When life leaves you feeling discouraged or a problem seems hopeless, remember this: God the Father has not stopped loving you.
St. Paul speaks of this in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17. It’s a prayer, written in the Bible, for you!
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father,
who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement
and good hope through his grace,
encourage your hearts and strengthen them
in every good deed and word.
That means your hope is not based on circumstances. It is based on the Father’s heart.
As I wrote in The Father’s Heart: Meet the Real Abba Father:
We long for the fullness of God’s love because we instinctively know that we’re supposed to have it. “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3 NIV). He designed us to know and receive his love. He created us because he has been loving us everlastingly, timelessly, desiring to have a precious Father-child relationship with us ever since and before we were conceived in our mother’s womb. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13 NIV).
Our Divine Father brought us into existence so that he could love us with his whole heart, his whole soul, his whole mind, and his whole strength. Jesus told us to “love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (see Mark 12:30) because this is the nature of God! This is the kind of love he has for us. For you!
Father God wants to heal your wounded heart. As he says in Jeremiah 31:3-4 (adapted for this moment): “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you close to Me with unfailing kindness. I will build you up again, my precious child.”
He is with you right now to correct the bad messages that have cut you down. Let him point out your goodness and your giftedness. He sees your goodness even when you cannot. Yes, he sees your sins, too. Yes, he sees your every flaw. But because you have allowed Jesus to be your Savior, when the Father looks at you, he sees you through the filter of the Son’s sacrifice on the Cross. He sees your sins nailed to the Cross. He sees you as the cleansed saint that the Sacraments have re-created you to be.
Psalm 139:14 (NIV) is a prayer you might want to say every day if you need healing from a bad self-image: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful….”
Why is it hard to imagine that Father God sees us as so wonderful? Because childhood punishments and the imperfect views of us that came from parents and other father-figures have tainted not only our image of God but also our image of ourselves. True, we sin and make plenty of mistakes, and fail in other ways. But we are much more than that, and God knows this better than we do.
Find the hope and strength you need. Get The Father’s Heart: Meet the Real Abba Father today!
The Father’s Heart
A do-it-yourself guide to heal your father wounds through the love of Father God
See other videos in our Good News Media Center >>
or go to the book’s Table of Contents >>
