In January of this year, I began to serve as the Executive Director of Heart of the Father Ministries. For the most part, a word that I've used to describe this experience is "fun." Taking on a new challenge, seeing our ministry from a new perspective, and working on new strategies have been invigorating and exciting for me.
At the same time, I have noticed in myself an impatience, a desire to move quickly, and at times a frenetic pace that leads to exhaustion. Taking on new challenges often comes with a sense that I have to do everything right in order for our ministry to thrive. I want to do well, avoid failure, and prove something to myself and to others. Perhaps you can relate to this feeling in your roles at work and at home?
Slowing down, taking perspective, and expressing trust in God are important steps as I walk through this transition. However, I've recognized that there is something deeper in myself that drives that impatience and striving. It is the desire to be worthy of love. More specifically, I want to be loved, and my motivation to strive and succeed is in the hope of gaining it.
I wonder if that is at the core of all of our striving, our fighting, our struggling, and our acting out; we want to be loved and we don't know how to find it.
This spring, we are doing a book study on our podcast, Open Doors: Conversations with Heart of the Father. We are diving into Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love. In this book, Fr. Thomas Acklin and Fr. Boniface Hicks lay out a practical understanding of prayer as a means to enter a loving relationship with God. He shares that the whole point of prayer, to be loved by God personally and to love Him by bringing ourselves to Him.
What do we do with that unsatisfied desire to be "enough" or worthy? What do we do with that feeling of emptiness or unworthiness? We bring it to Him. The authors wrote:
"It would seem that to grow in confidence, one needs to accumulate it, save it up, preserve it until finally one has enough. In reality, rather than growing through filling up, the confidence coming from faith grows through emptying...the truth is that I must know my poverty and be totally dependent on God."
What do we do with this restlessness, this very human desire to measure up and our awareness that the world cannot satisfy our need for love? We bring it to Him. We lay our emptiness at His feet and allow Him to gaze on us with His love. We give ourselves to Him and He gives Himself to us.
Later this month we will have our first Unbound conference of the year in Brighton, Michigan, led by myself and Emily Wilson. Please pray for us. As we share the message of the Father's love and the freedom we find in His heart, may we keep in mind that His love satisfies our deepest desires.
