Table of Contents

The Father’s Heart is a set of three workbooks, each with 10 spiritual exercises designed to heal your wounds and feel the wonderful love of Abba-Father.

Use this Table of Contents to revisit chapters you’ve already read. Do not jump ahead. Each chapter sets the stage for the next. Your journey into the Father’s heart will only be successful if you go step by step, reading the chapters in their proper order, doing the spiritual exercises in  each one.

Introduction: What are you seeking?

Book One: Meet the Real Abba-Father

1. Tears for Abba

   This book is written to introduce you to Daddy Who Wipes Away Your Tears. In whatever ways your parents and other authority figures have failed to represent Father God’s true nature, he wants to enter into your heart more deeply and heal you. He wants to enable you to receive from him more of the goodness and love that you long for. He has been waiting for this day. He is inviting you to reach out to him and accept more from him — more than you know is possible.

2. Healing Your Image of God’s Fatherhood

   Which Person of the Holy Trinity feels closest to you? Who has the deepest relationship with you? Whom do you turn to first? For most of us, it’s not the Father. God the Father is the scary one. We think of him as the one who punishes us when we sin. We believe that he expects perfection from us. And he’s too far away up there in heaven to help us with our little daily problems. Right?

3. The Name of Abba, Like No Other Name

   There are many names for God in scripture. Let’s look at the one that Jesus used: Abba. Then let’s find your own special name for God to help heal your relationship with him.

4. Words that Make a Difference

   What words do you use that imply something about God that really came from the ungodly traits of the humans in your life? This is what we’ll look at now because it can make all the difference between a safe, healthy friendship with Abba-Father and a relationship that’s handicapped by misconceptions.

5. The Safest Father in the World

   How safe do you feel you are with God the Father? Are you to be able to climb up onto his lap and into his arms to feel his protective concern for you? He wants you to feel his powerful arms wrapping around you and creating a zone of extreme peace with you at the center.

6. The Father Heals Us of Fear

   In today’s world, more and more people fear God due to the lifestyles they have chosen and the decisions they have made. Their inner child thinks they will be punished, and shame tells them that they need to hide from God. At the same time, Abba is reaching out with the love of a father who knows that erring children need extra attention, while Jesus the Savior is actively and continually seeking the lost sheep who are hiding from the Father.

7. When Doubts Tell Us God Doesn’t Care

   What doubts about God the Father do you have? These are undermining your faith, and today we’re going to find a way to overcome them.

8. Dealing with Disappointment

   Rarely are our prayers answered instantly. And there are good reasons for this. Divine reasons. If we could see it from God’s perspective, we’d be grateful for the journey of waiting. But our first instinct is to see it from our own limited perspective. And this leads to disappointment.

9. The Discipline of Abba-Father

   In this day of our journey deeper and deeper into the Father’s Heart, let’s look at how much we’re influenced by the fear of punishment. Does the discipline of a good father always mean punishment? Could it be that we wrongly interpret the pain of discipline as a bad thing?

10. Abba’s Hidden Love in Our Confusion

    When we try hard to discern God’s will and then proceed with what we perceive as his guidance only to meet with failure, we understandably get lost in confusion. We wonder: “What happened? Why didn’t this work out? I was following God. I was trusting God. And he led me into disaster! But this is not God’s nature; perhaps I’m projecting onto him what a human has done to misguide me. Or is it my fault? Did I misinterpret his guidance?” More confusion.

Book Two: Discover What You Mean to Father God

1. How to Recognize the Father’s Voice

   Feeling close to Abba-Father even while we are being disciplined — especially while we are being disciplined – comes from knowing how precious we are to the Father. Discipline is meant to be an exchange of love. In a trusting relationship, we are glad to receive instructions that will purify us. And the Father, who wants only what is best for us, is glad that we are glad — just as any good parent is happy when the child accepts the lesson being taught. But to reach this level of trust, we need to know how to differentiate the Father’s voice from other voices.

2. Communion with the Father During Eucharistic Adoration

   Jesus’ mission is to take us to the Father. He has shown us what the Father is like by being an example of the Father’s true nature. And he connects us to the Father every time we receive Jesus in Holy Communion. He has been revealing the Father to you all of your life, and he will continue to do so. I think he might even do this for all of eternity, for we will never fully know God, since he is more, always more, infinitely more than any human could ever understand. I think it’s likely that the Saints in heaven are still learning. That would be one of the adventuresome joys of heaven!

3. Children of God by Adoption

   Up until now in the 30-day journey into the Father’s heart, we’ve been focusing on who he really is as our Divine Daddy. Now we’re going to shift to who we are to him. What does it mean to be called children of God? Discovering this can help you make the transition from seeing Father God through the lens of your experiences with humans to seeing him as a Divine Daddy who chose to adopt you because you are so very, very important to him. You are more precious to him than you know. He is more actively reaching out to you than you realize.

4. The Father Sees You as a Gift

   Father God created you to be a treasure, a gift to be cherished. To be a gift means that we’re blessing someone. We’re making the lives of others better. Abba-Father designed each of us, at the very moment of our conception, to be gifts for the world — sacred gifts through which he could work. He answers the prayers of others through us. He heals through the giftedness of people in the medical field. He builds homes through the giftedness of laborers. Rarely does he do anything apart from the gifts that he designed into people. God values our partnership in accomplishing his will.

5. The Father Delights In You

   God delights in us because he knows our hearts. He knows the good that is in our hearts. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows his own presence within us.

6. The Father’s Compassion

   The Father is full of compassion for you. Compassion is not something that we have to wait for. Compassion is not something we need to be good enough for. Jesus gave us a parable that describes what the Father’s compassion looks like. The story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) illustrates that compassion fills the Father’s heart even while we are still far off track in the Christian life.

7. Abba-Father wants to hug you

   Are you aware of God’s touch? The tender, caring touch of the Father reaching out to you. The hug you need when you feel discouraged or lonely. Or the hug of his compassion. Father God touches us every day in big and small ways. He gives us congratulatory pats on the back. He comforts us when we feel depressed. He lifts us up when we stumble. He holds our hands when we stroll down the street admiring the clouds and trees and flowers. And when we get hurt, he wipes our tears and he kisses our aches.

8. Prayer Requests as an Exchange of Love

   Do you think that your prayer requests are not answered fast enough? Or that your prayer requests are ignored by God? Do you suppose that God is withholding any good from you because you’re not perfect? By now (if you haven’t skipped any chapters of this book) you know that this isn’t true. However, the worry that our prayers are not being answered due to the multitude of imperfections we have can sneak up on us, triggered by old messages from which we have not yet been completely healed.

9. Abba Is On Your Team

   Who fights for you?  Defends you? Protects you? No one on earth as much as your Divine Daddy does. Who wants to enter into your heart, your story, your journey through the everyday trials of life? No one on earth as much as your Divine Daddy does.

10. The Father Reveals His Love Through Signs and Wonders

    How often do you see God’s hand intervening in your day? The Father reveals his love in the uncanny coincidences that make a difficult situation easier. He reveals his love in the perfect timing of an unexpected phone call from just the right person while you’re wondering how to accomplish a goal. He sings to you through the song playing on the radio that ministers to you while you’re on the way to visit an unpleasant relative.

Book Three: The Victory of Abba’s Fatherhood

1. Walking through the Garden of Life with Abba

   Have you noticed that in a garden it is easier to experience God than nearly anywhere else? Praying while sitting in or working in a garden is a direct connection to our Creator. Why is that? Because it’s a return to the Garden of Paradise, the Garden of Eden. The close relationship that God intended to have with all of his human creations was first brought into reality here. He wants to restore for us the closeness that our first parents, Adam and Eve, lost.

2. Satan’s Goal: Destroy God’s Fatherhood

   To ensure the healing of our father-shaped wounds while we purify our image of God’s fatherhood, it helps to realize how the wrong image is continually being inflicted upon us. Major influences in the culture we live in have been severely undermining the image of fatherhood for a long time.

3. The Tears Of Abba For Your Healing

   Do you know yet how much Abba-Father cares about you? As your Perfect Father, he cries when you cry. He feels the pain that parents feel when their child suffers. He longs to give you healing.

4. The Tears of Abba for Lost Souls

   Have you ever wondered how God feels about the lost souls in your family? You pray for them because you yearn for their salvation. You even ache for them, knowing that their sinful lifestyles are separating them from the God who loves them and they are endangering their eternal souls.

5. Saints and Mystics Reveal the Father’s Heart

   The heart of the Father is breaking. It grieves him to see so many of his precious children fall into Satan’s hands. He cherishes even the worst evil-doers more than we can imagine. Abba-Father has been reaching out to them in countless ways, including through saints and mystics.

6. Saint Joseph as the Image of Fatherhood’s Image

   Only one saint stands out as the best human model of God’s fatherhood. Saint Joseph is the best ally for men who want to be good husbands and fathers. And yet we know so little about him from the Bible. Only recently has devotion to Saint Joseph become popular. Why now? It’s because of all that Satan has done to destroy the image of fatherhood. Abba-Father is giving Saint Joseph to the world as a remedy for all of the demonic strategies against marriages and families.

7. Reclaiming God’s Fatherhood Over the World

   How’s your journey into the heart of God’s fatherhood? Do feel differently about him today than when you started? Are you excited about this? Abba-Father is! He’s delighted that you’ve overcome some of the obstacles that have prevented you from knowing him better. He’s super happy that you are now embedded more deeply into his heart. And so he asks: “Because of what you’ve discovered, I need you to be My ambassador! There are countless people who are suffering because they don’t yet know Me well.”

8. The Father Gifted You to Make a Difference

   The path to the deepest place in Abba-Father’s heart is the road of ministry — in other words, collaborating with him in his works. At the very moment when he conceived you in your mother’s womb, from the depths of his Divine Heart your Divine Daddy pulled out a piece of his fatherly love for humankind and handed it to you. And he gifted you with a very special purpose, which he planned long before your life began. A Father-child alliance.

9. The Majesty of the Father’s Love for You

   When my mom was four years old, she was taken from her family and placed into the home of foster parents. Ten years later, the couple finally adopted her. In-between, she didn’t know to which family she truly belonged. This made a life-long impact on her. Do you feel this way about God’s Fatherhood? Are you aware of the benefits of being been fully adopted by the Father in all of his royal majesty? Or are you just in foster care?

10. Receive the Father’s Blessing

    In this final day of your journey into the Father’s heart, your Very Dear Divine Daddy wants to give you his blessing. A blessing that will stay with you for the rest of your life. A blessing that will carry you into the bliss of Heaven. A blessing that will make a difference today and every time you return to Abba-Father during prayer.