Our Father......

Last weekend I spoke at a retreat for a friend's church on behalf of my family's ministry . Pretty nice little group of believer; young, charismatic, intellectual, hip, and actually pretty diverse. Most were in their 20's and 30's, but there were a few up closer to the 50-60 mark. Nice folks, young families and lots of single people. I have never been to their church and had never met any of them before so I was a bit anxious about having to speak to them. Now, I usually am not at all nervous when speaking in front of folks, I do it all the time, but the topic of my time was a bit of a sensitive issue. We were talking about the wounds that we receive from our fathers and how that influences our lives and our concepts of God and his divine love for us.

These types of retreats can either be open and vulnerable times of healing, or just straight up intellectual consumption.... or just "blah, blah, blah..." I was praying for the first. I was hoping that the Spirit of God would touch some people and reveal the wounds that they had been carrying around due to abusive or absent fathers or just old wounds from unfulfilled expectations. I was hoping for some healing.

My fellow speaker and I spent some time in prayer and confession together before the whole thing kicked off and just trusted God to do a work. He did. There was a lot of weeping and pain expressed, but through it people were able to release it to our Father in Heaven and receive his touch.... receive his love. It was right on.

As I go throughout life, I am constantly amazed at the deep wounds we carry with us.... wounds that can only be healed by the Lord's touch. We refuse to let him touch us though. We hide our wounds, we ignore them, we play like we don't hurt by distracting ourselves with idle pursuits, sex, and work. We run from the love that can take away our pain. We refuse to believe it is truly there. We refuse to believe.
Lord have mercy....