaker 2:So there's that invitation to be a co-laborer with him, like we talked about the relational component here, right, there's a redemptive story that's being played out, that God is unfolding, and in 1 Corinthians 3, 9, there's a reference to us being co-workers with God. So, again, that's that we keep talking about this invitation, right, like an invitation, not a demand, but an invitation to co-labor with Him, to co -work with Him, to be a part. And we see that all the way from Genesis to Revelation, which I think is beautiful throughout the storyline of Scripture. And so in chapter 13 of Safe in the Father's Heart you titled the chapter you Are a Father Too, and so there's this idea that over time, as God has revealed himself to us as a loving, kind and faithful father, he will continue to reveal that to us. Then we also get to go and represent that as co-laborers and co-workers. We get to go and father others, mother and father others, if you want to say it that way.
Speaker 1:But yeah, kimberly, yeah, and the reason why we end with this chapter is, again, not to try to pressure anyone or guilt anyone into well, now get over yourself and go minister to other people. That's not the heart of it at all. But I think a lot of times when I find myself getting too inward focused, I mean and again kind of the story I shared in another podcast of I'm talking about something as if it just happened and it happened eight years ago. That was a problem with my own heart of not letting go, of not releasing that to God, of not allowing that part of my heart to be healed. But there are times that we can become so inward focused on what we've experienced that it kind of blinds us to the fact that there are other people in the world around us who are also struggling and also hurting. And sometimes the most healing thing we can do is kind of turn our heart towards others.
Speaker 1:And, okay, how can I help this other person understand the love of God more? And that's not necessarily saying quit your job and start a complete nonprofit ministry on fathering, but it's like I said, go into Walmart, okay, who can I show the love of God to while I'm here, and that may be as simple as stopping and saying hello to the greeter at the door and asking them how their day is going, because most people just ignore that person and walk straight past them, and so for 10 seconds I communicate to that person you matter, and someone sees you. It's as you're again enjoying God, inviting him into your day, spending time with him, co-laboring with him. How do you then start to out of the overflow of what God has shown you? And on your own heart, the overflow of what God has shown you and on your own heart, show the love of the Father to the people around you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love this idea because it speaks to legacy and it speaks to what Paul says, where he says we were delighted to not only share the gospel of God with you, but our very lives as well. And it is that idea of giving of yourself, out of the overflow of what has been given to you by and through your Father, god. And so the fact that I mean I just think it's pretty cool and amazing as cheap as those words are at times that God would allow us to not just represent him that way but get to speak for him that way, co-labor with him like agents of reconciliation and change right, like we get to be his ambassadors, his feet, the salt of the earth, the light, like we like I mean he is those things, but we have a calling to be that as his body here on this earth, and I just think that's a. I mean talk about trust, you know I think about sometimes.
Speaker 2:I think about the gospels and the life of Jesus during his earthly ministry, and he trusted the disciples to go along with him and to do these things, and that's the same thing that we have today as believers.
Speaker 2:He's trusting us, not just inviting us and calling us into it, but trusting us to do that, and so I think that's, I mean, that's a privilege. It's a privilege. And when I start to recognize hey, I get to be a part of this, start to recognize hey, I get to be a part of this. It almost redirects me back toward that loving God element. Right, like I want to love Him, I want to know Him, I want to know His love for me so that I can go and give that to others and represent that to others and cause them, help them see how much he loves them. And again, that's just almost like this full circle of all of that reminds me of who I am and Him and who he is and who others are. And it's love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how much more powerful is the message that we are able to share with the world because we have been wounded? If our lives have been great and everything's gone wonderful for us and we had a perfect relationship with our Heavenly Father, well then, of course you trust God as Father. But for many of us who are listening to this podcast, that's not our story, and I think there's so much more power when we boast about our weakness, as Paul talks about, so that Christ's strength can be shown. And so there's a long quote in Safe of the Father's Heart from Donald Miller, which, at the core of it, is talking about the fact that Desmond Tutu was asked who should be on this commission that was established by Nelson Mandela to try to help reconcile the country as it was coming out of apartheid, and Desmond Tutu said that those who have been wounded and then allowed themselves to forgive and release those that have wounded them are the ones that should be on the committee, because of the power that comes from wounded healers.
Speaker 1:And I think all of us in our own way, we've all been wounded somewhere along the way by someone, because we live in a world with humans and no one has ever had a perfect relationship with someone else, but when you've been able to have been wounded, take that wound to God, allowed him to heal you and allow the love of God to continue to flow through you despite what you've been through.
Speaker 1:There is such a powerful anointing in that, and so I hope, as we have talked through this podcast, you have heard us boast about weakness, only so that we could say all the more look how God has shown up for us, and Kimberly and I do trust the moon is round and we do trust that God is good and a good father. Despite some of the struggles and we still struggle. I mean, this year has not. The last few years have not been a picnic for me at all, as I've questioned some of the choices, of things that God has allowed in my life and I know that I have many more years of life ahead of me and they're not always going to be easy either but it's being able to trust in the goodness of God that, even though it may not make sense to me from His perspective, from His understanding and from His loving heart, it all will one day.
Speaker 2:I know I am always safe in my Father's heart. That's where we have to land. We have to land there. The moon is round and I know I'm always safe. We pray that you will be blessed with permission to be who your father intends you to be. From your place of strength in his heart, you can go forward into all the potential that God has planted in your DNA. Both naturally and spiritually, you are established in the father's love you always wanted. So as we close out our episode today, again our friend and board member Richard will be blessing us and know that you are blessed to also be a blessing.
Speaker 3:You are blessed to be a blessing. The Bible was written in into a culture that was steeped in blessing. A father blessed his child in giving him his name, passed on the patriarchal blessing to children's children, gave the priestly blessing over his household. Jude 1 and 2 says you have been called, loved by God, your Father, and kept by Jesus Christ. Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance. Be blessed to receive from your Heavenly Father the blessing you wanted from your earthly father. Your Abba is passionate about your settled legitimacy as his true covenant son or daughter. Live your life as your father's blessed child.
Speaker 3:Ephesians 1.3 says you are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. Be blessed with abundant life of generational blessing that your father has laid up for you. When you are secure in your Father's love, your presence is a joy to those who know you From the deep well of your belonging and worth. You can bless others. You can find satisfaction in your Father's love ever more fully. As you reach out to others from true inner freedom, from your wholeness in Him, he will send you forth to do all that he designed you to do. Share your life through encouragement, hope and trust. Pass on to others the passion to know Him. From the overflow of what your Father has given to you, give to the next generation an affirmation of identity and legitimacy. Be blessed, as you are intentional about investing in a generational legacy.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business 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.
