Connection…it’s what you and I were made for. Without it, we can emotionally and even physically erode. Being plugged into meaningful relationships is the life-bread of your heart. Even more so, connecting to Father God is a gift you and I were designed to experience on a daily basis.
The cry of a believer’s heart says “I want to feel close to God.” This should be a normal desire for every Christ-following believer. Yet why does this seem to be so difficult for so many?
The Struggle of Disconnection
Connecting to Father God is such a important aspect of our walk. Yet if you dig down deep into the hearts of well meaning believers, there is a nagging sense of disconnection. Most people cover it up with busy religious routines and overpacked lives. Some frost over it with various forms of denial.
The problem is, too many just shuffle on with their busy lives and just ignore this sense of disconnection; even though it is not what we were meant for.
The cry of connection is what you were made for. You were not designed to be separated from God, nor is it His desire for you to feel distant from Him.
But this is a very real problem. Many people will often say, “I can believe about Father God’s love in my mind, but experiencing it in my heart….that seems distant right now.”
Many choose to ignore those feelings, which can seem helpful. But over time, those struggles bury beneath the surface and infect many areas of our lives.
Connecting to Father God Starts With Him
We often view connecting to Father God’s love as something we need to pursue. There is good intent with this, but a lot of it is based on performance. We become conditioned to think that once we jump through the right hoops and take the correct steps; then, somewhere over the rainbow, we will land into the Father’s love.
But it doesn’t work that way. 1 John 4:19 reminds us that “we love Him because He first loved us.” So this means that God is the initiator of this relationship. The greatest pursuit of connecting to the Father is learning to receive; which for many is a foreign reference.
Receiving is simple, but its so challenging in a world where love always seems to be something that is earned. We have been conditioned with lies and a lifestyle that forms this distorted response. If we feel we need to keep doing something to make God happy with us, then we will always think something is wrong in the relationship because something is wrong with us.
The power of believing actually fuels our ability to receive. The more we focus on receiving, the more we can learn that love is not about something to earn, but something to take in with gratitude. Someone else paid the price for this, so that we could live in it.
Clarifying the Struggle
In looking at the separation many believers experience, the problem is not God and the problem is not that there is something wrong with you. There is interference in the way, designed to rob you of landing into the arms of the Father with confidence and assurance.
You have to understand that an all out war has been launched against the hearts of believers to intrench them in feeling separated from the love of the Father. The enemy will first make you feel separated; then condemn you for feeling that way and point to all sorts of unfruitful reasons as to why you feel separated.
This leaves many Christians discouraged and left floundering. But there must be a better way.
Knowing Who He is as a Father
When it comes to connecting to God in a deeper way, it’s important that you first recognize who He is as a Father. In our walk with Christ, it can be easy to focus our engagement with Jesus while avoiding the Father. Not that this is wrong, it’s just incomplete, because Jesus is the way to the Father. He paid the price so you could have intimacy with the Father.
But we will continue to struggle in separation if we ignore the nature of who God is. He is a Father. He is a Dad; and a good Dad at that. His nature is not exactly what gets represented when it comes to what a father should look like.
That is why learning to connect to Father God often begins with letting Him heal our lens of what “father” even means. I remember one day crying out to God and getting honest:
“God, I don’t feel your love or connected to You and I don’t know how to relate to You as a Father, so I need you to help me. I don’t want to ignore this any longer.”
That honest positioned my heart to learn and grow. The only way we can break through is to stop running and avoiding, but to position our hearts in humility to learn. For many, like me, it will be a re-learning of what loves means; what it means to be loved and what relating to a really good Father means.
How can you position your heart to receive His love today?